The Glass Castle is a memoir by MSNBC correspondent Jeannette Walls about her nomadic, poverty-stricken, and down-right unusual childhood. This memoir offers the reader an insight into how she was raised. The Walls’s lifestyle lead to endangerment and psychological harm.
From the text we can conclude, that the Walls’s created a dangerous environment for their children. Rex and Rose Mary Walls were more wrapped up in their creative endeavors then being responsible parents. “I screamed. I smelled the burning and heard a horrible crackling as the fire singed my hair and eyelashes. Juju was barking. I screamed again. Mom ran into the room “Mommy, help me!” I shrieked. I was still standing on the chair, swatting at the fire with the fork …show more content…
I three year old has no place cooking hot dogs while her mother is in the other room painting. Additionally, they had very bizarre opinions on child rearing. “Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you’re young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encourages them, she told us. That’s positive reinforcement for a negative behavior” (Walls, 28). If her children could talk, then this would not be a bad mindset. But when a child is so young that they cannot talk, crying is his or her only means of communication. Ignoring a child who cries constantly could affect their development; it could cause starvation, infections from a dirty diaper, or damage their ability to bond later in life. Although Rex and Rose Mary were creative people, they lacked the knowledge their lifestyle needed. In On Dumpster Diving, when talking about how he looked for food Eighner says, “I have no special knowledge and I have been wrong before” (148). Eighner is a college educated man, presumably smarter than the Walls. He admits to making mistakes when it comes to this lifestyle; he knows it is not foolproof and freely
From the text we can conclude, that the Walls’s created a dangerous environment for their children. Rex and Rose Mary Walls were more wrapped up in their creative endeavors then being responsible parents. “I screamed. I smelled the burning and heard a horrible crackling as the fire singed my hair and eyelashes. Juju was barking. I screamed again. Mom ran into the room “Mommy, help me!” I shrieked. I was still standing on the chair, swatting at the fire with the fork …show more content…
I three year old has no place cooking hot dogs while her mother is in the other room painting. Additionally, they had very bizarre opinions on child rearing. “Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you’re young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encourages them, she told us. That’s positive reinforcement for a negative behavior” (Walls, 28). If her children could talk, then this would not be a bad mindset. But when a child is so young that they cannot talk, crying is his or her only means of communication. Ignoring a child who cries constantly could affect their development; it could cause starvation, infections from a dirty diaper, or damage their ability to bond later in life. Although Rex and Rose Mary were creative people, they lacked the knowledge their lifestyle needed. In On Dumpster Diving, when talking about how he looked for food Eighner says, “I have no special knowledge and I have been wrong before” (148). Eighner is a college educated man, presumably smarter than the Walls. He admits to making mistakes when it comes to this lifestyle; he knows it is not foolproof and freely