Meyerson denies authoring "Living With Teenagers" column

[morningpaper]

[[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!

Oh, sorry. I stand corrected. I stopped getting the Grauniad Weekend ages ago!

The way the Living With Teenagers column ended was bad enough. But to follow that with an even worse betrayal? Unbelievable.

And I'm sorry, but her partner's lame attempts at justification don't go anywhere near excusing it. Smacks of all that adult moral panic about drugs that I was so dismissive of as a teenager myself. Would just make any teenager reading think huh, adults know sod-all about drugs so I won't listen to a word they say.

When I was that age, it was poor Leah Betts. We were so unimpressed by all the adults rushing around and panicking and being determined to find the evil dealer who had given her the E - because we all knew full well it wasn't Mr Evil Drug Dealer out of some Hollywood movie, it would have been one of her mates with no bad intentions. In some ways, moral panic killed the poor child. (I never even took E myself, being too much of a scaredy-cat but I was a bloody expert compared to the authorities being quoted in the papers.)

How did LWT end?

LWT ended when one of her kids ("Jack") was told by his friends, who had all been reading it for ages and laughing at him behind his back e.g. about the fact that JM had written about his four pubic hairs.

The kids confronted JM and she agreed to stop writing it. "Jack" had his say in the Guardian and revealed that his friends now all called him "four pubes".

Dittany - I don't think they put him out on the streets easily and then wrote a book to justify it, do you?

I assume there must have been genuine distress, trauma and despair there to take that action. I assume they love him as much as I love my ds (although I can't really believe that anyone can).

Whatever we feel about writing about your children it does not make them take drugs. Heavy skunk use is not the same as a gentle toke on a spliff. It does affect behaviour, brain development and can be addicitive.

Wow "four pubes" I imagine that would be damaging rather than a bit of suffering then (in reference to whoever it was who said earlier on this thread that this experience wouldnt damage Jake)

I feel sorry for all her kids and am glad my mother wouldnt behave as theirs has

It does raise interesting questions for all writers who "use" their family dramas in their work.

When i read lwt the children/young people had various crises and jm seemed to be in a dreamworld gazing at them helplessly remembering them as babies.The H didn't seem to be very supportive and they didn't seem to present a united front.

Parenting style in the early 90s did rather focus on loving the children,bfing on demand and basically giving them as much as you could and the rest would naturally fall into place.There was a lot less emphasis on boundaries and a lot of them were probably treated as equals and quite spoilt.

I don't agree with her documenting and selling the dcs lives but i do feel she seems to have been completely at a loss when her children didn't turn out to be well behaved and it doesn't sound like she stood up to them at all.
I feel sympathetic though towards her because poor parenting[and lets face it there wasn't family centres and parenting classes then certainly not for the middle classes]has led to a nightmare scenario with her dcs disrespecting her and each other.
I also think when teenagers get older they should think for themselves a bit and have some of the responsibility for the way they behave.

What was shocking in lwt was how ott the kids were and how passive the mum was~they were probably tring to get a response from her!

Dittany - I don't think there's any disguise in Heartburn is there - her husband the columnist having an affair with a very tall women whose feet are sort of splayed??

It is - I love it - gut wrenchingly miserable and so, so funny at the same time!

i think jm and her husband are just namby pamby arty farty clueless parents.
at the first mention of Fuck from my dc's and i would be Furious

For those of you without teens yet, I can assure you Jake M is the archetypal middle class teen who doesn't want to do Oxbridge and/or become a doctor or lawyer, but wants to be a musician instead. There are lots and lots of them about.

Unfortunately, for him, he has the Myersons as parents.

Poor boy. No doubt he will pull himself together in the end and end up as, erm let me think, a novelist???

shall i chuck out ds' guitar??

no oxbridge/lawyer route for him anyways

yeah, get rid of the guitar and sign him up for the army cadets immediately.

On the dilemma of what should educated middle-class parents do when a son wants to be a rock musician, one couple I know faced that situation. They told their son that he had their full blessing to pursue his career as a rock musician - provided the first million he earned, he gave half to Mum and Dad so that they could take early retirement from their teaching jobs.

They are now following his rock career with great interest - and with increasing desperation to get out of teaching.

Here are my predictions for Jake Myerson's future (with apologies for their appalling cynicism, if he himself is reading!)

Spends a bit more time dossing about smoking dope/playing guitar etc (whilst mum and dad earn more money writing about it).

Sees the light one day whilst lolling in dingy bedsit reading philosophy book or similar.

Signs up for degree at ex-poly/new university and gets a First (for added irony, this will be in Psychology).

Then either:
*decides to do a PhD and earns a bit of extra on the side writing articles about how it felt to be the subject of a book by his mum (taking a leaf out of her book, you see), before getting a part-time junior lecturing job and eventually climbing to tenure
or:
*discovers having got his degree he's competing for work with other younger, redbricks and Oxbridges - mum and dad help out by ringing round various contacts fixing up work experience/internships in media/PR or other similar field, one of whom eventually gives him a job.

In both scenarios he ends up fine - and beats the kids who all wanted similar jobs too, to pole position.

We'll see if I'm right

Oh, I sooooo agree with mrsbaldwin.

I suspect you are spot on there, Mrs B.

I think he will shoot to fame by releasing an album and having every Guardian-reading teenager in the country falling desperately in love with him

The first single with be called 4 pubes - straight to no 1!

4 pubes will become a Lily Allenesque YouTube smash.