- Joined
- Feb 4, 2024
OK, so they're gonna keep ignoring the issues as they've been doing this entire time. That's good. That's just what that family needs.
"The kids were never in any danger" doesn't mean that they haven't been SEVERELY affected by the environment that sounds like a straight-up drug den.
Just because Nick hasn't been beating them or held one of those guns to their heads, doesn't fucking mean that they're not being affected.
What they aren’t getting is neglect IS child abuse. The smaller children could have hurt or killed themselves when unsupervised if they tried cooking on the stove. If they tripped over the shit everywhere and hurt themselves in their disgusting house, parents that are high are unlikely to attend to them. Unless the teenagers do everything, it’s likely the children had no clean clothes to wear. If you have no money, you can’t drive and you live in a secluded area, you can’t buy groceries.
Imagine being 6 and trying to wake up your strung out parent because you’re hungry and they’re unresponsive. Are they dead? What do you do? You just learned that the people that are supposed to take care of you can’t be trusted.
Imagine being 16 and being in charge of a household all of a sudden. Your little sister hurts herself and you don’t know what to do. Parentification is horribly traumatic. Teenagers are old enough to *help* but being in charge indefinitely is wildly inappropriate. The guilt and shame you would feel if anything went wrong while you were taking care of your siblings would be immense.