WOW, Kal,
I'm really late in seeing this. Thanks so much for posting this. I heard about it but I never saw anything such as the questionnaire. The graphs were both very revealing and chilling. While I realize that all the things that the graphs show are true and I've heard many times before but seeing them laid out in graphs is chilling. The only issue I had with the test was that it describes an openly dysfunctional family setting. But I want to describe the opposite, the illusion of the perfect family setting that behind that illusion is also a dysfunctional setting that is just as dangerous to children.
The questions themselves are triggering in many ways. But I came to one question that asked if your parents were divorced or separated. So many of my friends here have had multiple changes in one or both of their parents and you hear horrendous stories that went on in those homes or rather houses since they weren't really homes. The neighborhood heard all about those families. They were known as drunks, couldn't hold jobs, fathers beating mothers, and visa versa. Drugs were common. Divorce was common, children didn't really know who their parents were in a crowd. In the '50s people felt sorry for the children in those houses. Everyone thought that those children would turn out to be just like their parents. Nobody helped. Nobody complained. Nobody listened. Nobody did anything.
The first 6 months of my life started out in an orphanage. I was taken in by what was the perfect parents wanting a perfect family. What puzzled me was that they were "happily" married for 80 years before they died. They were the perfect family in the '50s. The father went to war in the pacific in WWII, the wife worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After the war they had a house in suburbia, a late model car, the man of the house was a businessman, the wife was a homemaker, they had a dog, and to complete the mirage they bought me. That completed the image of the model middle-class family in America. But in reality, it was all an illusion.
I scored a 6, probably 7, with one question I had trouble answering. Why? Because outside the house I had new clothes. Maybe they were 5 sizes too big but they were new. But in the house I had none. So I didn't know how to score that because only I made the clothes dirty, only I made them smell. So I didn't deserve any.
Question #8 asked if I lived with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs. As far as drugs are concerned the mother of the house only used prescription meds for all her ailments and maladies in order to get high so they weren't street drugs. Remember the Stones song "Mother's Little Helper". The other part of the question asked about being problem drinkers or drunks and I had to think about that for a moment. They were not really drunks but "social drinkers" that went too far. They would have friends over to play cards. Pinnacle for the men and Canasta for the women (I think). They would social drink the night away. The empty bottles cluttered the "coffee table", the men's cigars and ashes filled their ashtrays and the women's cigarettes filled their ashtrays. As everyone laughed at dirty jokes being told, one of the friends would go over to the naked 4-year-old child in that house, in his room, on his bed, and rape him. He raped him at those get-togethers until the family moved when the child was 9. So they are not drunks but they were all quite sociable.
After the parents moved up the social ladder to now upper-middle-class they moved to a new bigger home in suburbia. The 9-year-old child started in sports for his 9th birthday. By 10 he was being rented out by his coach. By 12-1/2, he was living in the city with three other kids in an apartment. The parents thought very highly of the coach he was the perfect babysitter. The coach was taking very good care of their child. The illusion of the perfect upper-middle-class family continued but without the child. That life didn't end until the child was 24 when he ran away from life in the game. But the repercussions of that life never ended not even till today.
How many families look like this to the outside world. It's the perfect family moving up in a perfect world both socially and financially. How many kids exist in this type of illusion. Where the dog eats better than the child. Teachers don't see anything wrong except the child can't read (he's dyslexic), has ants in his pants, is disruptive in school (he has ADHD). So the child is marked troubled or marked as a bad child and is properly punished in school and at home. The child is bad but the parents are perfect. I wonder how many survivors here on MS lived in such an illusion? I wonder how many children today live in such an illusion?
