Sentences based on public humiliation

[Tink]

I had a neighbor/co-worker who I have long since lost track of who's mother taught her and her siblings to shoplift. No WAY would she spend any money on them, so if they wanted something she told them they'd better take it and not get caught. She too was a very odd person (the mother, not daughter). She'd been married many times, stole from anyone unlucky enough to turn their back on her and never felt any of it was wrong.

My neighbor left home at 14 because she felt she would do better on her own. When I met her she was well into her 40's and while she wasn't nearly as bad as her mother... who I did eventually meet, she had some really warped ideas on how to live. At one point she was in court fighting the federal govenment because they were trying to kick her and her tent off federal land where she'd been living for several months. Another time she lived on a beach in her pick up truck and spent her last 5 dollars to buy a bottle of booze.

I got to know her when she married (her first marriage) a man 12 yrs her junior who I worked with on the local ambulance service and lived near. She was interesting, and if she liked you she didn't steal from you, but she did have a very warped sense of entitlment and refused to ever work full time.

So Angie, your MIL isn't alone, but it's hard to deal with people like that for sure.

[katepoet]

The people we know!! The stories we could tell...

I don't believe in shame as a general rule but I do think a very tiny tiny bit helps at a certain stage of child rearing - that it matters how others perceive you or that you are making choices about how you are perceived. I don't mean that how we are seen by others should define us but that we should act respectful of others and sometimes that means dressing differently or maintaining quiet, or other things that make it easier on those around us.

But I do think anti-social people have undiagnosed or untreated illnesses and that there is help for them.