Little House on the Prairie

It is hard to understand, yet very true, that an abused child does not want to be removed from his abusive situation. It is all the child knows and even as bad as things are, they prefer the known (abuse) to the unknown. This is no exception to the little boy in this episode who is being abused by a father who blames the child for his wife's death (she died giving birth to him). Though the father loves his son, he drinks to forget the pain of losing his wife, and when he drinks, he becomes mean and beats his little boy. As happens in real life, the abuse only worsens as time goes on until the boy nearly dies. At this point, the community comes together to confront the dad.



Charles, much to his chagrin, gets put in charge of drying out the dad and showing him if he doesn't clean up his act, he will lose his son forever. The road is difficult and there are many times Charles would prefer to just leave the guy to rot and return to his own family than to put up with the hidden bottles of booze and the lousy, thankless attitude. With time, the father sobers up, acknowledges to himself that he was blaming the son, and promises to love his boy the way he always should have. Abuse is a very serious problem and it was good to see the community recognizing it as such.

It is always hurtful and disturbing to see a child being mistreated. We are rightly appalled, as are the citizens of Walnut Grove when a young boy from their town is found to be the recipient of regular beatings by his alcoholic father. Miss Beadle shows the latest round of horrific bruises (a bad make-up job here) to Doc Baker and Charles. A town meeting is called and it is decided that something must be done in order to possibly save the boy's life.



While young Graham goes to stay with Caroline and the girls, Charles sets up house with his father and proceeds to 'dry him out', which, due to the time constraints of televison, seems to be achieved almost overnight, and as father and son are re-united, all is right with the world. Kudos to Michael Landon for addressing such a vital issue. What a pity the script and line delivery weren't better to get the point across more clearly.