Letters to the Editor
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Protest: I haven't read this article and I'm not going to
I've believed for some time now that it's wrong the way Lamott uses her son for writing fodder. Her invasion of his privacy -- the privacy of someone who legally has no control over his own fate -- is astounding. I refuse to read any of her material, and I encourage others to do the same until she stops writing about him.
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Stop Writing About Him!
Your son is much too old for you to be using his life as material. Simple rule for personal essayists: teenage children are off limits.
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I haven't read this article and I'm not going to
Well, hey, thanks very much for swooping into the comment section and telling us not to read an article becuase you haven't read it, are never going to read it, and therefore really don't know squat about it.
We do appreciate your advice, however uninformed, because without you, how would we know that we shouldn't have read the article, let alone commented on it?
I'm sure the rest of us feel like right imbeciles for not following the advice you've waited this long to give.
Your work here is done.
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Stop Writing About Him!
Stop reading about him if it bothers you so much!
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parenting
closing thought...
I just feel really bad for parents struggling with their kids. And most of my friends are white liberal types, and most of their kids are total brats.
For PC reasons, I don't usually volunteer these opinions, because I know they're not fashionable. But I have had parents look at my kids and ask how I do it, esp. when their own are spinning out of control.
i had a girlfried who was just coming out of a nasty divorce, and her son (age 9) had started being really sassy, mouthing off to her, being very disrespectful. The timeouts weren't working, the "discussions" weren't working. She asked me how I disciplined my kids, and I told her to 1) give him some chores to do; and 2)give him a swat on the behind when he was really bad.
She looked so relieved when a rational person told her it was OKAY to discipline her child. and now her kid is so much better behaviorwise. She thanked me.
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Am I the only person who remembers being 17?
The great realization I had when I was 16-17 was how little control I had over any portion of my existence. I did not choose my occupation, my hours, where I lived, or much of anything else. Further, I did not even have the tools to begin to make those choices if I wanted to; it wasn't like I could move to a different city and shack up with a couple of friends until I found a job.
This was an intolerable situation, and I expressed it by being frustrated, lazy, and often kind of mean -- which is precisely how I express the same levels of frustration now that I'm a twentysomething adult, except now I have the experience to know what's going on in my own head.
Show some sympathy. Ways of living which work for kids don't work for adults. But set limits; there is still no excuse for being mean to your mom when she's been crying. The one thing which really was not excusable is the thing which he was not called on.
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Out the other side
Raising kids is hard hard hard. My kids are adults now; they're smart and sweet and funny and forgiving and they even--oh, if only I'd known these days were coming 10 years ago--send me the occasional card thanking me for being a good mother.
I read Anne Lamott's essay with recognition. The slap, the despair, the sobbing. God, I remember all of it, all of the love and worry and just doing your best every day, week, month,year. At night before sleep and in the morning before getting out of bed praying to a God I didn't even believe in to please please help me be a better mother.
To the letter writers who think families should never talk about this--no, really women shouldn't, mothers--I wonder what kind of shame they were raised with, what secrets they knew they had to keep.
Thank God some people are daring to tell the truth. What a relief it is, memoir, personal essay, when it's well written and close to the bone and dares to say something real.
I'm going to email Lamott's essay my son, who went through some really terrible years growing up (and I was on that ride with him, believe me) and is now, to my amazement, a teacher working with troubled kids, and also a writer.
When parents and kids love each other and wrestle through all of this hard stuff, maybe they understand it's okay to talk about it, even to tell others, and still be safe.
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Stop breastfeeding him
He should have self-weaned by fifteen . . .
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You shall sow what ye reap . . .
Make a living mocking your boy in print, and no surprise he grows up to hate you.
P.S. Are you listening, Ayalet? Your boy is going to dismember and eat you, in all probability.
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I second the fucktard analysis
Women like Ann Lamot are abusers, plain and simple.
She took it out on her son as a kid.
She made his life fodder for her essays.
He'll have it back. And then some.
"What goes around comes around, and when it comes around, it's like a fridge falling on your head"
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I remember
dusty, I don't think that was a fair characterization--the writer was saying that he/she had read other Anne Lamott pieces wherein she used her son as the subject, and felt that this was using her son in a way that's unfair to him.
So all the writer needed to see was that she was doing so again. The writer isn't criticizing Anne's work without knowing, because he/she does know: he/she has indeed read plenty of it and is criticizing the whole body of Anne's work about her son, not this particular piece, except inasmuch as it is treating her son as a subject again.
Am I the only person who remembers being 17?
The great realization I had when I was 16-17 was how little control I had over any portion of my existence. I did not choose my occupation, my hours, where I lived, or much of anything else. Further, I did not even have the tools to begin to make those choices if I wanted to; it wasn't like I could move to a different city and shack up with a couple of friends until I found a job.
This was an intolerable situation, and I expressed it by being frustrated, lazy, and often kind of mean -- which is precisely how I express the same levels of frustration now that I'm a twentysomething adult, except now I have the experience to know what's going on in my own head.
I'm over 40, but I hear this, Kimmitt. I do remember. Parents too often don't realize how very much they're micromanaging their kids, and how little of our lives are our own when we're that age. For some, they feel positively neglectful unless they're doing such micromanaging. That's not to bash anyone. I know people mean well. Just pointing out the fact. One should allow some measure of autonomy.