Child Neglect In The Glass Castle, By Jeannette Walls

Throughout the glass castle both Walls parents portray several qualities that would put them into the category of being uninvolved parents. One example being when Jeannette is young and a stranger climbs into her bedroom window and touches her inappropriately. She says, “I asked Mom and Dad if we could close the doors and windows when we went to sleep. They wouldn’t consider it. We needed the fresh air,” (Walls 103). Even after their daughter is put in danger neither parents take precautions to insure it never happens again. According to the article, an uninvolved parenting trait could be low responsiveness which is shown in this part of the book through the Walls lack of concern. “One evening when Dad was away and we had nothing to eat and

Think back to your own childhood. Could you imagine being a child, and not having a care in the world, but then, as quick as the snap of a finger, that all changes because of a thoughtless mistake made by your parents? In The Glass Castle it is revealed that as Jeannette grew up, she endured hardships inflicted upon her by her own parents. However, if Jeannette had not gone through these things, she never would have gained the characteristics that she values present day. Although Jeannette Walls faced hardships and endured suffering during her childhood, these obstacles formed her into a self-reliant woman who proves that just because you do not have as much money as other families, you can still achieve success in your life.

There are many occasions where the Walls family has used neglectful abuse on their children. Neglectful abuse is failure to successfully care for your child when you have different options to do so, but choose not to. For example, “I looked in the refrigerator. There was nothing inside but a half-gone stick of margarine… It was sort of crunchy, because the sugar didn’t dissolve, and it was greasy and left a filmy coat in my mouth. But I ate it all anyway (68)”. Lori and Jeannette were so hungry that they decided to mix sugar and margarine as a frosting and eat it. When their mom found out, she yelled stating that she was saving it. Jeannette later states how she thought her mother was perhaps saving it for herself. Later on in the book, on page 174, the Walls children catch their mother eating a chocolate bar as she used the excuse that she is a sugar addict. This goes to show how selfish her mother was being by letting her children starve while she snacks down a king sized chocolate bar.

Colson Whitehead once said, “Let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things”. In the memoir “The Glass Castle,” author Jeannette Walls faces despair and turmoil as a result of her impoverished and dysfunctional upbringing. As Jeannette grows up, she watches her father Rex fail to reach his full potential and his dream to build a Glass Castle shatter as his alcoholism takes control. Aware of the devastation her father was causing, she begins to slowly lose faith in him but doesn’t fail to escape her destructive household and pursue her dreams of becoming a journalist. Due to her parent’s lack of parenting and being forced to fend for herself, Jeannette developed a sense of responsibility to care for others and make amends to improve the family’s lifestyle. Despite the turbulence and destruction her parents had caused over the years, unlike her father, Jeannette was able to find the strength to overcome obstacles, developing characteristics that ultimately lead her to achieving her dream, thus illustrating that adversity has the power to shape one’s identity.

In the book “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls, Jeanette’s life has gone through many ups and down’s, all the way from her childhood to her adulthood. As Jeanette’s growing up she sees her Parent’s hopes and dreams slowly starting to elude away into reality. From the start of the book Jeanette’s parents, Rex and Rosemary have strong hopes of being rich from mining and sifting up gold in the dessert, through rexes “new Invention’s” to help detect the gold. But as time tells, Jeannette’s feelings and faith in her parents start to diminish away. Jeannette also starts to realize that her father is causing the problem. Towards the end of the story, Jeannette says to her mom, “Mom, you have to leave dad” (wells 188), and Jeanette’s mom is astonished of what she had said and asks why she suggested that, and Jeannette simply states that “He will bring all of us down” suggesting that they need to be on welfare. When Brian and Lori Begin digging the foundation for the glass castle that Rex had designed and promised them they were going to make, the idea quickly diminished into a fantasy once the hole started to fill with old rusty beer cans.

According to the scholarly article, “The Third National Incidence Survey of Child Abuse and Neglect defines physical child neglect to include refusal of health care, delay in health care, abandonment, expulsion, inadequate supervision, or other physical neglect.” (Bolger, 396) In Jeannette 's life it is clear her family neglected her, although it may have been unintentional, or the fact that her family could not make ends meet. It is quite obvious that her upbringing was not filled with the needs or necessities which her fast paced family who moved from place to place provided. Aside from “sneaking” Jeannette out of the hospital when she had severe burns on her body and was still recovering, the siblings also faced similar neglect, due to the fact that Rose and Rex did not believe in hospitals and conforming to it, their kids were the ones who got hurt from this. “Mom said he had fallen off the back of the couch and cracked his head open on the floor but she and Dad had decided not to take him to the hospital.” (Walls,13) Brian, was a victim of his non-conforming parents. They neglected him by not caring about what he did and not supervising properly, and when he got hurt they refused to

Jeannette Wall’s memoir, The Glass Castle, displays Jeannette’s life growing up as a child living in an impoverished family. It is surprising to see that Jeannette is truly loving and caring towards her family despite how completely irresponsible and negligent both her parents were. Rose-Mary and Rex Walls are unfit parents to their children.

Neglect: parents who cannot meet a child’s basic daily needs such as; hygiene, hunger, clothing and shelter. This can cause the child’s health to worsen and for their development to suffer. The child can also be left with people who cannot properly care for them. Signs and symptoms:

Individuals can be seen responding to the circumstances they endure in many different ways. The way they choose to respond to issues can determine whether the effect of their exposure will end up to be a positive strengthen to their character. In the memoir The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls, we see the effects of past experiences on Jeannette and we see how she uses those situations to shape the person that she becomes. Jeannette is a focal point to the life of success that a person can live even after growing up in an unorthodox family. She goes to prove that even with the strangest life she lives, she had the passion to pursue her goals is significant and her desire achieves the life she wants while her dreams were being

Jeannette Walls is an American writer in journalist who found success in New York City, most notably writing a gossip column for MSNBC in which she details the effects of gossip in politics. She published her memoir, The Glass Castle, in 2005. The book spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. In it, Walls recounts her childhood while growing up in an unstable family with her father and mother, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, her older sister Lori, and her younger brother and sister, Brian and Maureen. Rex and Rose Mary could not settle down and constantly uprooted their family of six to different locations in the southwest region of America. Neither parent could keep a job and struggled to feed and put a roof over their heads. In the novel, Walls views her parents as irresponsible because it rarely seems as though Rex and Rose Mary genuinely want to work and make money to support the family. They thrive off their sense of adventure, as they drive all over the country in a rundown car, looking for their latest shack to pile their family into, usually without running water, heat, or indoor plumbing. Walls will tell the story of her childhood through a series of pivotal moments that ultimately shape her opinion of her parents and lead her to a successful career in New York City.

In her memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls explains all the hardships she faced when growing up. Walls unfortunately had deleterious parents and this caused her to lose her childhood innocence quickly. Jeannette Walls, along with her siblings: Lori, Brian, and Maureen, all had to find ways to ultimately care and protect themselves.

“The Glass Castle,” written by an American author and journalist, Jeannette Walls, is a memoir about herself rising up and eluding from the continuous poverty and her unusual parents. Through out the novel, Jeannette describes her non-typical childhood with her optimistic yet delusional mother and a smart yet alcoholic father. Despite the fact Wells’ parents taught their children to be very strong and determined, Jeannette very much believed the way she was raised as being not normal.

Jeannette talks about how her parents at times were ignorant at how they were parenting. For example, Jeannette states countless situations in the book where she felt excluded or neglected. There was a situation in the book where she was cooking or preparing herself hotdogs and she got her dress on fire. The flames grew on her rapidly and the injuries became severe; soon after that her mother and father expressed to her that they were little to no concerned about their daughter. In the book it states, “Mom, in an unnaturally calm voice, explained what had happened and asked if we could please have a ride to the hospital. The woman dropped her clothespins and laundry right there in the dirt and, without saying anything, ran for her car” (9-10). This just shows the mother wasn’t the least bit scared for her daughter’s life, she didn’t even panic or react the way a mother should. With that being said, we can even notice that the neighbor was more affected by the situation than that of the mother. This is the earliest stories Jeannette can recall, which is mentioned in her book, and all the stories and memories after that only go to show the neglectful lifestyle she had to endure. It is really a sad reality of this woman’s life. However, Jeannette Walls is now a successful author, and journalist in New York, is one of the few people in this world that has made a successful life from a horrible and neglectful

Neglect can have serious and long lasting effects. In some cases, it can cause permanent disabilities. Sometimes, neglect can be hard to identify. It couldn’t be notice and makes it hard for professional to take actions to the child. Children

Child neglect is a form of child abuse, just less visible.it is a deficit in meeting a child's basic needs, including the failure to provide adequate health care, supervision, clothing, nutrition, housing as well as their physical, emotional, social, educational and safety needs (www.childwelfare.gov)The common definition of child neglect isn't as well-established as the definition of child abuse. People may consider one thing child neglect that another person might not. Harvey Wallace came up with the definition that child neglect is the negligent