Letters to the Editor
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A Teaching Moment?
I would acknowledging upfront that it's usually impossible to step back outside ourselves when we are in the midst of a fight (and I would also acknowledging that teenaged boys are all possessed by Satan) ... :)
... however, another approach might be to lead by example. In other words, take the boy outside and wash the cars together. Not as punishment, or as a "chore," but as a way to show him that there is a right way to do something as simple as washing a car - thoroughly, without scratching the paint, with extra attention to the details like chrome and wheels etc.
To show him the pleasure in accomplishment, a pride in a job well done. That there is a pleasure in doing something simple and manual. That there is a pleasure in doing something constructive together, that many hands make light work, etc., etc.
This approach would have an added benefit - making him a winner not a dominated child.
Servant leadership gets a bad rap because it's associated with religious fanatics, but the concept - the role of a leader being to ensure that everyone under their care has all of the right tools and support and environment to achieve their very best - is one that works with a family as well as a business.
As far as the slap - you need to apologize to your son for that and get some family counseling to help with your anger. It's not helping either of you.
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Ugh
Anne Lamott is the white new age annoying ass hippie answer to Kathie Lee Gifford. If I was using my son as fodder for my writing career, he'd hate me too.
God save us from white women with dreadlocks.
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Life of Samuel
Ms. Lamott,
Your chronicles have been a realtime ten-year horror story as I've watched this poor kid's future unravel under your sanctimonious pen. You're deluding yourself, lady. Your son kid does not hate you because you two are exceptionally close, he hates you because you have betrayed his childhood, his integrity, his privacy- his soul if you will- with your immensely self-indulgent psycho-drivel.
I wrote to you many years ago begging you to find another subject to exploit, hoping you might see the damage you were doing to this otherwise perfectly lovely child. Like your father before you, you've chosen yourself over your responsibility as a rational parent. More damning, you've replaced your substance addiction with Jesusworld. Fortunately Sam appears to see through this failing and perhaps even forgives you. I would not have been so gracious.
I cannot WAIT to see what he has to say about you in a few years. Maybe you can franchise the operation and screw up another generation?
ahansen
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she slapped him in the face over washing a car???
That's abusive, pure and simple. Guess her new-age, hippie, Jesus lovin' crap she's been writing for years is just a bunch of bs. I suspected as much. What kind of shrew slaps her son in the face for something so petty? What kind of shrew slaps ANYONE in the face?
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Why do you read Annie Lamott?
If you read Annie Lamott before and do not like her articles, why read it now? Why waste your time and space on expressing an opinion that appears you developed long ago.
I do not read Ayn Rand anymore. Read 'We The Living' & 'Foutainhead' and did not like her premise. As such, I have no opinion on Atlas Shrugged, but I could if I wanted to. Like Annie Lamott, Ayn Rand does not vary from one idea, so developing an opinion would be easy to do. I realize Ayn Rand has a following, which is something else I have no opinion.
If you do like Annie Lamott's references to Jesus, stories about her son and self-reflection, why read AND comment? She does little else and obviously it is how she makes her living.
Accepted she does not have any new insights on life's journey, but it is new to her and I enjoy her take on it.
So why do you read Annie Lamott when she is predictable and you know you won't like it? Do you do so just to pontificate?
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manhood
in the old days, Sam would have been providing money or chores to help out in the household. He obviously needs MORE chores, and MORE responsibilities. If Ann could talk with her son, and explain to him that she NEEDS his help, he just might rise to the occasion.
Also, we seem to somewhere lost sight of the concept of earning things in household. Parents feel guilty over their mistakes, and cover it up by GIVING too much to their kids, which really robs the kids of the feeling of accomplishment, or doing a job well, and of earning something.
i know as a mother of a teenage son, there would be nothing that would burn my butt more than me coming home from a long day at work, to a lazyass man/boy sitting on the couch playing Playstation while the trash molders in the trashcan and flies buzz around the dirty dishes.
But this is why fathers are very important. And I agree with Masterkwan. My husband parents our sons very differently than I, he is more strict. But we also show a unified front when the kids try their manipulation techniques (as all kids do). And they are better for it.
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No, not pontificate, it just seems people like to be mean
And Salon Letters offers the perfect forum to be mean to someone without the consequences of being mean to someone face to face. Face to face someone can be mean back to you, or slap you, and they know who you are. Here, everyone is just anonymous
I'm just stunned at how many of you seem to have forgotten what you were like as teenagers and are so ready to come down on Lamott. If you are such self-richeous unemotional mean-for-meaness-sake jerks now, I shudder to imagine what you were like when you were 17.
Most people mature and become calmer, nicer, more well-reasoned, more open-minded and sympathetic.
But not some of Salon's readership, that's for sure.
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Yes, it is a phase...
I had two sons (now in their 30s) and went though some similar difficulties, also living in Marin County. I think this transition is particularly painful for single mothers and it's also made more difficult by the fact that mothers and sons have a special relationship and have often shared a great deal of closeness. Who knows? Maybe it even echoes abandonment or rejection by other men in our lives. Maybe we thought this was the one man we'd always have. And we will--if we waddle and wade through this painful time and manage to come out the other side, wait a few years until the man-boy is in his 20s, and he will come back to us with fierce loyalty, sometimes even admitting that he was a jerk and is sorry now for how he treated us. At this point in my life I feel treasured by my sons, and it's a great feeling. Hang in there! Keep praying, and keep doing all the things you can think of to take care of yourself and make yourself feel better in the meantime.