This mum needs to Get A Grip Pronto

[Greythorne]

It is only a tattoo.

What a bizarre woman! As her son rightly said, it's not as if he got someone pregnant. I would discourage my dd's about having tattoos under 18 and urge them to consider it carefully over a long time BUT you can get them removed now, it's not that expensive just uncomfortable.
I have tattoos and a career. Unless you have them in your neck or face and or they are offensive how on earth would an arm tattoo prevent a law career?

no, she only has one daughter and her husband's sur name is oliver. so scrap that.

I cant help but think maybe had she not held this one thing up as the one thing that would hurt her more than anything else etc etc that he wouldnt have gone and done it. My s/son knew his father didnt want him to have one (not as obsessively as this woman l hasten to add) and he in fact stopped him and they rowed about it when he was younger. As soon as he was old enough - what did he do - yup that's right !

That's what young people do - defy their parents, rebel etc. DH to his credit just said 'very nice' or ilk when presented with the offending tattoo thus taking away all his sons rebellious thunder.

I am convinced he wouldnt have bothered having a tattoo had my DH not opposed it quite so much.

God there are loads of them out there.

Remember Diana Appleyard who used to write in the Mail about how her husband was really common and embarrassed their daughters at Pony Club meets?

I knew him. Nice bloke. He moved them all to a remote part of the Scottish Highlands to protect people open a B & B.

I think she still has internet access when the wind is in the right direction.

A friend asked me to help her out with a feature on men with fantastic bodies. DH has one and we both frequently enjoy it together.

DH was keen because (a) he's a bit vain and (b) despite being married to me for a long time he's still touchingly naive about journalists.

I said: 'No! We'll look like freaks.'

^^ That was about the cottage industry known as Female Journalists Plundering Their Family Life For Copy.

There aren't as many men who do it apart from that awful Tom Utley in the Mail whose family will surely rise up and hack him to death with rusty garden implements one day.

That poor poor son.

The bit in the article where she says it would have been easier to understand if he had been in an accident and lost an arm is horrific. WHat kind of person thinks a tattoo is worse than that?

I dunno, what about that bloke who does the column in the Saturday Guardian magazine, and the one who does a column in the Family section?

I think in general the men are a tiny bit more self aware.

Who's that? I don't often read the Guardian. They have so many irritants on CiF I don't think my blood pressure could take it.

Giles Coren does it too but he offends me so much that I don't want to be confined to just one thing.

And that nobber Sam Delaney who used to edit Heat. The gruesome twat wrote a hilarious book about fatherhood - probably started when he persuaded Mrs D to throw her pills away. When Myleene Klass does it she's quite rightly despised. What's the difference? At least Myleene doesn't kid herself that she's funny.

Oh, I was forgetting Keith Kendrick who always looks like he's been parboiled.

Pathetic. What a selfish woman! We didn't even find out what the tattoo was!

Wow, I feel sorry for her poor son having to live with an possessive, controlling mother like that. No wonder he waited until 21 to get a tattoo, the traditional age of majority I note. He was probably so terrified of his insane mother that he waited as long as he could.

I really wonder about parents like this. What would they do if they had truly troublesome children who got pregnant / got someone pregnant at 16, went out drinking or on drugs, ran away from home etc? How would they cope?

It sounds like a really bad parenting relationship, toxic parenting almost where your child is not his own person but an extension of you. Interesting that she says she felt angry that he had defiled the body that she spent so many years looking after. Yes, but it his body!! You took care of him but that's your job as a mother, it's still his body! What a crazy woman...

Why cant I leave comments on it? I so very much want to leave a comment.
Stupid fucking bitch
I don't give a toss here or there about tattoos
My ds1 had one a few months back.
Did I sob and stop talking to him and rent my Boden cardi and wring my hands.
No I fucking didn't because he is ALIVE.

Silly, bubble headed, insensitive fucking twat.
Her son is alive and healthy and well off enough to spend 150 quid on a tattoo.
And purleeeese with the 'I think of all the things I could spen £150' on.
Like that isn't chump change to her

Me too, regarding the comments Mrs. DV.
I'd love to leave one, your's would be fucking ace.

What a loon. My mum reacted the same way and hasn't changed her tune 20 years later. DH also hates tattoos. If it weren't for them and their whiny hatred I'd be covered by now. But I only have 2 and feel very resentful. It hurts so much when the people who love you most can't accept you for who you are.

I think tiggytape has a very valid point. I don't think it's the fact that it's a tattoo that's the issue, I think it's the fact that it is the one thing that's an "issue" for her.

A LONG time ago I was with a guy who had long hair. He decided to cut it all off to improve his job prospects, which was a very reasonable thing to do. Trouble is, I have a bit of phobia about hair being cut. It was a really big issue for me, and he did it without any warning. (completely reasonable I know, his hair, his choice.) But it did feel like grieving. It knocked me sidewards, and even though I knew how ridiculous it was, and how utterly irrational, I still couldn't stop bursting into tears and feeling sick.

So I can kind of understand her feeling that way about it. I do think her reaction to her son was unreasonable though. To have laid it all on him, and to have told him their relationship had changed forever, was disgusting behaviour as a parent.

When I got my tattoo my personality changed completely. I am a chavvy, aggressive idiot now. I was also immediately sacked from my job because a professional person must be perfect and unaltered. And obviously patients can see through my clothes.

What a load of self pitying wank! I feel a bit sorry for her, but only because she is so deranged!

My DS1 cut off his beautiful waist length dreadlocks ,last year. I has looked after and cared for them since he was a little boy.
Of course I was a bit but he is an adult and it's his body.

I thought he should have spent the £100 his tat cost on rent.

But ffs the woman is either very short of material and had a deadline to meet or she is a twat.
Or both

As others have said: He's an adult human being and it's his body, his choice.

Personally, I suspect she's upset because he's showing autonomy by getting the tattoo, not because she has a legitimate phobia of tattoos. My mother went ballistic when I cut my hair short at 18. You'd have thought I had burned the house down. The row wasn't about my hair cut, it was really about how I was grown up and my mother wasn't ready to let me go. I have a feeling the grief the author's feeling over the tattoo might be coming from a similar place.

This is nothing to do with a tatoo. It's about a woman who is a control freak and her son who is (finally!) saying back off bitch.

Good for him.

But I do pity the future DIL.....

MrsdeVere - you need to register to be able to comment. I agree she shows an incredible lack of self-awareness and perspective. If she had been through what you'd been through, then she'd have something to complain about.

The thing that the writer, whoever she is (a few people on the Guardian thread have suggested Julie Myerson, which would fit), needs to realise is that your child isn't you. Your child will make different choices from you and you may not like those choices. A lot of parents seem to struggle with this (perhaps we all do) but it's a process we all have to go through. Luckily most of us have the sense not to publicise our self-absorption in a national newspaper.

It's got to be Julie Myerson surely? There can't be two such self-absorbed mothers of sons about.