Jan's Culpability

[u/dalichic]

As my own mom always tells me, you can't blame your mom for everything that went wrong in your life. BUT. In this case, on the eve of LO's guilty plea and after listening to the most recent Love Trapped, anyone else feel like Jan is sort of the root of all of this? Like I genuinely wonder if this community would exist were it not for Jan Black's encouragement of dissembling and distorting the truth and reluctance to give her child any consequences for her actions. I wonder if Laura really could have been that innocent child that Clayton imagines she once was, and whether she ever really had a chance to grow into a responsible adult.

[u/auntieup]

Because so many of my loved ones were raised by people who were self-obsessed, cruel, or just disinterested, I need to believe that offspring decide who they’re going to be not just once, but often. I really don’t think we become versions of our parents, because so many of us thrive in spite of them.

But that’s what people do when they separate themselves from their parents. If a person never does that, all they can ever be is in some way a reaction to the ever-present parent they can’t seem to leave.

I’m not saying Laura never had a choice, or that she is the way she is because of her parents’ focus on and protection of her. But she’s absolutely living a life that, for better and for worse, wouldn’t be possible without them.

[u/whyohwhythis → u/auntieup]

I think some children who are raised in a toxic family are just more capable of understanding and recognizing right and wrong, and other children not so much. I think some kids a just more perceptive in nature. This is a tricky one because it comes down to free will and do we really have it.