The Impact of Parental Rejection

I arrived in my office to find a father and a grandmother sitting next to my desk. Waiting awkwardly.

Our social worker had located the family of a boy that had been rescued five weeks earlier by the city social welfare department.

His parents were separated, and neither wanted to take responsibility for him. They had their "own" lives, different partners, and new families. He was stuck in the gap between the two.

He had lived with his grandmother, who found him too much to handle as.an elderly widow. Uncontrollable and frequently running away, he preferred to hang out with the other street children and gangs, who were more like family to him. 

In just a few weeks of restorative care at House of Joshua, it was clear that he had seen and experienced far more than any 11-year-old should see, know, or be part of. 

In counselling sessions, his drawings were of coffins. He told everyone, "My parents are dead!" and shocked his teacher with blunt, matter-of-fact statements when he started school. He even asked her frankly if she would adopt him.

Children's drawings are key indicators of their inner world and perspectives.

His parents were not physically dead, but the artwork exposed a haunting true picture of all he had lost; the graveyard of his heart.

I watched his restless fidgeting as he sat beside his father and grandmother. Three people whowere related but completely disconnected, distant, and silent. 

Simple raw artwork shows the child perceives and feels love in this relationship.

His father seemed annoyed at the prospect of having to take further responsibility for his son—a nuisance and an interruption to his life and the things that he wanted to do. The man unashamedly wished he wasn't the father—a burdensome biological mistake that DNA is unable to erase.

"It's the mother's fault," he said in an attempt to wash his hands of additional contributions. His choice of grammar was starkly revealing. She was another unwanted article. The relationships were undeniably dead. He looked at the clock. The time was ticking by and he needed to go to work.

The grandmother with softer compassion wanted to protect and care for her wayward grandson, but she struggled with such a stubborn and difficult boy who was attention-seeking, impulsive, uncooperative, and defiant. 

She preferred for him to stay in rehabilitative care, acknowledging her limitations with unusual honesty and admirable humility but her grandson stared strategically at the floor.

She tried to persuade him to stay. She promised to visit him regularly. I could see her anxious eyes pleading and praying that he would change his mind. His silence and downward eyes equally yearned, "I want to be wanted. ...to belong to someone, anyone."

Stalemate.

Eventually his grandmother relented and agreed to take him "home."

The three generations walked out of the gate together, but the "reunion" weighed heavily. I knew this boy would be back "home" on the street by evening, exposed once again to those who took advantage of his longing to belong and used him for their own pleasures and gains.

He left to return to the familiar "family," and I watched the cycle begin another rotation. 

"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted are the most terrible poverty."

Mother Teresa