Thank you all for your responses and sharing your experience with me. I know it is a very emotional and not an easy topic.
I volunteered at a soup kitchen last december, and watched a young woman with 2 little kids walking in. It was pretty cold and snowing and I noticed all of them were wearing no jackets and the kids had no shoes on. The woman seemed really stressed and asked to use the phone. Later she told me that on the drive home she got into an argument with her husband who left her and the kids stranded on a sidewalk before he took off. The woman was very very worried that he might harm himself in drunk stupor, telling her children to stop crying as she would have to search daddy..
I agree that without having walked in her shoes in terms of being a parent I can not give her advice. I also agree that similar to dealing with an alcoholic,k trying to cut through her denial doesn't make much sense.
After having experienced alcoholism and its craziness I would not think that she doesn't care about her children or doesn't have their best interest at heart. My own experience taught me that while acting with the best of intentions, I made a lot of mistakes. Mistakes I have to own, and that I can't change but that I can learn from. I know it's hard to ask for help and I'm glad the woman came in.
I think what I'm trying to say is that while I haven't lived this familie's life, my own experience helped me understand a part of their struggles and reality, and maybe see it with more compassion.
What stuck with me in the Acoa thread was that children with parents in denial experience their own reality being disregarded. Do not speak. Do not feel. Do not act.
I believe it is the parents responsibility to raise their children and non of my business. But by acting as if nothing has happened and saying nothing because I haven't walked in their parents shoes, I think I am re-enforcing what some children might experience at home. I join their parents on the merry-go round of denial.