door slamming

slamming door clip art – sodahead.com

I have been reading M.Scott Peck ‘People of The Lie’ this week which is all about human evil – what creates it and what can prevent it.  It’s really interesting.  Wednesday night I went to a community theatre production by Cardboard Citizens http://cardboardcitizens.org.uk/ in the community centre where I am based near Kings Cross.  It was about family breakdown and homelessness and finished with an opportunity for the audience to rewrite the script and re-direct the actors into other scenarios – the sort of learning and discussion that they take in to schools and prisons etc.  It was quite sad.  The 18 year old teenager reminded me of J2, but her mum didn’t put up with the swearing and door slamming.  I wanted to say, but didn’t, that parents need to give children an opportunity to retreat with some pride intact.  J2 always comes out after 20 minutes and apologises.  If I did the, ‘don’t speak to me like that’ or ‘you treat this house like a hotel routine’ every time, he and I would have no relationship.  I also realise that I was/am able to take the abuse because I don’t  take it personally and have/and had good enough self-esteem due to other lovely things going on in my life.  In the play the mother was in a dead end job and very unfulfilled.  It’s salutary though.  Bringing up children with little money is hard.  The Peck book also made me think of some of the terrible parents we met through fostering and how cruelly emotionally manipulative they were.