Letters to the Editor
-
Honoring pain isn't going to help.
I don't really have much thought on the basics of this letter. Too little to go on. Maybe the mom is absent in some way and her son misses her. Or maybe the son is like so many of us as a teenager -- he's right about how he views the world and f**k everything in his way (seriously, meet some of these kids who are brought up anti-drug/sex/and-everything-else). So maybe the advice is spot-on.
What I disagree with is that whatever pain parents leave us with, you don't honor it. You don't pay tribute to it. You don't simply blunt it. None of those things are "knowledge." Those things add up to nothing but bitterness. Knowledge comes from the process of getting past it. Stifling it and enshrining it is completely different. You poison your life and those in it just as much with that as if you never did anything at all either through mimicking your parents or medicating yourself into a numbness about it.
Maybe the mom here needs to realize she's close to failing in some way her own parents did. She needs to work past it. Honoring the pain inflicted on her or living a self-induced numbness over it is the same thing -- it's a life built on the foundation of painful memories and nothing else.
-
Can you imagine a multiple felony conviction?
Because that's what would happen in North Carolina. And for your kid too. Yeah it's all warm and fuzzy and let's talk about our feelings and shit till the cops show up. Then the law takes over and you can in fact be charged as an adult at age 15 or 16 with multiple felonies at the discretion of the DA. Then your prince gets tossed in with the grown men till you bail him.
-
Just wait a few years...this too shall pass
And your boy will be out of your life. He's 15. He's playing a power-game, and will quick lose interest in Mom because soon, he'll have no need for mom. Boys are biologically ordered to break from mom as soon as it is possible to do so.
Mom should do her thing, and let junior deal with it. If he moves out, so be it. He'll come back when he needs a babysitter for his bratty kid.
-
Sorrow, yes; blame, no
Hi
Alanon, for you and your friend's son (or TeenAnon for him).
NarcAnon for your friend.
Overcoming long-term addiction is difficult, really very difficult. You need information, perspective, and boundaries.
Pay attention to what you can control and acknowledge what you cannot, without further recrimination. Sorrow, yes; blame, no. It will help the son if your boundaries are clear, you stay calm, and help him undertand addiction cognitively, since he already too much experience of the emotional side.
Good luck to you, your friend, and her family.
cahcap
-
a word of caution
The kid can and will leave. That would be pretty stupid of her, to push her son into leaving over something like this.
I raised a foster kid. I was a court-appointed special advocate. I can tell you all about stupid parents. This lady is one. The way you tell the stupid parents is that they always think they can rule the teenager the way they ruled the child. These parents are never, ever, ever right. Teenagers don't accept "I'm the parent therefore I rule even when I'm wrong." As well they shouldn't - teenagers are learning to be adults, and an adult who thought that way would be a pretty sad excuse for a human being. Teenagers fight back like wolverines. If you force them into a corner, they will self-destruct rather than give in.
So the kid runs away. Yay! He's destroyed his life! All because some stupid bitch wouldn't stop smoking pot because "no kid of mine is going to tell me what to do."
-
Exactly what it feels like...
"If she chooses to keep smoking pot, she is telling her kid to fuck off.
That is what she is saying. That is what it feels like. "
Cary nailed it. Substitute vodka for the pot, dress the characters in bad 1970's fashions, change some cultural window dressing, and you have my teen years. And there is no bigger waste in the world than a parent looking at a child through a haze and trying to demand "respect." The more the parent asserts the right to destroy him or herself and denies the reality of the state he or she is in, the more love and respect gets eroded.
There are ways to rebuild the love and respect, but they're not surefire. They take a lot of work and a lot of time. Like 30 years and counting.
-
In the wise words of Bob Saget---
"Marijuana is not a drug. I used to suck dick for coke."
You cannot conflate the damage that alcoholic parents can inflict on those around them with the effects of marijuana on parenting. Alcohol addictions are vastly more destructive to ones relationships than daily weed smoking.
So what we're left with is this... this boy has developed a self-righteous streak that puts him in conflict with some aspect of his parent. This happens all the time, and it can happen for a variety of reasons. It can apply to anything from a parent's drug or alcohol abuse, to extra-marital affairs, to realizations about something unsavory that mom or dad does career-wise. So under which circumstances does the parent capitulate to the child's disapproval? An alcoholic father should get treatment, certainly... not a whole lot of people would disagree with that. But what if dad is a corporate lawyer for Baby Seal Clubbing Inc? Does he resign? If Mom likes to go play bingo or go to the dog track, and Junior is convinced (even correctly) of the evils of gambling, does Mom quit her hobby? Or is Junior just being insufferable?
There are a lot of things that drive apart children and their parents. Sometimes it's the parent's fault. But as often as I've witnessed that throughout my life, just as frequently it's the kid who's at fault in these rifts.
I was out of my mind when I was fifteen. I passed judgment on everything that breathed. If the world, or even just the people around me, had conformed to my personal ethic at that time, I would sorely regret it today. And I think the son in this letter may be similarly distorted in the way he views his world. The mom should simply wait for the son to get over himself.