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?

Fennel, you are so right. I had given up on it by that stage in a haze of despair and inadequacy. No, I can't pretend to enjoy every minute of it or not to miss parts of my old life - hopefully this surfeit of selfishness on my part will definitely make my children well-rounded, sensitive and responsible in later life.

I've only read the article linked to here but really....! For the most part, I've enjoyed having teens a lot. Yes, there are turbulent times but there's also a lot of fun.

Imo, the author has an issue with controlling her dc's lives. Now they are teens she can't make them eat/drink/sleep/play as she sees fit and that's what she finds so hard. Maybe she should get a dog.

Agree suedonim. She's clearly a control freak - just reading about how every tiny detail of her children's lives were controlled when they were little makes that clear. Anyone who tries so hard to achieve that perfection is setting themselves up for a fall. Teenagers can be really difficult - they have raging hormones, they are well on their way to adulthood and as a parent you can't (and shouldnt want to) control everything they do/what they eat/wear, who their friends are. I think what she describes is a symptom of the culture we live in where we are obsessed with trying to get everything perfect for our babies. We're made to feel that we need to spend £600 on a pram, that we need to do baby gym/massage, that we're dreadful parents if we open a jar rather than puree parsnips every day. We'd do much better to remember that actually the major part of our childrens lives will be spent as adults, when they will make their own decisions and live their own lives.
As you say suedonim, the writer need to go back to having pets i think!

It's all a bit "No, shit, Sherlock?" isn't it?

"Having babies is the most transforming thing. It changes everything - every idea, person, shape or colour."

Oh, really? Thanks, I've never heard anyone say that before..... These women always think they are the first people ever to have thought these things and to write books about them. Yawny-yawny-yawn.

I haven't read today's justification yet, but almost every week I groan inwardly at the stuff she puts up with from that spoilt little tw@t.
Maybe it's easy to say this when my eldest child is only 8, but I really cannot imagine myself ever putting up with the kind of behaviour she drippily accepts.

i haven't read her egular articles - and i do feel like fennel suggested - i didnt actually like every moment -however i thought the article below was lovely

maybe thats becuase i think others see more horror in what she writes than she means?

"It made me see how absurd some of my expectations are, how ludicrously selfishly teenagers behave, and how much I still love and enjoy them despite all this. And it made me realise - with a sinking heart - that I know nothing. The longer I am a parent, the less I seem to know. I used to think experience counted for something, but I'm not so sure any more. As parents we are programmed (thank you, God) to forget. So each day is a new day. Into the battle. Your only reliable weapons are consistency, forgiveness and love"

ok puketastic in a mills and boon " hee took me and i shivered" kind of way

non the less - think - true.

i bloody love them. i do not mourn the passing of their younger childhood - and i think this is where this article may faulter.

i bloody love the hoodies the " i think i am orgiginal" and they clearly arn;t. i love parenting teenagers.

however i haven't seen mine for 3 days - this could be nostalgia - or that "thank you god forget" thing going on!

Mumsnetters are always so keen to be clever critics!
Sorry all, but the article linked to has made me a bigger fan than ever. Maybe I'm just another dripping wet mum?

Haven't read the regular column until this week but just read the linked article which I found rather vom inducing and syrupy.

As if she thought all those things her and DH (sorry have you ever met a man who enjoys boiling and pureeing parsnips with a 'look of intense satisfaction on his face) did in their smug way when they were little would insulate them against teen horrors. And have never met any parents who have found romance in being parents. Joy yes but romance.

It never ceases to amaze me the bubble that these type of people seem to live in. Maybe I am a bitter cynical old cow. I have got an 11 year old DS who is getting a bit lippy and hormonal but I have been expecting this to happen. Don't feel as though I am dealing with it well but it's not a shock.

And I don't feel that any amount of Clarks shoes or organic puree would have helped.

And also a bit embarassing to have your teenage boy in the bathroom with you if he sems a bit uncomfortable with it. I still walk around naked but will cover up if oldest doesn't like it.

obviously cannot be bothered to read whole article and obviously am not a guardian reader but when I did have the misfortune to read one of those columns once it was so exaggerated I thought it had been written by a melodramatic teenager desperate to shock

Have read her column on and off, I was a bit (a lot) of a tearaway but I never would have dreamt of speaking to my parents like that!

This article is v gushy and too full of cliches and adjectives thought stuff for the guardian had to be a bit more "edgy".

As for teenagers I'm making the most of ny 16m dd NOW. because 14 year old girls are truly horrible

God, I HATE her columns. She is such an unbelievable sap.

I'm hoping that her horrid children are the result of her unbearable smuggery (about which she is very honest to be fair to her). I have never, for a minute, believed that I'm doing everything right or that I'm providing the perfect upbringing for my children.

I do think she writes well though, and that the end of this piece was surprisingly moving, given how bloody irritating she is most of the time.

I know we all (?) have unconditional love for our children, but I do wonder whether she could do with being just a tad more conditional. My brother and I always knew that my parents would, in extremis, have a cut-off point; thankfully neither of us have ever found it, but I think it's important that children know that you will go almost to the ends of the world/your tether for them, but not quite - certainly not if they're ungrateful, abusive, rude little turds.

Reading the thread I see morningpaper has already said this but more pithily...

I wonder if she assumes that the rest of us (those with teenage children who don't tell them to fuck off every time they see them) didn't feel as she did when they were small? And don't feel the way she does about them now?

I just don't see the point of the article. Or the book. (I bet it will only be bought by third parties)

I read this column every week with a kind of horrified fascination. I was hoping the full length article might help to explain how her relationships with her children had deteriorated to the point when every second remark they address to her contains the word f**k. But it didn't - it was as if they'd all simply transformed overnight from sweet toddlers to the teenagers from hell.

Crossed my mind it might all, from the ground up, be completely made up. Ie no children at all. Or one portly son in his 40s.

(There's a weird bit in the linked article which says "now you realise why you had to be anonymous" or something - which is bonkers, as how on earth could these teenagers not have spotted the articles were about them, or their friends not have made the connections, etc.)

I liked the way she listed all the care she had taken over her children's upbringing over the years (the organic puree, the start rite shoes, teaching them to swim, caring for pets) ....and never once mentioned disciplining them.

Isn't that the bit she's been missing all along? It seems she thinks she has to accept anything they choose to do. In consequence they are horrible spoilt brats (I particularly remember her eldest son standing outside her bedroom banging on the door for two hours trying to intimidate her into giving in and her cowering inside)

She needs to get a backbone. Loving your children is not enough.

Haven't read any of her columns (thank god) but just read linked article. What world does this woman inhabit?? She needs to get a life of her own. We all love our kids and try to to the best for them but hers are obviously spoilt to death if she has let them become like she says they are. For those not there yet teenagers are not all hoodie wearing, nightmare, out of control, rude brats. They need to be allowed to grow up at their own pace, helped and guided to be their own people - but they also need to understand that parents (and others) are people with feelings too. What I realised with my (now 17) DD, and say to her (when we have conflict)was that it is my job to be a parent, sorry, and that I was learning how to do it at the same time as she was learning how to become an adult.

I always ready her columns every week hoping that she will one day stand up to her children (who sound like rude, arrogant, spoilt brats) but no. I can't believe what she puts up with (if true but her columns do have a ring of truth if slightly exaggerated). If either I or my siblings had spoken to our parents like that we would have been out of the door! dd only 4 atm but I know there is absolutely no way I will accept her telling me to f**k off any time in the future - there is such a thing as respect!

sorry read!

If I'd had to live with such utterly saccharine small children, I'd really have welcomed them growing into teenagers who used the f-word.

(I have a 13 year old son who doesn't - well, not often, and not when he thinks I'm listening )

Bink at 'portly 40 year old'. A friend who was staying with us over the w/e is convinced it's made up too. But I don't think I could invent something which showed me in such a bad light!
Margoandjerry and Keeplaughing- absolutely agree with you. What I wanted to say when I posted last night but couldn't quite articulate.

(... I meant to add that the portly son would of course have never given a moment's trouble)

Actually, I have since had a more realistic idea, which is completely obvious in its plausibleness ... that it's done by committee. Don't some of those situations sound exactly like what might be made up by four or five raw-material-generators (each having a bit of experience of teenagers, but none actually being Doormat herself), regularly getting together of an evening & egging each other on to greater & greater horrors?

i havent read her columsn but I thought the artcilce was rather sweet

I angst and cluck like her

Yep - it's true. But most of them come through the other side ok.
My eldest DD and I hated each other when she was a teenager (her favourite hobbies involved alcohol, cannabis, shoplifting, avoiding soap and water, piercings, tattooes, etc,etc - just about the worst case scenarios imaginable). She's 27 this year, gorgeous, a very successful career woman, has a beautiful home and most importantly we love each other to bits. We're very close and even laugh and joke about her teenage years now.