Unconventional Parenting Methods in Wall's The Glass Castle

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Although Rex and Rosemary Walls of The Glass Castle have strange ways of parenting, and aren’t the ideal parents; the Walls’ kids should not be removed from their home. There are numerous reasons for them to be removed, indeed Rex and Rosemary, at times were awful parents, but children should never be taken away from their family, no matter how crazy they are. If the children were to be removed, they wouldn’t be anything like themselves; they wouldn’t have the education they currently have, they wouldn’t be as successful as they grow to be, and they would’ve missed out on many major life lessons.
The Walls’ children have an exquisite education, they learn from real world experiences, life lessons, and their teaching-certified mother. Although Lori, Jeanette, Brian, and Maureen were practically raised on the streets at times, their parents spent plenty of time teaching them everything from how to make beds from random appliances, to knowing the importance of not judging people because of their skin color. After the kids move to Welch, they discover some places do not have very decent teaching expertise, Jeanette says “ …but he stood at the front of the room next to a map of West Virginia, with all fifty-five counties outlines, and spent the entire class pointing to the counties and asking students to identify them”(137). In Welch, the learning is appalling. They “pass the hour watching a film of the football game that Welch High had played several days earlier”(137), in Jeanette’s second period. The Walls’ children would be better off learning from a trailer in the middle of the desert than in Welch High. Maureen however, was practically raised in a different environment, she wasn’t taught all of the lessons her siblings were, sh...

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... used. It’s important that Jeanette and her siblings were involved in some of the situations, because if Jeanette were taken from her parents, The Glass Castle wouldn’t have been written, and many readers wouldn’t have been informed about some of the circumstances that Jeanette’s family were involved in. To sum it up, children should never be taken away from their families unless something truly awful is happening; such as physical, and sexual abuse. Jeanette says in an interview at "CBS This Morning," her childhood was a "pretty wicked" time. Not many kids can say that.

Works Cited

Cochran, Amanda. "Glass Castle" author Jeannette Walls on her childhood: "Pretty wicked." CBS News. 12 June 2013 < http://www.cbsnews.com/news/glass-castle-author-jeannette-walls-on-her-childhood-pretty-wicked/>.
Walls, Jeanette. The Glass Castle. New York: Simon and Shuster, 2005.

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