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Original poster

Meyerson denies authoring "Living With Teenagers" column

149 replies

morningpaper · 10/03/2009 10:18

[[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/4962988/Julie-Myerson-and-the-extraordinary-ca se-of-the-copycat-column.html Meyerson denies authoring "Living With Teenagers" column

"There have been rumours on the MumsNet website, but she is adamant that it is not her," a spokesman for the author, pictured, tells me. "It is no more than a coincidence."

oooer!

OP posts:
Ponders · 10/03/2009 20:55

Which kids are not damaged?

MT, I don't get where you are coming from either.

nickytwotimes · 10/03/2009 20:56

I didn't find the column boring - I found it shocking. I stopped reading it after a few months becasue it made me so angry that someone would let their child talk to them like that.
ANd Her kids may well be damaged from having their private lives publicised.

spicemonster · 10/03/2009 20:57

You don't know that her kids aren't damaged MT. I think that's a bit of an assumption to be honest. I would have been horrified and felt completely exposed and exploited if my mother had served up my growing pains as latte fodder and I think it would have left me with massive trust issues.

Would you really have been fine if your mother had done this? Really?

justaboutindisguise · 10/03/2009 20:57

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Monkeytrousers1 · 10/03/2009 20:58

I'm not being particulalty sympathetic with her Spice - she did a daft thing - maybe - who knows? 'Jake' will soon forgive her when the royalties p[ay for his first car.

It's the over reaction to her supposed 'crime' thats confusing me. Had she sold her kids into sex slavery, I can't imagine the invective would be so different.

MP, i'd excect nothing more from the guardian talkbpoards!

Yurtgirl · 10/03/2009 20:59

FWIW I suspect her children have suffered and will suffer for ages thanks to their mother writing the column/book. How can it be helpful for a teenager to have his or her laundry hung out to dry for all the world to see............

I suspect it will shape them in some way (minor or major) for years tbh.

Monkeytrousers1 · 10/03/2009 21:01

PMSL

"You don't know that her kids aren't damaged MT. I think that's a bit of an assumption to be honest."

Like everything on this thread is anything else.

I'm off out now btw.

Ponders · 10/03/2009 21:01

'Jake' will soon forgive her when the royalties p[ay for his first car.

Why 'Jake', MT? That is his name, poor sod. I doubt he'll be taking anything from her ever again.

Monkeytrousers1 · 10/03/2009 21:01

suffering is not the same as damaged. We all suffer fgs.

spicemonster · 10/03/2009 21:02

You're right - who knows? I'm just putting myself in the shoes of her children and I guess you are too. You are clearly made of stronger stuff than me!

shonaspurtle · 10/03/2009 21:04

I found LWT oddly compelling. I hated it, but I read it anyway .

I just don't get why anyone would write about their children in a way that made said children seem so utterly unpleasant.

Maybe they are that obnoxious, but why would you put that all over a newspaper, publish a book of the collected columns once you are "outed" to said children, and then go on to write yet another book about your offspring's life?

(Even my mother twigged that LWT was her btw, and she doesn't really "do" the Internet. I think the denials in the Telegraph yesterday were a little odd.)

Original poster
morningpaper · 10/03/2009 21:09

They have lost the plot though

The article about bullying his 16 year old girlfriend to have an abortion makes me want to bite my hand off

what a fucking mess

OP posts:
oranges · 10/03/2009 21:13

Do laws about childrens' privacy protect them from their own parents? I can't believe you can get away with exposing a minor in your care like this.

Ponders · 10/03/2009 21:28

He's 20 now so no longer a minor, oranges (& no longer in her care, either )

Oh I am using up a year's worth of s on this story, what she has done & is still doing is (are?) so wrong

snickersnack · 10/03/2009 21:39

LWT disturbed me deeply. I could never understand why she seemed to accept their appalling behaviour as normal. She clearly loved them all very much, but it didn't seem normal to me - I don't have teenagers, but I have friends who do. They aren't easy, but they aren't that bad. And I also used to worry about the impact on the children as and when their identities were known - I couldn't see it would stay a secret forever.

And the Myerson thing has been disturbing me (separately) for the past week. I saw an article in the Guardian today by her husband attempting to justify what they did - their decision to ask their son to leave, and her reasons for publishing a book about it. He did a good job convincing me on the first point, a much less effective job convincing me on the second one. His argument that it's a "warning to other parents" seems hollow now I know she spent the last 2 years writing anonymously about how vile her children are.

This compunction to live your life in print is very odd. She's a writer, she writes, she writes about stuff she knows about - I get that. But I don't get why you would expose your children to public scrutiny like that. It's not as if they gave their consent. I would be utterly mortified if one of my parents had discussed my failings so publicly.

Yurtgirl · 10/03/2009 21:42

FWIW from what I heard her say on the radio one of the reasons he is no longer in her care is because they asked him to leave because of his drug use.

I honestly think her time would have been better spent nuturing her family instead of bitching about them in the newspapers

flimflammum · 10/03/2009 21:44

Hey Monkeytrousers1, maybe you haven't twigged about the current issue, that she has written a book called The Lost Child about Jake's problems (supposedly with skunk) and her eventually throwing him out on the street at the age of 17. He is (understandably) very angry with her for writing about him again.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/adult_fiction/713727-Julie-Myerson-why-am-I-not-surprised-that-a-book?pg=13

glasjam · 10/03/2009 21:55

Halleluljah!! FINALLY she admits it! I've only just come back to this thread - I only just posted onto the other one what would happen if we were wrong and she WASN'T the author of LWT - would Mumsnet get sued - but now see that that's all academic now.

What an unbelievable mess. I would like to see her on TV defending her position in the light of her admitting this.

NotAnOtter · 10/03/2009 22:00

lwt was infact a 'what NOT to do' manual

NotAnOtter · 10/03/2009 22:02

Monkeytrousers

I can see where you are coming from

her deed is NOT what it could be

I would use the word 'bizarre' to describe selling her sons 'story' like that

I fear he may use the word 'unforgivable'

UnquietDad · 10/03/2009 22:06

He is "Jack" in LWT, Jake in real life.

LaundryFairy · 10/03/2009 22:08

I've been talking about this whole debacle with DH and I'm pretty upset about how JM has behaved. Life With Teenagers was shocking reading at times, but I took it at face value - an honest, gutsy attempt to print one person's reality of parenting (I didn't realise at the time it was done without the kids' consent). To find out later that JM was writing behind the kids' backs and now to see that she carried on with the column (with judicious ommisions) while in the middle of a family crisis, feels dishonest in the extreme. It makes me feel that I was somehow complicit in her actions through reading it and I don't like that feeling at all. I think the commissioning editor of the collumn has a lot to answer for.

Slambang · 10/03/2009 22:10

I don't condone JM's cashing in on her kids (Remember a column about Becca's Periods?) but admit I loved LWT in a voyeuristic car crash type way.

But FGS there seems to be such spite and vitriol towards JM and her family - a family that has to all intents lost their beautiful son to drugs.

They have gone through hell. Can you feel no sympathy at all for a mother who has seen her talented, charming child throw everything away, steal, lie, drop out of school, waste his life?

And no, we can't blame his drug addiction on her writing because he was obviously deeply involved before his mum's writing about family trivia was exposed.

Yes - they probably made lots of mistakes as parents but who hasn't? If I can look back when ds is 20 and say my only mistake was being too liberal then that's probably a pretty good track record.

There but for the grace of god go any single one of us who is a parent of a child growing up in the 21st century.

NotAnOtter · 10/03/2009 22:10

wasn;t there an immense hoo har about the younger two getting stick at school for LWT and now this ??

theyoungvisiter · 10/03/2009 22:11

No, the older boy is Eddie in LWT. Jack is the youngest boy.

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