Fear the Walking Dead: Strand and Alicia beg to be seen

Alicia has had to raise herself on Fear the Walking Dead. Strand told her to make Madison see her on the latest episode.

On Fear the Walking Dead, Madison has been trying to reach Nick since before we even were introduced to the characters. From conversations Alicia and Madison had and Nick and Alicia had, we can tell that a pattern has developed in the Clark family over the past several years.

Nick tries to assert his independence and moves away from the family in a way that involves drugs and spontaneous living. Madison tries to get him to return and assert some control over him without much success.

Alicia wants independence as well, but she went about it be getting good grades and taking control of her own life. Madison didn’t need to control Alicia because Alicia was self-reliant. Alicia became self-reliant in order to get away from the life she saw her brother lead. She wanted better for herself.

But every child wants attention from her parent. She doesn’t want to be hovered over and controlled, but she wants to be able to rebel against that hovering like a normal teenager. That hovering is love. She gave her mother the consideration of giving her the freedom to go after Nick without worrying about her. The least her mother could do is show some appreciation.

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If Alicia weren’t so mature and smart, she would have decided to do something bad herself. Something to draw the attention to herself. But she didn’t want that for herself. So she detached. She detached from Nick. She loved Nick. She wishes he could be around to have fun with, but she knows it’s not that way.

Madison can’t detach. Detaching is a misnomer. Detaching doesn’t mean that you don’t care. Detaching doesn’t mean that you forget. Detaching means that you love, but you don’t grip tightly to the outcome. You don’t try to control the other person’s actions.

We found out last night that Strand is a similar character to Alicia. Strand told Thomas that his father was a preacher who never understood what he wanted to do. It’s likely that Strand’s father wasn’t able to pay attention to him the way he needed either. I don’t know whether or not Strand had siblings that got more attention. But I would guess that his father’s congregation got quite a bit of his attention.

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I saw this dynamic in classrooms all the time. The students who caused the most trouble or did the worst, got the most attention. Those were the kids that caused the teachers the most stress. The kids that the teachers focused on when they tried to come up with ideas to help get through to the students more.

That seems admirable. A student is having trouble and a teacher tries to do more work to help him. Another student is behaving poorly and the teacher works extra hard to come up with ideas to modify her behavior.

But that leaves quite a few kids sitting in your room every day who do what they are supposed to do and get no attention. I used to try to pay attention to that. I always focused on the students who did well and gave them at least the same amount of attention as the ones who were not doing well.

I made sure I had systems in place to reward the people who did what they were supposed to do. Things that made it appealing to join the group of kids who were acting appropriately.

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Strand became strong and focused and confident. He demanded attention. It brought tears to my eyes when Strand told Alicia to make her mother see her.

And Alicia did. She said to Madison. I’m here. Why isn’t that enough?

She’s saying look at me. Find me. I’m here, but I’m still lost to you. She wants to work together with her mother to make a life. It’s okay that Madison wants love Nick, but she can’t keep making these impetuous decisions that put herself and Alicia and the others at risk in order to try to control her son.