Guardian teenager weekly article

[1357]

am i alone in thinking this mother needs a shake-up? Why does she come over as such a walkover and why allow the swearing. am i being naive?

But I get the impression you are rather strict and this lot are softies or at least the mum is...

just reas it - sound like my house - my son two years ago ( although my son wouldn't use "enable" it isn't in his vocab"

he also wouldn't swear at me. he swears in my presence - reciting a story from work - but he didn't at 15.

no swearing at 15. i would have slapped his face.

i dont suppose you can print that in the grauniad.

my son recently - started crying ( he is 17) like a baby - he was dog tired from work and resented the fact that he now has to pay for everything. I had bought my younger son - something or other - a computer game i think it was.

he said " when i was his age" PMSL " you told me i had to get a job...you just buy him everything...i was out in the rain, THE RAIN delivering newspapers - he gets everything"

i nearly wet miself - in between holding my stomach - i duly reminded him after his melodramatic monologue finished that he stuffed the papers behind a hedge and rarely delivered them and i had to take him round in car after nasty phone call from newspaperman.

dont think me laughing at weeping son in throws of dramatic please for sympathy would go in there either.

I feel compelled to read this column every week - I think it's really well written, but the way she allows her kids to speak to her, and treat her generally, appalls me. Does this woman have no self-respect? I have two girls aged 8 and 11, so I'm perhaps not 'qualified' as such to talk about teenagers, but I would never let them think it was ok to treat me like a verbal punchbag. I wouldn't let anyone get away with talking to me like that - it is verbal abuse, plain and simple - so why would I allow my children, who I've loved and nurtured and supported all their lives, to do it?
I also think it's insulting to the kids themselves, to assume they can't be expected to behave with some degree of respect/consideration for others. If they think that you have such low expectations of them, what kind of negative message does that send? And parents of teens living at home aren't completely powerless - it's up to them to impose rules and stick to them. I know it's easier said than done, but it CAN be done. I sincerely hope that she is making half of this stuff up - it gives such a depressingly bad picture of what life with teenagers is like, which I'm sure is not true of many households.