Hey, Children should be seen and not heard?

     The proverb, "Children should be seen and not heard."
     This is "Extreme parental style #1".  According to Don"s dad, this is the only way to raise a child.  Children do not make decisions.
     Don, age 12, was mentally and physically wretched. He entered in handcuffs.  He lived on and off the streets.  He and his father lived with a woman who was employed, but she disliked Don.  He enrolled dirty with multiple insect bites covering his body with lesions around his anus.  He appeared somnolent-sleepy.  His father dispensed medications inconsistently from a tin box in accordance to Don's behavior and withheld bowel medication to discipline him.  His appearance was worse than a Charles Dickens' street urchins.  When time permitted, the nursing staff washed him before school and gave him clean clothes, but the following day Don would appear in his old clothes for school.
     Staff reported that the father had Don on  Trazadone, but the father denied this.  During free choice time Don would sit in a corner re-enacting sexual behavior of adults adults he had witnessed.  It was overwhelming.  Don uses drugs.
     Extreme parental style #2. We make all decisions together. I am your best friend. (Mother/daughters were the most common on the ward.)  These children were the most disconcerting to help.  Their situation confusing and toooooo perplexing for ages five to twelve years old.  The parent or caregiver had "empowered" the child in family decisions.   The sweetness buried the child's own identity. In public the child looked perfectly accepting of the situation.  Too late to escape the emotional  smothering that had covertly encompassed the child.
     To today's parents:
          1.  Allow children to make some decisions.  Be wary of toooo much clout. (You are the boss.  You are wiser.  You are not their best friend)
         2.  Parenting comes first.  Best friends categories, often, means the parent or caregiver, or the child is filling a personal void. The child doesn't develop their own incentives, if parents organize the child's life around themselves.  (Entitlements often creep in)
          3. Set limits by having fewer options, especially, younger children.
     Extreme parental styles lead to drug use and suicide, according to my Mayo Clinic teaching experience.  Parents and or caregivers make the 'family' involved decisions with these last words heard,
                                                                        "This is a family."