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Re: 14 Year Old Nephew

OK Ross,
I can't stand silently reading these posts any longer. I've got to add my
perspective and advice. This is an area I know well from observing certain
people I may or may not be related to and reading MUCH on the subject,
researching it a long time.

What's happening is abuse. No amount of reasoning and maneuvering will get
it to stop. What really needs to happen is for your sister to leave the SOB
who is abusing their son. It's that simple. The kid is the focal point in
the family, the scapegoat, the bad guy, the punching bag. He has been
trained, probably all his life, to play the part, to be there to be hit on.

If you can get him out, even some of the time, so he can be a part of a
different system, he will have more choices. In his family, he has very
little choice. If he doesn't respond as the system dictates, they will up
the ante until he does.

Metaphors? Yes, they will help, but they won't do the trick. If he reads,
you can give him biography books. I'd suggest This Boy's Life, by Tobias
Wolff. It was made into a movie. He needs to see it.

But people who don't know what an abuse situation is really like don't know
that NLP doesn't offer a technique to make it stop. I remember Grinder
saying in a workshop I have on tape that he broke up a family because it
was destroying the health of the children. He said he could do that in
three days. He didn't say how he did it.

Your nephew has sought out the friends he has because he has no other
support group. He desperately needs people who can model decency and
positive cause/effect for him. And people who will accept him. He has had
to find them where he can, from other children who have been abused and
cast out, victimized by the systems in which they find themselves.

You can be a beacon of light for him. But it may not pull him out. It's a
sad situation, but one that is repeated everywhere every day.

Pat G.

Patricia Gundry
Suitcase Books
"Resources For Your Journey"
Publisher of The Zondervan Family Cookbook