Tough Love

I know all too well how it is when you have grown kids or teenagers that think they are grown living with you or hanging out at your home more so than living there. I know all too well how aggravating it is trying to get them to get a job, go to school, or do anything besides lay or bum around the house and other relatives every day. I know all too well how the expense seems to be overwhelming at times. Or the trips to the bail bonds office grow tiring. I know all too well how angry you can be when your money, credit cards, checks, or property comes up missing. It’s tough, isn’t it? I’m all too familiar with that too. Do you know what they call it? Tough love, I believe we have all been told how we need to show them some tough love. Just make them move out. Don’t give them any money. Don’t bail them out of jail. Show them how much you love them with tough love. You’re making them do for themselves, for the most part, it works really well too. But then there is the other part, the so-called lesser part that doesn’t work. Those that tell you to simply apply a little tough love don’t tell you this part so I am. When you kick them out of their home, you know the one they grew up in they don’t really have anywhere to go. All their relatives already know all about them so they aren’t welcome there. They may be able to spend a night or two with a friend, but more than likely that friends’ parents are going through exactly the same thing you have been going through and he or she won’t be welcome there long. So now they are out on the streets with nowhere to go and have to fend for themselves, but of course, that was the plan right? Let me see any one of you go get any kind of place to stay let alone live with no money, no job, and more than likely no credit. It’s not going to happen. How many nights will you sleep out in the cold before taking drastic measures? Of course, the easiest way to get money quickly is to just take it from someone else that already did all the work for it, so they steal. If you’re lucky no one gets hurt or killed. Maybe they join a local gang, start selling and using drugs. If it’s a girl maybe they sell or trade their bodies for what they need. Or maybe they just can’t do any of it at all. They can’t find a job, they can’t find a place to live, they refuse to steal because YOU taught them how wrong it was, they have too much pride to sell or trade their bodies, and they are starving. They sit hungry and homeless under a bridge and begin to think about their lives. They are too young to inexperienced to see the light at the end of the tunnel. All they see is what is there right then. All they see is how they can’t and don’t want to live like this anymore. They feel no one truly loves them or cares if they live or die. After all, the only people they had that they truly believed with all their hearts loved them unconditionally, are their parents. Yeah, you know the ones that threw them out of their home. Are you ready for some real tough love? That phone call you get from the police isn’t asking you to bail your child out of jail; they want you to come to identify the body. Now you’re standing beside them laid out on a cold steel table with a sheet pulled over them and asking THEM why? Why did you do this? Why did you leave me like this? Why didn’t you call me? Why, why, why, why. The questions are never-ending, the answers are meaningless. The blame will haunt you for all the days of your life. Ladies and gentlemen I can promise you love don’t get any tougher than that. I don’t know about you, but if it would save my child’s life they can lay up in my house, eat my food, or whatever until we grow old together and I may raise seven kinds of hell at them but by God, they will be there, they will be alive, and they will damn sure know I DO love them unconditionally. Hell, you didn’t start ordering them to get a job the day the Dr. smacked their backside. You were more than willing to deal with all that expense, restless nights, Dr. bill’s, and finicky eating habits because that’s your baby. They will be your babies till the day you die. I love my kids with all that I am. If they know anything about tough love it’s me instilling the importance of education, values, respect, and integrity not from being thrown out of the house, or turned away. Now you know the other side of tough love. There is no love tougher than that of a love for a child lost forever. I lived this experience personally. I hope my pain, my suffering from “Tough Love” will spare you this pain. I promise you it won’t be easy. But nothing they ever do will hurt you like standing beside their lifeless body will. No matter how old or how young, save your child’s life….bring them home.
Simply my thoughts
Dean Butler