Instead of killing the kids or yourself ...

Instead of killing the kids or yourself - there are other options.

Written for a 12 step group.


Read about some familles and single moms on the recovery lists being in turmoil from troubled kids. The feeling of hopelessness and despair is in many of these posts. Recently, I discussed the range of options of what to do with problem children with a professional in that field. She responded with many choices that are available for the parent that is ready to self-destruct. I've included these options below. A big problem can arise when the parent that is not a kid person has kids and learns too late that they are not cut out for that job. The danger point for the parent and the child is when the parents sinks to hopelessness and sees no escape other than death for themselves or the kid. Personally, I like kids, but I am low capacity in this area and have a very real limit when it comes to dealing with stress from kids. I have no patience to coddle and breast feed kids. I usually do better with older kids than screaming infants. Screaming infants give me the feeling that someone is sticking a knife in my brain. I accept this and work with it and not against it. This is the foundation of accepting and living within ones comfortable means which I will go into below.

I've heard from a few moms that feel shy about discussing such troubles in public. They feel ashamed that they lack the capabilities to be "perfect moms." We can see a large range of comfortable abilities when it comes to moms. One mom can raise twelve kids without breathing hard, while another mom can't raise one kid and in the end even ends up killing off the one kid. Is the person that can raise 12 kids a good person and the other person a bad person? No, they just have different comfortable abilities and capabilities. What separates the two moms? In a word - Naturalness. One mom works with her nature the other mom works against her nature and is living a "forced" life.

If you are a stressed out single Mom or have a high maintenance family, be pointed in the direction of removing stress and problems in your life at every turn. Get the kids involved as well as the hubby with removing some of this stress. Make it clear to the entire family that life cannot go on the same way that it has been going. I marvel how people that are already sick from a complex and stressful life keep adding more complexities at every turn instead of taking the path of simplicity and less stress. If you make stress reduction your foremost purpose in life, you will be successful at reducing your stress load and thus increase your inner peace. You may not do this perfectly, but you can do it more perfectly than not if you did not make the effort at all.

Food plays a big part in the lives of troubled kids. Many kids eat a diet of crap, highly salted crap at that. My own kid had high blood pressure at 14. I had it as well before we became clear on the sodium issue. Once we developed clarity, we found out that my son was eating 6000 to 7000 mg a day of sodium. Besides generating high blood pressure, sodium is a great corrosive that eats at our joints. Sodium in excess really agitates me, gives me headaches, restlessness and agitation. Corn syrup, sugar and artificial chemicals also work to keep kids agitated. Many of the parents themselves don't eat healthy, so how can they give away what they do not have themselves? Some of the parents I talk with say they do not have the time to cook healthy foods and eat right. No time to live right? They never heard of "first things first" I guess? Sounds like they need to apply a life of voluntary simplicity? What is the essence of voluntary simplicity? In a nutshell it brings your awareness to the fact that if you can't keep up - you scale back until you can.

Other times the parents say the kids wont eat healthy as they "Don't like it." What I did was to prepare healthy meals and tell the kid, "This is what's for dinner. If you want to eat diner then eat it. If you don't want it, then skip dinner and I'll save it for you and you can eat it for dinner tomorrow." I made it a point to stop buying a lot of junk foods and keeping it in the house. Sure kids can get junk to eat outside of the house, but I will not contribute to his eating it in excess at home. We had treats and junk now and again, but the majority of the food served was real, not fast foods or junk. Another area of neglect in many homes is that of exercise. Sedentary lifestyle is on the rise with a lot of kids. video games, computers keeping them sitting too long.

A lot of kids seem to be starting young with addiction nowadays. When I dropped my kid off at college yesterday I noticed most of the freshman smoking cigs. Then there is all the stories of gambling, drunkenness and drugs. If your kid is a young addict, get them going in 12 step work. Better early than late. In the news was the latest rage with teens - asphyxia or choking to cause an altered state of consciousness. Kids find no shortage of ways to abuse the senses ... do they? When I was young I did most of the same. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" ~ William Blake.


Here is part of the professional's response as to what to do with problem kids that are destroying a family.

(...) writes:

Counseling is available for all income levels through local mental health services. But, in extreme cases if a child is causing overwhelming problems parents can seek other options like:

1. Contact the children's services dept. of your local human services agency they can take emergency custody for up to 30 days and you can get the child back anytime you want during that period and help you develop appropriate resources and strategies for coping

2. Temporary custody is from 30 days to a max of up to 2 years depending on the state you live in, they make a case plan for reunification including wrap around services to help you with the reunification and they always look for family or friends of the family for the placement first - it is a priority

3. If there is no change of circumstances and the situation remains untenable, may be that the state takes permanent custody of the child. Again this is the most extreme cases, but if you are contemplating destroying yourself or the child, then that is a viable option

(end of snip)

V writes:

Sometimes, just the threat of the kid going away for a "vacation" can get kids serious about change and help them to think in a different direction. Other times a vacation is needed for all concerned to get a fresh start. In any case, there is never a need for physical harm unless we choose the wrong path due to ignorance, hopelessness and rage. So exhaust all means at your disposal for change and then and only then work on acceptance. Here is an old post to shed more light on this subject.

"Living Within Our Comfortable Capabilities"

It seems life gives us enough hassles for free, so we don't have to help life by bulldozing more problems onto our own backs. It is a real death trap people make for themselves when they try to keep up with a hi-cap lifestyle with their low-cap capabilities. They are concentrated on keeping up with others and forget to concentrate on themselves and their own inner peace. The 12 and 12 writes about this on pages 122-125 when it mentions "staying right size." I feel there is nothing shameful about being a low-cap person, the only shame comes from trying to be something we are not comfortably able to be and killing yourself and your loved ones from an ego driven, out of balance life. Learning acceptance and being grateful for my comfortable capabilities was a major key to being at peace with my capabilities. My self worth comes from being the best I can be within MY comfortable capabilities and not from trying to be something I am not comfortably, solvently, abstinently, soberly and peacefully able to be.

Clarity about or actions is very important for those that ask the question about living comfortably within ones means. I will say that no one ever accomplishes anything great without pushing the envelope of stress. If you want to climb Mount Everest you have to make yourself uncomfortable. But, on the other hand, no one can force you to climb Mount Everest and make yourself that uncomfortable if you don't want to be. That choice is ours alone. The only question for the addicts to ask themselves, if they choose to climb Mount Everest is this; are you going to end up as just another one of the dead cadavers littering the mountain or will you be successful with your summit.

Being uncomfortable is one of the top reasons why addicts lose themselves in their addictions. It doesn't matter whether the point of uncomfortability comes from resentments, stress, abuse, greed or kids. It still boils down to wanting to escape life and pain though our addictions. The concept of working within my limits and comfort zone sprouted from my own clutter work. I found I could not keep a mantle dusted when I had 20 things on it but could keep it clean when it only had 3 things. Now, the 20 things were not cheap things by any means, they were carved ivories, carved jades, antique oriental porcelain, a 19th century musical tortoiseshell clock and an 11th century stone craving from India. Many, many thousands dollars on that mantle, yet it was all turned into dusty trash because it overwhelmed my comfortable capabilities to maintain. In fact, if there was a few square inches of mantle showing through I would think on buying something else a to fill that spot. Learning about the importance of numbers and how it related to my recovery clarity brought me the concept of "living my life by the numbers."

Once I learned this concept of "living my life by the numbers" I was able to apply this numerical clarity to many other addiction areas whether it be sex addiction, clutter, food, time management or kids. I now use number to take ME out of the picture and put recovery in the drivers seat and it all revolves around the question of "comfortable capabilities." We all heard of HALTS, yet of us make little use of it since we have no clarity of where our boundaries are. in a word we are VAGUE. I heard of HALTS in the mid 1970's yet until I became aware of the importance of my comfortable limits, measured within my program by numerical clarity I seldom applied it. I guess it is just too general of a term HALTS is. But with clarity and measurability HALTS came alive for me and suddenly became a useful recovery tool. My Debtors Anonymous program was my first exposure to using numerical clarity and thus one recovery program helped another.

I first thought of the importance of living within my (stress) means when it came to paying bills one day. I was overwhelmed with some work and could not bring myself to pay the bills for a few days. My bill paying routine was to sit in front of the TV and write checks. Anyway you cut it, that is not much work to pay the bills in front of the TV. But, to me I didn't care. It had nothing to do with money, as I had a few thousand dollars in the bank more what I needed to pay the bills. I just wanted to sit in front of the TV and veg out and didn't want to be bothered with anything. Now when I feel that way or come home and don't have the mental energy to make a sandwich for lunch this is a signpost for me to take a look at my lifestyle. As I probably need to scale back with stress and I'm headed down the wrong road again. What is voluntary simplicity in a nutshell? If you can't keep up, you scale back until you can keep up.

An overeater once told me that she became aware of a signpost that her program was heading downhill when "The first thing to go is the crudities" (referring to not eating her raw vegetables as a signpost that she was headed in the wrong direction with her food program.) There are many signposts that we can look for in our own lives to warn us that we are getting too busy for recovery. This helps avoid a binge if we can see it coming on and change directions. Working against our higher power and praying all the while does little good. We need to match footwork with mouthwork - we need to talk and walk in the same direction. We all have another binge within us - but maybe not another recovery? When I am too disgusted and tired to exercise, I'd better pay attention to how I am living.

Each of us we all have different capabilities. Yours might be ten times more of what mine is, or it may be ten times less. In the end, it really doesn't matter whether it is higher or lower, all that matters is you accept your own abilities and work each day to live within these means. I do know that we all have boundaries or limits and once an addict is pushed too far outside of the limits they are headed for trouble. If they think they are immune to this just because they have a recovery program they are wrong. If they were immune to slips they wouldn't be an addict anymore would they? So, whether it be the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak or the flesh is weak but the spirit is willing, something has to give. So check out your comfort zone and make sure you know the signposts of when things are coming undone in your own life.

Recently there have been a couple of mothers in the news for killing all their children. They were both home schooling mothers too. In my opinion, these are two extreme cases of not living within your comfortable means whether it is financial, energy, spiritual, mental or ability means. I think if they were more in tune with their comfortable limits and abilities their kids would still be around. These mothers saw no other way out. Their ego or their husbands ego ruled and forced them to such actions. When we work in unnatural directions, it is usually ego driven. For if we let peace guide us, our actions become natural, comfortable and sustainable.

It is almost an impossibility to be perfectly comfortable in life or recovery no matter how hard we try. With families, work, sickness, money issues and life in general we will get many opportunities to be uncomfortable in life. Now, if we have no concern for our comfort and just keep making ourselves uncomfortable, plus we add all the free problems life gives us then we will be definitely overloaded. So, this is the importance of being aware of our comfort zone and boundaries in life - cut down on your problems and don't add to them.

"Remember, peace is just another name for the integrity of being which enables man to respond to life without inner conflict. A mind which is in pieces cannot be a mind at peace." -- B. Phillips


Take Care,