When do you give up on parents?

Am I the only one tired of hearing people say that children would be better students and less violent if there was more parental involvement?

As obvious as the importance of good parenting is to the success of the child, this also becomes the biggest cop out line ever. 

There are varying levels of parenting. There are good parents who have great kids; good parents who have bad kids; bad parents who have good kids; bad parents who have bad kids. 

There are parents who realize they need help and are open and willing to improving their parenting skills. There are parents who don’t have a clue and will continue down the path of bad parenting despite every attempt to help them.

It’s the children from the last group of parents that concern me most, the ones who come from homes where the parents are beyond help. Yes, those household do exist, and they exist in great number.

When we offer a blanket statement that parents need to be more involved, and that’s your last and best solution, you’ve just given up on thousands of kids whose parents will never react to that message. 

Once a child is identified being from a family with absolutely no chance of parental involvement, the focus has to be on the child. Programs must be in place to show that child how to survive and advance even without the parental structure.

Too often we bang our head against the wall trying to work on a parent that won’t change without providing any services to the child because we’re expecting the parent to eventually realize that it’s their responsibility. In reality, there are a lot of parents who will never live up to that responsibility.

Should the kid be given up on as a result of a negligent parent or should we become creative in trying to help these kids who will never have a chance getting what they need from home?

Think about what you’re saying the next time you say the parents need to get more involved. Think about what can we do for the kids until the parent gets involved? We need to put as much, if not more, focus on the kids as we do the parents.

In the famous words of famous rapper Will Smith...”Some parents just don’t understand”.