- Joined
- Oct 28, 2018
Barb is a smothering parent who has been emotionally manipulating, coddling, and controlling Chris his entire life, and she's never really let him face any challenges or be independent of her in any way. When he was mute for a while as a kid, she bribed him into talking by buying him toys and shit and basically just spoiling him rotten. She didn't hesitate to yank him out of the Greene County school system when they tried to suggest putting him in a special program, and bent over backwards to ensure that he would be mainstreamed throughout his education, with predictable results. Every time he was potentially facing consequences for something, like when he got permabanned from the Game Place or charged with a felony for hitting Michael Snyder with their car, she would step in and try to fix it for him, up to and including when she blew their entire inheritance from Bob on the Snyder case. (That said, the Snyder thing was about saving her ass as much as his, so it's debatable if she'd have gone to the extremes she did if her neck hadn't been on the block also.)What's wrong about barb? I read sonichu.com a little but I cannot piece together. Is she enabler or helicopter parent?
She's also threatened to harm or kill Chris several times, and treats him like a servant. Some time prior to the house fire, she forced him to move into a room closer to her so she could order him around more easily, and when he tried to refuse she threw a tantrum and trashed his room. The first time he ever tried to go to MAGFest years ago, she guilt-tripped him out of it by threatening to kick him out of the house, then switched gears to talking about how she was going to pack up and leave the house and how she wanted to die and so on until he gave in. She's threatened suicide on a few other occasions, so that seems to be a favorite tactic of hers. As she's aged, she's apparently started pulling a Sanford and Son and telling him that she might die of a heart attack at any time, to the point where he panics if he goes out somewhere and she doesn't answer the phone.
They also have a creepy pseudo-incestuous dynamic going on that implies some really awful things about how they both view their relationship. They've been observed to be very physically affectionate with each other; Marvin saw them at a court hearing and said that Chris was constantly rubbing Barb's shoulders and holding her hand. By itself that might not be such a concerning issue, but Chris has mentioned that he's had sexual dreams about Barb, and he also once mentioned that she was apparently jealous of him potentially loving one of his sweethearts more than he loved her. She made him spoon with her until he was at least 22 years old. Bob tried to get them to quit at one point, but Barb once again threatened to kill herself over it. This happened again after the house fire. Chris' bed had been destroyed in the fire and they didn't have the money for a new one, so he slept in her room and she made him spoon with her again until he got the money to buy his own bed.
Tl;dr, she's done everything in her power to ensure that he's mentally and emotionally dependent on her, and combined with his unchecked autism, this parenting style has produced the delusional, babbling manbaby we all know today.