Anyone Up For Golf

Regardless what Hillary Clinton says, for most parents, raising children is “their” lifes work and has little to do with Mrs. Clinton’s village. In essence, a child’s success or failure in life is a reflection of just how well a parent has done their job.

Unfortunately some parents abdicate their opportunity to parent and subscribe to the village analogy because of their inability, blatant neglect or just plain laziness.

On this particular occasion our program was to receive a young man who had been kicked out of every school in town for such things as truancy, drug and alcohol use and various other unscholarly behaviours.

The father was a workaholic the mother an alcoholic. The kid was in serious distress and in dire need of professional psychiatric help or perhaps just a couple of parents who gave a damn.

The father came to the intake meeting, said all the right things, furrowed his brow at all the right times, smiled lovingly at his kid intermittently, we thought we might have a genuine chance in helping this kid out given the fathers apparent interest in his kid.

After about a 45 minute meeting the plan in place, dad stands up and says, “Well got a flight to Phoenix to catch, see ya in two weeks.”

As he heads out the door he turns and declares to the three staff members present. “Fix my kid and there’s a golf weekend someplace nice in it for ya.”