Letters to the Editor
sfsclark
Published Letters: 15
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Can get past the slap -not the letters from the readers
[Read the article: My son, the stranger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Can't get past the slap? Tell your son how much you worry about him so he will understand and respond? Who are you people?
Look no one thinks hitting a kid is a good idea. But most parents know it happens and the kid usually had it coming. As someone who is basically peace-loving but has on occassion lost control of my own hand , I sympathize with Anne and what she is going through. I have tried other methods too, such as once emptying out my daughter's bookcase and contents of her dresser on to the floor, when I've been pushed past what any reasonable person can endure, usually heaps of scorn or unbridled contempt.
No teenager cares if his/her mother worries. They alreay know that all mothers worry. I was a teenager once and I couldn't have cared less about my mother or her worries.
Controlling her kid with cars and chores is entirely approrpate. It is the only aces she has left to play. Teenagers are not adults they are children in large bodies who are prone to making poor decisions. (Nor are most college students for that matter, if they were we wouldn't have fraternities, binge drinking and fire alarms being contiunually pulled on college campuses.)
I am currently trying to manage a 13-year-old daughter (girls hit their difficult years earlier)and right now I love her and also hate her. I have fantasies of sending her to boarding schools. Right now I am controlling her by threatening to send her to grandmother's for the summer. The tone in her voice alone, alternating between contempt and sheer disgust, is enough for me to send that kid packing.
Raising children is not for the faint of heart. It is particuarly hard becuase for so many years they were so reasonable and pliable and they said and did funny things that tugged at your heart and they looked at you like you hung the moon. Then they get older, reality hits, the body's chemistry changes, and they can't get away from you fast enough. It is a necessary heartbreak, but it is still painful.
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Stop Blaming Mom Misinformed Salon Readers
[Read the article: A mother's love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As always when an article appears on Salon related to parenting the letters from Salon readers are in general so unbearable, so stupid (for lack of a more gracious word) that I always wonder who are these incredibly annoying people who, like me, are Salon members. What kind of club am I member of? Be Honest's letter typifies the kind of ill-informed response - blame the mother. (Just like "refrigerator" mothers were blamed for autistic children generations ago or homosexual sons were the result of "overbearing" mothers.) I suggest readers like Be Honest begin to educate themselevs about our latest understandings of the biological basis of personality as well as the effects of early deprivation on child development. If an educated middle class white woman tried to do a good thing (for herself as well as for the child) by adopting an impoverished orphan in South America, how generous of her. How well that speaks of her, unlike readers like Be Honest who undoubtedly have much opinion but no actual experience or information.
I found her article very interesting in the same way that I found Michael Dorris' book The Broken Chord interesting (yes, yes I know about all the supposed abuse in the family). Well-intentioned, kind-hearted people who of course have their own agenda in terms of wanting to be a parent, but believe that love, opportunity and choices are enough to create responsible adults who can navigate the world approproiately.
Sadly her son and his wife cannot be fixed. A lifetime of poor choices is creating another generation of inviduals who will never function properly in the world.
Unlike most angry Salon readers I have children. Four of them. One of them is adopted. We are doing our best. Upper middle class, highly educated parents with the best of intentions who spend hours engaged with them, playing sports with them, reading to them. But it is clear we only have limited influence. All are different. Each has his/her own personality. Some will fair better in life than others. Our 10-year-old we worry about in particular. I will take some responsiblity for the way they turn out. But only some.
By the way adoption is about the adopter but it is also about the adoptee. The adopter wants something for him/herself of course, but as far as orphans go, the ones that are adopted have hit the jackpot.
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Cary's bad advice
[Read the article: I gave up everything to be with my Russian husband and now I'm unhappy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary usually gives excellent advice...but this time it stinks. A woman is thinking about divorce because her husband doesn't travel? Look: If she gave up an MFA program and then had a three-year-long "writer's black" sounds to me like she was as committed to a writing career as she is to marriage. Very few people who live in a city like London consider it to be a form of prison. Maybe some of his dumping on her is the man is tired of a whining woman with no idea of what she wants to do or who she wants to be in life. My advice: Grow up, look into the VISA paperwork yourself, find something meaningful to occupy yourself in London and decide what you want to be when you grow up. Then if you're still unhappy? Divorce him.