What I have a hard time with in the canon...

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 96237

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "daled7350" <daled73 at e...> 
wrote:

Dale:
> What continually niggles at me when I try to relax and enjoy the 
> Potterverse is the belief that any child who had endured the 
loveless 
> world of psychological abuse that Harry lived in from age 2 till 
11, 
> wuld be undamaged enough to be able to make friends with Ron and 
> Hermoine the way he does. 
> 
> Excuse me, but he's been isolated from any form of love in the 
family 
> setting, and although JKR doesn't say much about his pre-Hogwarts 
> schooling, I doubt if he could have been adequately socialized by 
the 
> children he found in school, after being treated like a leper at 
home 
> until he reached school age. 

Geoff:
Let me cite a real life example for comparison.

Many years ago, my wife and I knew some folk in London. The family 
lived in the same street as I had until I married and my wife knew 
the younger son through Sunday School work. There was about an 18 
year age gap between the two sons.

When Dave, the younger, was 10, his mother died suddenly and at the 
end of his First year in secondary school, when he had just turned 
12, his father died after an operation. He lived with his elder 
brother in the family house for a year. His brother then took off 
into the blue because he couldn't cope and has only been seen once by 
any of the family in over 30 years. Dave came to stay with us for a 
fortnight while the family wrangled (often in front of him) as to who 
would have him. He went to an elderly aunt and uncle who, like 
Petunia took him unwillingly, and then threw in the towel after a few 
months and put him into care where he remained until he was 18.

He came out at the end very streetwise but remarkably unscathed 
emotionally by the lack of love shown by relatives, by his perceived 
desertion by his brother and by the rather institutionalised and 
sanitised way of life in the care home and hostel. We were very 
surprised and, even now, when he is in his 40s, we still are amazed 
at how well he has coped with the "slings and arrows of outrageous 
fortune" which have been thrown at him both then and in his early 
steps into the adult world.

So, it is quite possible that Harry, although younger than our friend 
when his problems began, managed to deal with them and still come out 
as a reasonably well-balanced guy at the end.