He comes to the platoon, the first week on the job. He is five minutes late to a briefing with the 1st Sgt. since he was busy working out the logistics of the new truck he just bought (which has an APR that’s through the clouds). He’s not good at PT, but you think that maybe he’s got potential when it comes to more tactical skills — he doesn’t seem stupid, after all. And he is alright, but he keeps making the same mistakes over and over. When you speak to him about it, his eyes are glazed over, and he nods, responding with a “Roger, Sergeant.” You can tell that he knows he messed up, he’s beating himself up about it, and yet he continues to make the same mistakes over and over — at the end of the day, these mistakes might not only get him killed, but they might get his friends killed too. They might get you killed.

Most military veterans know this guy, and if you don’t, then I hate to say, but it might have been you. That is, he’s that guy who, in one way or another, always falls into trouble. He breaks a bone at the worst time possible, and before you hear the name of who broke what, you know who it is. Oh, and it’s never their fault either — they always have an excuse for everything.

But I know plenty of people like that, and I’m not in the military.

You’re absolutely right. People like this are everywhere.

Maybe she’s a waitress, and maybe she has worked several jobs before that — she was fired from each one, and she’s got a story about how she was a victim in each and every circumstance. Her failed relationships in the past aren’t her fault, of course. And if you were to sit down and listen to each and every story independently from one another, they are very heartfelt and convincing. They make honest-to-god sense. String two or three of them together? A streak of bad luck, perhaps. But as the hits just keep on coming, these events begin to paint a picture. They being to illuminate the common denominator in each struggle in that person’s life.

These are the problem children.

However, when their nature as a problem child is revealed, other people usually have one of two reactions: they either distance themselves entirely in order to mitigate any damage to themselves, or they haphazardly try to “fix” the seemingly stupid problems one at a time. “She lost a job? Tell her to buckle down next time and push through it!” “He can’t pass that military school? Tell him to grow a pair and pay attention next time!” They may even attempt to walk them through problem by problem, not realizing that something greater is at work.

Just as there is a common denominator in all of those problems (the problem child themselves), there is also a common denominator with all of their problems. The person is probably not aware of this root problem — sometimes they are too proud to look inward, other times they simply don’t understand themselves very well.