FAMILY IN CRISIS

Mari A. Schaefer

Nov. 4--As coach of the Eagles, Andy Reid has excelled at keeping the lid on, brushing off questions about team controversies with a countenance as stony as Mount Rushmore.

That lid grew airtight when it came to problems at home, with Reid bolting from briefings when anyone dared to broach his sons' legal woes.

It therefore fell to a Montgomery County judge last week to publicly reckon with the dynamics of what he deemed "a family in crisis."

In skewering the structure and supervision in the Reids' Main Line home, Judge Steven T. O'Neill raised the conundrum facing countless other homes in which drug-addicted adult children still live: What is the parents' responsibility -- let alone their ability -- to monitor and control their grown children?

"You've got to take accountability of what goes on in the house," O'Neill told Reid and his wife, Tammy, in an extraordinary lecture Thursday at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown.

His remarks came as O'Neill sent the Reids' two oldest sons -- Garrett, 24, and Britt, 22 -- to county prison for up to 23 months each on gun- and drug-related crimes.

The sentencing hearing also laid bare the depths and duration of the Reid brothers' drug dependencies.

A presentence investigation revealed Garrett Reid to have been a street dealer in North Philadelphia and on the Main Line. Britt Reid's addiction, the investigation found, began at age 14 with painkillers prescribed after he hurt his back lifting weights at Harriton High School in Lower Merion Township.

He remains addicted to painkillers.

O'Neill reviewed those histories before a courtroom audience already stunned by news that 89 pills had been found that morning in Garrett Reid's jail cell as he was being brought to court.

Investigators concluded he had concealed them in his rectum before arriving at prison Tuesday evening. He had been ordered there after failing a routine drug test, and now faces additional charges of smuggling contraband.

"I have some real difficulty with the structure in which these two boys live," O'Neill said, noting the guns, ammunition and assortment of drugs that at various times had been in the Reids' home and cars. "What is the supervision?"

Mike Wood, a family therapist at the Livengrin Foundation for Addiction Recovery in Bensalem, noted that addicts are very manipulative and creative, good at concealing things. It may be unfair to hold parents accountable for them into adulthood, he said.





I funud this informaton in Philadelphia Inquirer,The (AP) 11/04/2007
wwww.yahoo.com/family in crisis.


MY OPINION


ON MY OPINION I THINK THE PARENT OF THOSE GUY TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THEIR CHILDREN'S AND SEE WHAT THEY ARE DOING GOOd OR BAD.those guy were in trouble in drugs and the parents don't even know abouit so we know the they live in a poor country but the think that i don't understand is that if they are in drug where they get money to get it that is Whit i don't understand i think the parent more care of their children cause this is a very huge crisis.