In “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” by Greg Haddon and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, both children have to deal with problematic parents. Christopher in “Curious Incident” deals with this by leaving his father. The son in “My Papa’s Waltz” doesn't have a solution for his father’s issues, but rather just deals with it. In both “Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-time” and “My Papa’s Waltz” children are forced to deal with dysfunctional and problematic parents.
In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz”, a mother and son have to deal with an alcoholic and problematic father. At the start of the poem, the narrator states, “The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy;” (Roethke lines 1-2). The man described has clearly been drinking, and is most likely drunk. From this, the reader could infer that the poet included these lines for a reason. The most likely reason is that the father is an alcoholic, and cannot control his drinking problems. While the father was drunkenly dancing with his son, Roethke describes his mother by saying, “My
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Christopher recounts his mother saying to him, “Jesus, Christopher, I am seriously considering putting you in a home,” (Page 48). Judy has the same anger management issues as Ed. Both of them get so fed up with Christopher sometimes, and they just want to get rid of him. Not only does Judy have anger management issues, but she can also be selfish sometimes. Instead of staying with Christopher while he is growing up, she decides to leave him and be with Mr. Shears. Instead of just leaving Ed and Christopher abruptly, a better way would be to tell Christopher what is going on in his parent’s relationship, and then he would be able to see both of his parents consistently. Judy's selfishness and anger management issues force Christopher to deal with her problems as well as