To be stunned by this parenting decision

[MoonriseKingdom]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/25/i-paid-to-have-my-daughter-kidnapped-experience

Article from the Guardian. Rather an extreme reaction to your DD wanting to be a hairdresser! Wonder how the daughter would tell the story?

at tattoo mother! another one who misses point of thread

speechless

Fucking hell.

Ha!! I don't know how DD would react if we did this, but I suspect with violence!

How is this not a criminal matter?

Both my kids joke that I’m a psycho mom, but they forgave me and we remain close.

This! I bet she thinks that they are close but they aren't. My mother thinks we are close and she says it's great how close we are when in reality I am about as far from close to her as it is possible to get! I can't understand how any mother could do that to her child.

there is so much pure evil in this article it honestly made me sick. thank christ MN has a thread, The Guardian closed comments.

not only do children die at these places, there's also a complete lack of regulations (SERIOUSLY. they are completely unregulated //by design//), and rampant sexual and physical abuse.

• I can almost understand this parenting decision if your child is a violent drug addict. She doesn't mention a sin beyond WANTING TO GO TO BEAUTY SCHOOL

which frankly makes her a disgusting snob + terrible person.

• the complete lack of self-reflection in this article is really, really telling of anyone who would make such a decision imo. Like...if you can't handle your child talking back to you (my dad is like this - he simply can't handle people having the opposite view to him so my sister and I used to drive him nuts simply by having different opinions...) you need to LEARN.

• I know that discipline is a crucial part of parenting but something just makes me feel ill about the whole attitude of "losing control" over your child once they turn 18. I don't think a parent should ever see themselves as being "in control" of their teenager (17).

• her daughter wrote her grovelling letters of apology...for what, exactly? tbh, that part made me feel sickest of all because this monstrous narcissistic bitch of a mother (I'm sorry if this language is too strong) was touting it as such a victory. when all I could think of was a desperate teenager who had been drugged and kidnapped trying to "get round" her mother, and apparently fooling the witch long enough.

Tattoo mother needs to get a grip doesn't she? I hate tattoos but if my DD or DS decide to get one as adults then that is up to them, i certainly won't be grieving but I also won't be letting them read this

also, the fact that BOTH her children were acting out (and having drugs at 14 seems to me more serious than anything the camp-abused daughter was getting up to) makes me think this woman's horrific nightmare behaviour goes back far further than her wise decision to get her daughter drugged up with sleeping pills and ship her off for 6 weeks to a desert where she could have died or very easily have been irreparably abused.

OMG the tattoo mum is self-obsessed and completely oblivious to the fact her son is a separate human being to her.

But drugging your child and sending them to boot camp

One of the comments sums it up by saying she's not surprised at the choice of a legal career by the daughter - she was being a normal adolescent, back chatting a bit and wanting a different career to mum's choice then got kidnapped. Legal system allows her to develop a false self of internalised disciplinarian. When she inevitably has a nervous breakdown this will be a very healthy thing!

And no they aren't close. They are fake close like families on the Stately Homes thread.

Tattoo mum article is hilarious. I don't really like tattoos but she is seriously lacking in perspective.

I think if my own mother had me drugged and kidnapped I would struggle to trust anyone again. It could really screw up your future relationships. The mother is extremely short sighted if she can't see those letters of apology were written by someone desperate to do anything to get out of that horrific situation.

If my mother had done that to me she would be out of my life forever.

Tattoo mum is nuts. I hate tattoos with a vengeance, but dd is determined to get one. Nothing I have said holds sway with her. "You'll regret it when you're old(er)" I say; she sends me links to pages of 80yos saying how much they love their tats. "It'll be there forever, what if you don't like dragons when you're 30?", she tells me they're much easier to remove these days.

I am sure the moment she turns 18 she'll be in a place, under the needle. Will I stop speaking to her and cry for 3 days? No I bloody well won't.

As for the boot camp woman, I hope she gets what she deserves. I am imagining her children choosing her care home.....

I very much doubt her daughter forgave her. Gave up hope more like.

DM was just like tattoo mum, except she first of all went berserk and told me to pack, then cried for about a week, then said she hated me, then cried even more. And it was only about an inch long! DSis has a full sleeve now, DM wasn't impressed but she didn't carry on about it.

FWIW though, she's definitely not the drugging and kidnapping type.

Haven't rtft yet, but wtf?

So if your almost adult children don't do exactly as you want for them, and, shock horror, want to make their own choices, you can just ship them off to bootcamp?

There are no words.

Wasn't there a TV show about this? Extreme brat camp or something like that, they sent scary bouncer type men to kidnap their teens in the middle of the night. Was massively fucked up and I wouldn't be surprised if alot of them end up with PTSD

I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs of tattoo lady's article. Get a grip woman!

www.channel4.com/programmes/extreme-brat-camp think it was this

Chilling.

Well, the daughter went back to school, college, then did a Master's and works in the legal system. If becoming a hairdresser had been so important, she would have done that as an adult, wouldn't she?

I would also assume that when her daughter calls her psycho-mum she probably means it. When I tell my sister she is mad I mean it but it is shrouded in a voice that says "I love you regardless" when in actual fact I am not entirely sure I do.

Iona not necessarily. There are plenty of people who didn't do what they really wanted to because of pressure from pushy/psycho parents.

Maybe she will eventually, or maybe she was just rebelling and wouldn't have lasted as a hairdresser. The point is teenagers should be able to make those kinds of choices - they're not irreversible.

If you end up as a lawyer because you were bullied and terrorised into it, that doesn't mean all's well that ends well.

Actually maybe she became a lawyer so she can sue her mum big style when she feels up to it.

Well, the daughter is now an adult. She is free to throw away her college education, university education, legal career, train as a haridresser and go NC with her mother as a declaration that she thinks what her mother did was wrong. I wouldn't hold my breath though...

Gosh so the only thing she learnt by both her children going 'off the rails' wasn't any introspection about her parenting skills, or helping them understand the consequences of their actions etc... It was just that their will and spirit needing breaking, and that she as their mother could ensure that happened.

Do people die in these places by the way?

I read the article earlier and found the cracked article. Some of the comments on the cracked article are from people who've been on a similar programme and are shocking.

What I don't understand is how it can be legal to drug your child and sign away legal rights. I mean, how do you get the drug to drug the child with in the first place? I don't know how drugs and prescriptions work in the US, but surely it's illegal to give someone a prescription medication without their knowledge?

It's deeply disturbing.