There's something I wanted to comment on, and the bolded part here seems relevant to me.
It's the thing about the eldest son reportedly telling LT outside the college that he wanted permission to be friends with another student, and LT's response was to say "whatever" and drive off, and then he never went to that class again.
It reminds me of the words that LT's father is reported to have used to her when she left home to get married at 16 to DT, something like "you've made your choice, you've chosen him, so...go and be with him".
I can imagine the son being told, through feelings as much as words, that he had to choose to be with LT and that had to be exclusive, you can't have a mom *and* have friends outside the house. It's emotional manipulation and emotional abuse, and we 'know' that must have been a huge part of their lives because even when the siblings had some small amount of apparent freedom or contact with people outside the nuclear family, they didn't tell anyone what was going on, it was ingrained in them to keep to the rules.
And from other perspectives, the eldest son apparently 'chose' someone who didn't have friends as the person he would like to be friends with. To me, I wonder if that's a little bit of human empathy coming out in him, that he'd seen someone else who seemed marginalized in the peer group and wanted to help both himself and the other person be eased from that marginalization through mutual friendship? Did he maybe even think to himself that he had 12 'friends' at home, yet this person didn't seem to have anyone? That could be a good sign for these young people's futures if they have this empathy for others inside them. Ironically, if the siblings are constantly watching out for the moods of their parents/captors, they might be quite sensitive to the moods of others. There's good and bad things about this level of empathy as I think it can contribute to depressive states, but the ability to empathize is a positive thing, and despite the forced segregation from 'outsiders' this might be a sign that they want to have friends outside the family and they want to be kind to other people, even if they're people who they're technically 'banned' from interacting with.
In the Krispy Kreme photo, there's a lot of thinking going on in that young man's head from the look on his face, far more than is apparent from the happy masks in the family group photos, I think he's assessing the situation, and again that's a skill those siblings probably 'had' to learn for survival inside the home. For all the life skills they might lack, these siblings might have very good skills in other areas, skills that might not be taught in schools or in a lot of homes the siblings might have had to develop for themselves.
There seems to be a significant percentage of people on these boards at WS who have had past traumas, and on the boards they're highly empathetic, thoughtful and caring individuals. It just shows that trauma will leave a lasting mark not only in negative ways but also it can leave positive things for a person, and part of the challenge, I think, is to find the positives and bring them out and utilize them, and I think that goes for everyone. We're not clones, whether it's math, cooking, people skills, we're all a bit better in one area than another, and too often we focus on our shortcomings--and the shortcomings of others--without looking for the positives.
