Parenting
The
book, The Glass Castle, is a memoir
by Jeannette Walls that tells about her family’s difficult life while she was
growing up. Jeannette was grown up in a very
poor and unstable family who moved around a lot. They were often forced to do the
“skedaddle”(19), which was a term her father used whenever they had to pick up
and move away from one home to the other.
Often, Jeannette and her siblings had to put up with conditions like
homelessness and hunger. Many may feel
their parents, because of their lack of financial security, were not good
parents. However, although Jeannette had
grown up in such a miserable situation, she is not all that bad off because she
had two talented and optimistic parents.
Her
family consists of her father Rex Walls, her mother Rose Mary, and her two
sisters and one brother, Lori Walls, Maureen Walls and Brian Walls. In the beginning of the story, they lived
like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains,
Jeannette’s father called it “skedaddle” (19) and often moved because he was so
sure a posse of federal investigators was on our trail that he smoked his
unfiltered cigarettes from the wrong end.
Her mother told them that the FBI wasn’t really after their father and
their father just like to say they were because it was more fun having the FBI
on their tail than bill collectors. The
skedaddle is when the family skipped town, packing up what few possessions they
can fit into their rundown car and leaving before they have to pay taxes, the
children are forced to attend school, or the local social worker realizes they
lack indoor plumbing.
Jeannette’s
mother, who is an artist, likes to talk about Shakespeare and Picasso to
Jeannette. Obviously, she does not have
much money even have to picking trash, however, she never act like she is good
and she does not need any help to Jeannette.
She will make a trick when Jeannette asks her that she want to help
her. She would rather say she just want
to do recycle for the wasteful people in this country. In a word, she is an independent and tough
woman talented in art. Jeannette’s
father is a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's
imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life
fearlessly. Though Jeannette’s father always makes the family move and has no
stable home, anyway he is not a bad father because he always tells his children
the truth of life and shows his love to his children in his way. For example, during the Christmas days, all
the children will get some nice gifts from their parents. But Jeannette’s parent cannot afford anything
to their children. “They couldn’t afford
expensive presents, and they didn’t want us to think we weren’t as good as
other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the
tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus” (39). Even though, Jeannette’s father will tell
them that they could have their own star in the galaxy one night when they were
sitting together under the sky and telling them this is your Christmas gift and
no one else will receive such a Christmas gift.
Therefore, Jeannette’s father is very optimistic and creative. Jeannette’s father is also very
talented. “One time when a neighbor’s TV
set broke, Dad opened the back and used a macaroni noodle to insulate some
crossed wires. The neighbor couldn’t get
over it. He went around telling everyone in town that Dad sure knew how to use
his noodle. Dad was an expert in math
and physics and electricity. He read
books on calculus and logarithmic algebra and loved what he called the poetry
and symmetry of math. He told us about
the magic universe. But Dad’s main
interest was energy: thermal energy, nuclear energy, solar energy, electrical
energy, and energy from the wind. He
said there were so many untapped sources of energy in the world that it was
ridiculous to be burning all that fossil fuel” (23). Jeannette’s father is very knowledgeable at
those science subjects. And he always
likes to tell his children about the science.
Though
a comfortable living environment is very important to a child, it creates more
opportunities for a child to live better; good parenting skills and a good
relationship between parents and their children is the most essential issue for
children to grow up to maturity. In the
story of the Walls family, they were very harmonious though they did not have
much money because it was hard to make their living. A good relationship between parents and their
children makes the children feel less disappointment when their life is really
hard to maintain.
Personally,
when I was growing up, I lived with my grandparents because my parents were both
running business so they had no time to take care of me. I was living with my grandparents until I was
fourteen. After then, I went to a
boarding middle school. So definitely my
parents spent very little time with me when I was a child. I could go to see them once a week. Therefore, my childhood was very different
from other children. While other
children were going to zoo or park at weekend, I just stayed at home because my
parents had no time to hang out with me.
I was really jealous when my classmates told me that they went to
somewhere interesting with their parents over the weekend. What is more, I was also very envious because
my classmates were taken by their parents to go to learn piano, violin, or
ballet. But I had to stay at home to
work on my homework and read books.
Now
I am an adult, and I can take care of myself and live in an unacquainted
country with people who speak different a language. I was so proud of myself because not just anyone
can do this. But because I was not grown
up with my parents, I cannot get along with them like friends. When I face some difficulties, I would rather
not tell them in order to get advice from them so that they will not
notice. We rarely talk to each other
about what we were thinking. Therefore,
I think my parents do not have good parenting skills and a good relationship
with me not because they do not love me; I do feel that they love me very much,
but they just do not know how to parent well by showing their love. Though my parents provided me a stable
financial foundation, they ignore the importance of communication with me. I think good parents should often communicate
to his/her child to know about the things around them.
Effective parenting has never been more important to a
family’s success than today. Proper parenting shapes the coming generations,
and the way the next generation will behave, affecting the world around them.
History has taught us that parenting without a proper foundation has always and
indefinitely lead to confusion for any developing child (Lopez). In my opinion, a good parenting skill is more
important than a comfortable living environment to raise a child. I think the best parents are their children’s
best friend. Their children would like
to tell everything to them and share their opinion. Good relationships between parents and their
children are very helpful to children because whatever difficulty they face,
they will tell their parents first to get advice. Then their parents can tell them how to try
their best to overcome it.
Work
Cited
Walls, Jeannette. The
Glass Castle: A Memoir. New York: Scribner, 2005. Print.
Lopez, William.
"AllPsych." Successful Parenting Skills That Shape Children's
Behaviors
(May 15, 2004). Print.
