'Puppy helped me train my teenage sons' - more Family Guardian hopeless parenting

[EightiesChick]

It's here and thankfully it looks like it's a one-off, or I fear we might be seeing the new Living With Teenagers column. Exasperating.

To add to the dog article was another a few pages later by a mother whose teenage daughter keeps nicking all her clothes/make up. It was sooo irritating. The tone was rueful/resigned/almost comic. Just stand up for yourself woman! It was classic LWT-esque.

As the OP who posted this, I certainly wasn't implying (and don't think) that all annoying teenagers are badly parented, at all. What's exasperating is the, as nighbynight put it, 'drippy Guardiany way of dealing with it'. I used the word exasperated because I wasn't purely annoyed at the mother, I did also feel sorry for her. Things that struck me that she seemed partly or wholly unaware of were:

• her (presumably ex?) husband is clearly undermining her in a way that she needs to challenge

• Michael seems pretty likely to me to have some kind of SN or other condition underlying his behaviour, yet no help (as wahwah says) was sought on that basis. Instead getting him into a "small fee-paying school" is the answer

• the puppy training analogy didn't actually work that well! Just seemed to me that the sons liked having a dog, and things got a bit better in some was, largely by chance. As MissM says, it honestly seemed to think getting a dog would solve all this stuff which was frankly laughable.

maryz and oranges I also thought she?d made a mistake in giving up her bed ? I appreciate your situation, maryz, and admit I wouldn?t have thought of this explanation ? but then as I?ve said above, she seemed totally oblivious to the fact her son(s) might have SN or need specialist support in some way that could be related to their inability to share a room, and if that?s the case then it?s a real pity it wasn?t being recognised.

Baconsarnie ? yes, the piece about make-up stealing was also eyeroll-worthy! I will have to give up reading the Family section if they?re determined to reinstate some LWT-style article or two every week.

I agree with all of those points, EightiesChick. It was the subsequent posts that were a bit smug about how well-behaved their teenagers were that got my back up.

It's a shame about the Guardian family section - on the one hand, it has absolutely brilliant bits like the article on adopted children someone else mentioned (the woman who hadn't had children because of the risks of passing on diabetes who then found out she was adopted shocked me to the core) and then stuff which really isn't very good. I have to say I didn't hate this article so much but it felt like it was trying to shoehorn the 'why not look after a guide dog puppy for a year, it's brilliant' article into LWT very clumsily and failing badly.

Hmm, not exactly the right reason to become a guide dog puppy walker, I wonder what her supervisor will make of the column.

Agree with MissM, it wasn't her initial struggling that got to me, but the facile solution: get a puppy and all your problems will be solved, though we're never shown exactly how.

Also it was annoying that she listed all the reasons for taking the puppy as the ones to her own advantage: someone else pays for everything, easier to go on holiday, etc, without even mentioning as an aside that the dog will one day be of enormous value to a blind person. This self-seeking attitude, "what's in it for me"-ness expressed in a very complacently middle class way, may lie behind some of Michael's sense that he should have better clothes and more money, etc.

The odd thing is that if she were a little more robust about putting herself at the top of the pecking order as opposed to her sons, they might respect her more. It is as if the implicit message she is sending them is "we are middle class people who are worth more than others; however, within this family, you are worth more than me. Therefore you can treat absolutely everyone else with contempt."