Letters to the Editor
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Give him a banana, Anne...
Or have his father give him a stern talking-to. His father is around, right?
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Stop controlling your son with money and the car
As I read your article about your son it really jumped out at me how much power you are trying to exert over your son through the fact that you own the car you let him drive and that you have more money. This is not a good basis for respect or power and I think you should stop relying on it. Paying the insurance on it doesn't entitle you to order him out to do errands, to make him clean the car or for that matter to order him to clean it to your satisfaction. In the short term it will only be effective until he gets his own car and in the long term you are losing his respect.
Like it or not you need to accept that he isn't going to do as you tell him to anymore just because you can make him. And when you do succeed in making him, and force him back into that position of being a child it just makes him resent you more.
If I were you I'd give him the car as a gift and do it in a generous spirit. Don't mention it again and don't abuse the fact that you have more money than he doesn to exert power over him.
When you worry about the way he drives, or want him to do an errand, treat him like an adult. Tell him how much you worry and how much you wish he'd drive more safely. Take the risk and be vulnerable with him. When you want him to do an errand ask him nicely to do one for it's own sake rather than because he 'owes' you.
Whether he chooses to treat you with respect or not you at least are acting like a lovabhle and respectable person and sooner or later he'll realise it.
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My son, the stranger
As the mother of two sons now past that awful age, I just want to offer encouragement. They do come back. You just have to earn it by staggering as best you can through the wasteland years and trying not to give up hope. Just as you're doing now.
It helps (a little) that you get those brief but reassuring glimpses of the sweet boy inside from time to time - not enough to make you relax, but enough to remind you he's still there.
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Maybe...
You should stop writing about him. Just sayin'.
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you're a beater
for hitting your son. I don't care how "emotional" you were at the time; it is simply unacceptable to hit someone in response to mere words. How would you feel if the kid's father, if he is living; had done the same, or if you had a daughter rather than a son?
You have never had any responsibility to provide hime with anything other than shelter and sustenance, and you will soon not have to provide those things. Perhaps it would be best to negotiate with him about things like the car as if you were dealing with a business situation -- he might respect you more for it.
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All the answers are there
All the answers to Anne's problems are right in the article. Mother and son are both going through a difficult time, and as another writer said, this is all about power. But you have to remember who is the adult here, and as an adult she has to have to wisdom to see the truth. The truth is rather unpleasant and what an adult does is learn to deal with it.
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Couldn't get past the slap.
I loved Lamott's 'Bird by Bird'. Fantastic book. But even in there I felt she was mining a troubled parenting situation for laughs. It's not that it can't be done, but now I jcan't get past that she slapped her son. Couldn't even finish the first page.
It takes a lot of something (hell knows what) to slap another person in the face. A son! I have a two year old, and it's freaking me out that when he's 17 I might have the gumption, the stupidity, to haul off and slap him. No way.
Listen, what he said to her before the slap wasn't all that awful. It wasn't a cut against her it was self-depreciating. And she couldn't even hear it.
These two need to part for a while. He needs his autonomy. And if there is a true bond there (which I'm sure there is) he will someday come back. And need her.
But not today. No one needs that. Not even a big strapping young man. He's lying if he says it doesn't hurt.
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I agree, with Laura BB (and, really, all the posts here) though I think this is typical parental behavior.
The whopper for me was the little line about "barely sober." Is this serious? Is she a recovering alcholic? Did he have to endure a period of her alcoholism? Might explain some things, about his behavior and hers. Is her necessary need for strict control of herself being extended to unneccesary strict control over her child ("if I have to suffer super-strict guidelines, so do you")?
I can’t figure out what “peeling” around the corner means, since she’s so overly cautious about speed. So I don't get how it could endanger anyone’s life. A sharp left turn that cut into the right lane, maybe? Who can tell, but it sounds more like her fussiness than truly dangerous driving on his part, and what’s with grounding him for a week? Does that mean he’s learned to drive safely, or just to wait until he’s around the corner to drive what most of us would call normally? And what do you want to bet that doing this in front of his mom’s eyes was the whole point (to demonstrate his autonomy)?
I'm also a little bewildered that driving at 20mph is fast enough to hit the curb and puncture the tire. Either he was driving faster (which is unlikely since it seems she was observing him) or the tire was in bad shape to begin with, in which case it's hardly his fault.
None of his driving sounds unlawful. Sounds like he's driving in a legally acceptable but not Mom-acceptable fashion. In other words, it's something for Anne Lamott to get over, not Sam