Appreciate The 'Function' In Your Life

Yes, I'm back from the blogger grave. My goal is to keep my posting up to date, but life and stuff seem to get in the way at times, so bear with me.

From time to time I will post an experience I have at work and I'd love to hear your thoughts. As a probation officer working with juvenile offenders and their families, I see many examples of what most would consider dysfunction within the family. We all have various levels of dysfunction within our lives but sometimes I see situations that could win the argument for mandatory parent licensing. That's my extreme view on the subject for sure. But know, there are kids out there (more than you'd think unfortunately) that go through way too much from people who shouldn't have the title of 'parent'.

An example is the 16 year old boy on my caseload who has substance abuse issues, steals money from his family and has anger / emotional issues. He's actually a pretty nice kid, until the proverbial trigger gets pulled. One day this kids father calls me and said his son is out of control and needs to be booked into the Juvenile Hall immediately. Ooookeeeey, need a bit more information. So the dad tells me that his son is blaming Dad for taking his marijuana (hmmmmm), and the kid is tearing the house apart looking for it. Now, another caveat that I should mention is the dad is currently going through a CPS investigation due to the fact he hit his son during an argument recently. So I tell dad we can't just take his son out of his home without an extreme reason. The dad, who just met with a CPS investigator earlier that day and has a handle on the lingo, says to me, "So, if I were to beat the shit out of my son, wouldn't that create an unsafe environment that would affect his placement?" I told the dad that would affect his placement when he goes to jail. This jack-ass just laughs and tells me he wouldn't really do it, but is "almost to that point". A few weeks later the kid was at home lying on his bed when the dad came into his room and punched a hole in the wall above the kid's head during an argument. The dad told the kid, "This could be you", and apparently hit the wall and not the kid because he knew that jail cell was waiting for him. The kid went to live with his mom after that, but was back at his dad's after a few weeks when mom checked herself into a rehab for alcoholism. We'll see how things go this time around for the poor kid.

I'm love movie quotes, so let me drop one that fits this situation to a 'T':

"...You need a license to buy a dog or drive a car. Hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reamin' asshole be your father."
- Keanu Reeves in 'Parenthood'

We must appreciate the good functional components in our lives and not dwell on the bad. Because no matter how bad our lives seem to get, always remember there are those out there not so fortunate and live life with dysfunction as the norm.