What are the limits on parental love and should it have limits?

I don't think the issue is love is it, sometimes the greatest demonstration of love would be handing your child in.

Family loyalty and wanting to hush nasty things up ? Sometimes those constraints can be very,very powerful.

Maybe it’s a case of the parents hoping that loving their child enough will eventually sort them out. Unrealistic, but I suppose they are clutching at straws.
I have been trying to think how I would respond if it were my child, but just couldn’t imagine it.
I know that I feel for the poor parents. You

Please ignore the ‘you’ at the end. No idea how that got there!

I just hope I'm never tested.

I don’t know about evil but my parents dealt with my sister and her husband who became alcoholics.
Over two decades my parents paid deposits for rental flats,for their children’s clothes,.Took her and the kids in for months at a time to try to get her away from him ,had her steal from them .
Sent my younger sister and I to her with cash when she phoned saying she had lost her purse …a regular call .Eventually they sent me with bags of food and clothes instead of cash .
It was the most difficult decision of their lives when they needed to step away from her.My father had heart attacks caused by the stress .He died and my sister died 10 months after he did by choking on vomit when she was drunk ,her husband was unconscious and woke too late to Save her .
Tough love wouldn,t have worked,she was besotted with him hadn’t drank alcohol until she met him .
My parents adored her and thought helping was what they should do. I,m sure there are many families who do the same.

Aww, paddyann, so sad.💐🕯

I think it's important to make a distinction between loving your child and agreeing with or even enabling their behaviour.

As an example, I have family members who have made choices that are contrary to my personal values. I still love them, even if I don't agree with their decisions. Now, in these cases, fortunately, they are not illegal actions so I am not faced with that decision. However, I do think there is an obligation not to enable people and in some cases to report their behaviour if there are serious risks. (For example, if a parent found out that their child was driving drunk, I think they have an obligation to report to prevent injury.)

Parents condone drink driving very frequently, a son or daughter driving home from a party is very common. The reality is that it’s very rare for a parent to report their child whether adult or not for any crime or even misdemeanor, most parents would defend them to the end

Unfortunately it’s very often poor parenting at the root of the problem.

How AR had come to dominate the family home in such a way has to be down to a complete lack of boundaries.
The photograph of the families living room said it all.

Our daughter became very rebellious after leaving university, she came to live at home, she had a good job but had a female friend who was a bad influence.

We gave her 4 weeks notice to leave our home, we didn’t want her younger brothers thinking her behaviour was acceptable.

She left and moved into a flat a few miles away, we helped her move and it was all reasonably amicable.

It was the best thing we ever did.

She now realises what an entitled madam she had become!

The attached picture is the Rudukabana family living room..

Bit harsh sago and don't know why the picture was included. As parents most of us do the best we can and often make choices or decisions which are not always for the best. I agree with agnurse loving our children does not mean we condone their behaviour.

Unfortunately it’s very often poor parenting at the root of the problem.

I am really thinking of the extreme cases like those I mentioned,rather than merely children pushing the limit, and I really do not think that upbringing comes into it. many children like this are mentally ill or mentally abnormal in some way and the parents see themselves as failure for having a child like this (of course many are adult children), many parents struggle to admit just how 'deranged' their child is and struggle to admit it too themselves, this is becoming clear in the Southport enquiry and the elder abuse case I was involved with. there is that unexpressed beleif that there can be a solution, something minor, that does not require anyone to do anything very much, certainly not involving in authorities in any way.

Thank goodness. I have never faced anything like this, but I do wonder whether if things were as bad as these cases, I would not at some point step back and tell my child, thats that, you are to get out of the house and, almost, my life and I would turn to the authorities and say. I have done what I can, you take over.

It’s complicated isn’t it?
There are or should be limits to protecting an adult child.In cases of MH parents are anguished and know that their son or daughter would be living on the streets if they didn’t care for them.Where crimes are concerned it depends on the crime committed.
Not all parents are good, far from it and in many cases don’t even look after their own young kids let alone adult ones.

I think you can look at your adult child and see them but you also feel that baby in your arms, totally vulnerable, totally relying on you. It is hard to ignore your baby.

I think that children can come from a very solid background and then fall under the influence of mind altering drugs, peer group pressure whatever and the family relationships breakdown. Whether that was the case with RK or maybe he was always extremely difficult he certainly appeared to rule the roost. Interestingly I was reading about the daughter of the late Angela Lansbury as a teenager, she started behaving very badly, stealing from family, taking drugs etc. she had fallen under the influence of a very dangerous man, that man was Charles Manson. Angela Lansbury took the extreme measure, and of course she had the means, to do that, to move the family from California to Ireland and in doing so probably saved her daughter from becoming part of his murderous cult.

Of course there should be limits and boundaries, but in practice, I'm sure we've all seen the lengths some parents will go to for their children. I'm thinking of one case in which a mother helped her son cover up evidence of a murder.
And it's not always a case of poor parenting - as others have rightly pointed out, a child can come from a very solid, loving background and still end up committing a heinous crime. Hopefully none of us will ever have to find out how our limits might be tested in such situations.

There was a case recently when a teenage boy stabbed and killed another boy, fled the scene and went home; his father took him to the police station and he was recently convicted.
That is what has to be done, that must have been terrible, but not so terrible as the life of the family of the boy he had murdered.

There have been several cases of parents turning a blind eye to any evidence that their child is a paedophile.

As parents we never want to believe the worst about our children not just because we love them and see them as part of us but also because society is very quick to blame parents, particularly mothers.

eazybee

There was a case recently when a teenage boy stabbed and killed another boy, fled the scene and went home; his father took him to the police station and he was recently convicted.
That is what has to be done, that must have been terrible, but not so terrible as the life of the family of the boy he had murdered.

That’s similar to the plot of ‘Adolescence’ isn’t it? It was the right thing for any parent to do.

is there something primal

I dont think so.

I knew a set of parents who, though well aware of the chilrens' shortcomings, still thought they were the most wonderful children on earth.
And also, expected others to be and do the same with their own children.

No thanks!

I think it's important to make a distinction between loving your child and agreeing with or even enabling their behaviour.

Good point agnurse

I think Rubanaka was known to the authorities but the father wanted everything kept quiet and hushed up. Perhaps they felt ashamed?
It must be difficult to deal with a family who refused to share information and would not take advantage of any help which could have been offered.

Years ago a referral to a Child Guidance Clinic would have been the preferred route where specialised and co-ordinated help would have been available for both child and parents. It seems this is not the case any longer, perhaps with cuts in services. The waiting list for CAHMS is long and the service, as far as I know, is different in concept.

@Sago easy to blame the parents but they did report their son and tried to get help, the system let them down, as it does so often with MH. He was also abusing his parents so like all abuse victims their heads would not have been in a good place.

In my father's family everything was hushed up, even paedophilia, on my mother's side, we tend to overshare but fight for help. When my half brother died of a drugs overdose, my father insisted everyone was told that he had had a heart attack and refused to go to the Coroner's hearing or take part in the investigation into what had gone wrong. His mother covered up his lapses by hiding the evidence in a neighbour's bin so that his rehab councillor wouldn't know and wouldn't ever admit he was an addict.
When I was a kid, my father wouldn't acknowledge my existence once my parents were divorced because he didn't want people to know of his first marriage.
I think we can certainly blame the parents in AR's case for not getting him the help he needed but anybody in this country who has tried to get help for their children will know how hard it is. Even if you manage to get seen by a "professional" the treatment is usually limited after the initial appointment to a set amount of time with absolutely no regard to need. The professional services are so overloaded, it is bound to fail.

I do not think we can generalise here. Perhaps one never can when discussing human behaviour.

My experience as a school-teacher has shown me very clearly that many parents are unable to see faults in their children, or indeed any difficulties the child might have ,be they learning difficulties, or behavioural issues.

I suspect to a certain extent we all see our children as extensions of ourselves, that our love for them, and theirs for us, blinds us to a certain extent to the less acceptable sides of them, and that guilt if a child, whether as a child or and adult, does something wrong also plays a part.

And of course this applies to the love between spouses as well.

I think there have to be limits, not to our love for parents, children, husband or wife, sisters, brothers, friends, but to our tolerance of their behaviour and that the limit must be reached, when we see them either harming themselves, or harming others (including us).

Enabling a drug addict, or an alcoholic (to take two common examples) is surely wrong, as whatever the addict may say, it is not in their best interest that we help them to continue along their self-destructive path.

Nor can it ever be morally right to conceal that anyone, family member or not, is potentially or actually harming others, is contemplating a crime, or has committed one.

In most countries, it is a crime not to report a crime that you know has been committed,or one that is being contemplated.
Concealing crimes will probably lead to you being charged as complicit, or an accessory.

In our lifetime, attitudes have changed regarding many things that we were brought up to believe were wrong. Many of these changes are all to the good, but,l ike anything else, tolerance can be carried too far.

So to my mind, there needs to be limits to our tolerance, and we need to make moral and ethical decisions when confronted with cruelty in any form, or criminal behaviour.

But there should not be limits not to our love, but to any acceptance of wrong-doing. It would be the epitome of selfishness only to love those who treats as well! But by actively concealing wrong-doing, we are subject society as such, potentially, or in actual fact to it.