So is she saying that she did absolutely everything right, but that children will all be horrible teenagers no matter what you do? (Author of living with teenagers)

[emkana]

www.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2250686,00.html

If that's true, then scaryyyyyyyyyy.

She is unbearably smug though isn't she?

I think she's a pushover myself.
Seriously though, she is going to say that, isn't she. Would make her feel better about it all.

I hadn't read many of the columns yet, had a look at some now, and by God the things she chooses to put up with

Yep, mind you, I wonder if she really is clueless about her own input or if she just exaggerates it for the column.

my 9 year old says some of the things her teenage daughter does

yes,its true,apart from the fact that when it comes to being a parent there is no such thing as 'right',only 'the best you could at the time'

That is true DS but, at the same time I can't help thinking that if your ds steals from you, you just bung him another fiver (can't remember the exact details now but it was something like that).

Didn't finish that properly did I?
Meant to say you don't just bung him another fiver.

i think it is what it is, sweet, heart string tugging, lightweight semi autobiog reading.
I have a son nearly 14 and I identify with some sentiments, although my son has not quite (yet?)descended into teendom in such a malevolent and dark fashion as hers appear to have done.

But that's because I breastfed of course

Some of it rings bells me with. The bit about them getting into bed with you. Mine are 21 and 16 now.

Her regular column is horrible though. I would never put up with being spoken to like that. My 21 year old said the F word by accident to me at xmas and immediately went white, winced and mumbled 'sorry mum, really really sorry'.

Her regular column is (pardon my language)overexagerated bollocks.

I will admit (revealing my bitchy judgemental side here) that she winds me up, simply because she seems so wet.
I read it and think but why are you such a drip?, honestly makes me want to gnaw my knuckles off.

I think she secretly likes them behaving like they behave. E.g. today, the one who is doing GCSE's wanted to have some friends over. On the one hand she doesn't want the agro of having his friends staying in the house, but on the other hand I think she likes that her children want to have parties and aren't social outcasts.

Also, you have to remember she is being paid for a column every week.

I agree with rantinghousewife - sometimes I thing its six of one and half a dozen of the other - I was on the side of her son with the towel incident.

Couldn't have put it better myself Rantinghousewife. I want to put her in the stocks and pelt her with wet copies of the Family Guardian.

She is a Peter Pan mother - her children should never have grown up.

I loathe her. Either it's true, in which case she is utterly spineless, or else it's wildly exaggerated, in which case it's semi-fictional and should not be presented as life with teenagers.

(More wet newspaper here please, Rosa)

So her kids are horrid to her and the rest of us will have the same.

Hmm... well currently my teen son is warm, loving and really good with the younger children. My teen daughter is either completely loving or sulking in her room.

I clearly have it bad

I'm no pushover!

She sounds like one of those mothers who LIVES for her children and that's all she has in her life. She must be HUGELY irritating for her children if so. She seems obessed by their lives. If her columns are really true, I really feel for her. She is going to hit the vodka when they move out of the home because she will have nothing left.

Of course I won't have any of those problems because when mine hit the age of 10 I am going to send them to Mars for the summer and Custy for the winter

I do live completely for my children atm, and am really enjoying that - but they are still small, and I really do hope very much that over time things will evolve into something different to what is portrayed in the columns!!!

I find the columns unbelievable. She sounds as though she has some giant weighing scales, and every time she does something for her children, she adds it to the scale, which is of course now tipped heavily down on teh side of personal sacrifice.

Think hanging's too good for this woman personally - she is so wet and abdicated all responsibility of them years ago.

There seems to be no form of atrocious behaviour from these kids that doesn't spark sentimental yammering about how lovely they were as babies instead of anger and concern at what hideous young adults they're becoming.

Perhaps she will come out with the angelic toddlers speech in front of the judge and cry when her eldest is sent down.

I actually like her, she sounds warm, motherly and angsty, that's my style of parenting also though fortunately my teens were/are not anything like as extreme as hers. My elder one was a little bit Jack-like at times but she grew out of it.

She seems inexplicably weak in her dealings with them, agreed, but I think I would be too, always erring on the Pollyanna-optimistic 'but love will bring us all through!' side and that's why I read along and empathise, while thinking 'thank god mine aren't like that' - isn't that the point?

I'm a writer too though of much less well-paid stuff than a regular Grauniad column leading to a book, so in one sense she got it just right - I can see how that column might have transpired 'I'm going to try a column about parenting teenagers on the Grauniad - but if it's bland they won't want it, so I'm going to be bold and go for it with something that plays on everyone's fears and suspicions about modern teenagers that'll make readers gasp in shock and sneer self-righteously and feel superior and.... come back every week to see what awful thing happened next!'

Obvious I know. But I still wouldn't mind her job even if you lot hated me

I find her unbelievably drippy too. I read it and think "I will NEVER put up with that behaviour". Though it worries me slightly that friends who are parents of teenagers do seem to relate to it rather.

I've always found her unbelievably spineless and end up screeching at paper each weekend: "Take control, you're the adult here."

But, what was completely horrifying, was her descriptions of her children's early childhood - the kind of age mine are now. It all seemed very familiar and I am wondering if descent into gothic hormonal tailspin as soon as they hit 13 is now inevitable as a result of plenty of good clean fun and only occasional sugar treats

Her description of life with small children sounded quite like ours too, which was vaguely worrying. But then I reached the end of the article where, reminiscing about life with 3 small children, she writes "We enjoyed every single moment".

and then she has a rather vomit-worthy paragraph about how "Having babies is the most transforming thing. It changes everything - every idea, person, shape or colour. Everything is different from that moment, and you never get your old self back. The funny thing is, you don't even want to. All you can think of is making things OK for your child."

And at that point I felt a big sense of relief that actually her experience of parenting is quite different to mine. I don't enjoy every single moment, I don't live for my children, and I DO sometimes desperately want parts of my old life back.

I am clinging rather desperately to hoping that a different approach to parenthood will mean that my experience of teenagers won't be like hers because she does seem to be particularly wrapped up in her children and very much needing their attention and affection.

funny, reading the article it seems to me, after reading the column every week, that she still treats her teenagers like they are still fluffy toddlers. It's not enough to love them, your primary job as a parent is to guide them to emotional maturity so that they leave home as responsible adults.