Being the one competent adult in child’s life can make difference

Last Tuesday was part one of my answer to a reader wondering about her duty as an aunt and a citizen. The reader believes her adult niece and husband are ineffective and sometimes neglectful parents, that the children are pretty much raising themselves. The reader is torn between her desire to confront the situation as an agent of positive change, and her fear of estranging the relationship and perhaps being prevented from having access to her nieces and nephews.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's a painful dilemma. Sometimes our felt sense of duty is in conflict with effective strategy.

I told the reader she could confront the situation directly, or report the situation to the proper authorities. I reminded the reader there is a long list of types of parental ineptitude and even cruelty that are, sadly enough, neither criminal nor actionable.

Confrontation risks estrangement, though sometimes we risk this estrangement because we believe it is our duty to stand against some behavior we think is sufficiently reprehensible and damaging.

Yet, if confrontation costs my reader access to relationships with the children, wherein lies the victory? In this case, "doing our duty" affects little more than that now there is one less competent adult in the children's lives. It's like taking your opponent's bishop with a move that will cost you your rook. A thoughtful person will pause to wonder if it's worth the trade.

Reports to Child Protective Services, even made anonymously, are ultimately only as effective as the parents' amenability to self-examination and change, or to the discovery of clear and compelling evidence of abuse or neglect giving authorities a clear mandate to intervene regardless of parent cooperation. I'm not discouraging the use of CPS -- not at all. I'm merely saying we can't avoid the horns of the dilemma. What is best for the children is not in every case simply and easily answered by involving the authorities.

In some cases, I advocate for a third choice: One Competent Adult, which I'll call OCA.

We decide that the parents' behavior stops short of criminal or actionable, though we do not respect the parents and are convinced their actions and inactions are stupid, selfish, lamentable and harmful. We decide not to stir the pot with a CPS report. We draw the strategic conclusion that the parents do not have the developmental wherewithal to cope positively with a direct, critical confrontation. In this sense, then, we give up on the parents, and turn our attention to fostering and protecting our relationship with the children.

Seriously. We schmooze the parents. Play them like a fiddle. Smile, nod, affirm, demure, commiserate. We literally feign a fiduciary alliance with the incompetent parents as a strategy to maintain our influence over the children. (Note to Faithful Reader: You'd be stunned right now to know how many grandparents are reading this paragraph, smiling and nodding their head in Cheshire cat affirmation.)

But wait! Isn't this patently condescending? Yep. And sometimes we dance with that devil because what is best for the children is for us to remain in their lives as a competent adult.

I'm convinced it is not parental abuse, cruelty and neglect that irreparably damages and psychologically cripples children. The real culprits in ravaging a child's mental health are 1) a child's developmental inability to accept the reality of inexcusable treatment, and 2) the way incompetent parents do not allow children access to their feelings about abuse.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, teachers, coaches, teen employers, police officers, therapists, social workers, neighbors, youth leaders, pastors, rabbis -- each of these people might be called into the lives of a child as the One Competent Adult (meaning, perhaps the only competent adult the child knows and trusts). The OCA models maturity, sanity and responsibility. The OCA is a source of encouragement and advocacy: "I believe in you."

But the overriding goal of the OCA is to communicate a powerful message to the child, even and especially if the OCA cannot change the child's circumstance or rescue him/her from it. It's like slipping a note to a hostage or prisoner. In so many words, in bits and pieces over time, the OCA installs this reality in the world view of the beleaguered child:

"I know what's happening to you. And what's happening to you is wrong. And I know it makes you angry, sad and afraid. And you have every right to feel angry about it. To be disappointed. Because what's happening is not OK. Hang on. Don't give up. I'm here for you."

For some kids, this message is the knot tied at the end of the rope of hope and sanity. It is the singular difference between an abused child who is lost to mental illness or drugs or crime, and the abused child who finds within him/herself the resilience and heroism to become a productive, thriving, albeit wounded human being.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal. com.