Letters to the Editor
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Can get past the slap -not the letters from the readers
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.