I felt that the fact that the mother so obviously had her own issues to deal with made it all the more realistic, but it wasn’t just the mother’s issues, the conspicuously absent dad was equally responsible for Tracy’s self-mutilation. The mother, despite all her faults, did really seem to be making a conscious effort to understand her daughter, not block out the problem.

Seeing a film like this certainly makes me wonder if I should ever have kids. I mean when have we really worked out our shit? When are we really ‘ready’ to be parents? And even if we are the ‘perfect’ parent, it’s still no guarantee things will work out OK for the kid(s) – just look at how different siblings turn out coming from the same family.

I thought the movie did a great job of showing the disolving relationship between the mother and daughter with more than a few clues that the mother’s weak parenting skills, rather than the “tempting Evie” was the primary catalyst for disaster.

Nikki had the cutting her arm thing down to a science, which implied she had been doing it for a long time before Evie stepped onto the scene. I think that suggests some really deep rooted problems were already present in our young, innocent Nikki. I would say that the constant foot traffic through their house, the mom’s continuing battle with addictive behavior, the mom’s inability to say “no” to anyone including her kids, and the son’s (seemingly accepted) drug use all suggested that Nikki’s self mutilation was in reaction to a really sad lack of parental involvement.

Of course, our culture loves to demonize the idea of the sexual young girl as a corrupting force, but let’s get real … Evie was more than a bit tragic as a character herself. I’m not going to get into her sad lack of parental authority figures, but she was desperate for some mom attention, positive or negative.

What I took away from the movie was that as an adult you need work out your own shit before you try and parent. Otherwise you lay the groundwork for “the kid gone out of control.” Maybe this point wasn’t as explicit as it could have been, but that could have something to do with the “real” Nikki’s story being filtered through her “step-mother.”