Watching a Family Teeter on the Edge

Like a passport, this job allows us entry and safe passage through all sorts of situations and milieus we would never otherwise see or experience. It can be amazing, fascinating and instructive, or--as in covering the private lives of private people--all three.

While studies and experts document the drug abuse, violence, divorce and shortage of knowledge and time that are driving today’s families nuts, it is another thing entirely to see a family spinning out of control try to contain itself.

To that end, I accompanied a Boys Town counselor on his nightly rounds to a large suburban Orange County home with shingles and stucco. Inside, I was told, would be a family on the edge.

The last time I had walked into the troubled home life of a middle-class family that I’m not related to was in 1973, when I watched “An American Family,” a TV documentary about the Louds of Santa Barbara.

Much has changed in 19 years. In retrospect, the Louds resemble the Cleavers.

In this Orange County family, the parents are friendly and pleasant and want to do the right thing, but are unsure about what it is. The mother/wife works, and her third husband is unemployed. Her oldest daughter, 14, is a chronic runaway and substitutes home study for school. She and her school-age brother have both been to psychiatric hospitals for emotional problems. There is another school-age girl and an infant in the family.

Included in the total picture--but not at this residence--is a father, allegedly with a serious drug problem, who has taken care of the children off and on.

As we sit talking on the flowered sofa, the boy races from the kitchen through the living room, up the stairs and back again, complaining about both his sisters. This is a vast improvement, says the mother, who just got home from work and is yawning from fatigue. Nothing ever worked with him, she confides.

“You could spank him ‘til he’d bleed,” she says. “He’d just say, ‘Go to hell.’ You’d tell him it was bedtime, he’d say, ‘Forget it.’ ”

And the teen-ager “makes us promises one night and runs away the next,” she says.

But the mother does not want to give up, for the children’s sake. “If you can’t get along with your family,” the mom tells me, “you can’t get along with anyone.”

The counselor draws up a chart for both children--featuring earned privileges for good behavior. The mother tries to explain the rules to them as the teen-ager flops sideways in an overstuffed chair, head buried in a pillow, while the boy runs back and forth through the living room.

“How many points does she lose for running away?” he asks.

The mother announces to the teen-ager: “We’re going to make up a contract, and you earn back privileges after three weeks.”

The girl whines: “You mean I have to wait three weeks before I go out with my friends?”

“This is not the end of the world,” the mother says. “You hardly know them.”

“You know why I run away! It’s the only way I can have fun!”

The husband tries: “But we don’t get a chance to meet your friends.”

The boy chases his younger sister through the living room, yelling: “Tell her to shut up!”

“That’s it!” the mother says to the boy. “Go to your room!”

Then to the teen-ager: “You earn your privileges by being responsible in the house, then you can go out.”

Teen-ager: “A month. Oh, God. . . . I sit here and get so bored. I want to run away.”

Mom: “Look at it as if you’re grounded. You ran away and you got grounded.”

Teen-ager: “You know I’m upset.” She starts to cry.

Suddenly, this whirlwind escalates as the younger girl and boy gallop again past the sofa. Girl: “He just hit me!”

Mom, to boy: “Go to your room.”

Boy: “I didn’t do anything! You jerks!”

Girl: “My necks hurts because of him!”

Mom: “Go! Now! Shut the door! Be quiet!”

Both parents gaze numbly at the counselor with their contracts, the white pieces of paper, lying on their laps.

The counselor gets up to leave, but they keep asking him questions. They don’t want him to go.

Eventually, we leave in silence. I get in the car and wait for the counselor to get behind the wheel. Then I ask, “Please, just tell me, what do I have to do so my family won’t turn out like this?”

But I don’t really expect an answer.