Julie Myerson - why am I not surprised that a book has materialised concerning her own son's drug issues?

[glasjam]

Read this is in today's Observer www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/mar/01/julie-myerson-novel-drug-addiction

Does anyone else have the uncomfortable feeling that I have on learning that she is writing about her son's drug problems? I know that writers often mine their own personal experiences for material but I think she's putting her literary endeavours ahead of her son here. From what I can gather, he is still young, his drug issues are ongoing, and although he is out of the family home, surely this is risking any possible future reconcilliation? I also baulk at the way she "weaves historical research about Yelloly with her disturbing account of her son's ejection from the family home" It just smacks of middle-class-writer angst.

My cynicism is further fuelled by my very strong suspicion that Julie Myerson is the author of Living with Teenagers - but that's another story...

So in the midst of all this she denied it, and then admitted it the next day? What a mess.

Re the Grauniad Family section, I actually hope this makes them rethink their whole emphasis on first-person tales and musings which almost always involve children who have little say being plastered across spreads for public consumption. It has always driven me mad that they will publish endless "minutiae of how I feel about having kids/my daughter's skin colour/my son's ingrown toenail" type articles and never even seem to consider what important topics they could be using that section to raise and campaign on - they could be addressing and exploring things like domestic violence, childcare costs and standards, homework and curriculum, adoption and sperm/egg donor issues, gay parents, maintenance payments, stepfamilies, male/female balance of power, women changing their names, discrimination against pregnant/childbearing-age women at work - not from that tiresome "my personal feelings and woes" perspective but from a political and analytical one. Why don't they?

Don't they cover things like that in the Society section? Family is supposed to be human interest, not sociology. Mostly it works (well it does for me, sorry!)

(But I loathed LWT from day 1 because she was such a fucking doormat - having teenagers in the house is not inevitably like that )

Actually, I can see where lalalonglegs is coming from. I'm one of those parents who equates academic success with overall success. This story has made me think about my priorities, as my children grow older.

This thread and story in general has been very helpful regarding the pitfalls of teenage years. It makes me feel quite sad, when you read of JM's accounts of her baby boy climbing into bed with her, sucking his thumb and fiddling with her hair. So like my own little ones, but look what can happen later .

oh god this is awful. I used to love the LWT column, because it was raw and it was dreadful, and was a sobering account of how not to parent. I liked it though, I read it every week. I like the line where the family editor says people would write in and say 'thank you, at least I know my teenagers aren't the worst in the land.'

But oh god, don't you think this is just a dreadful and colossal car crash of vanity and mistakes and selfishness and troubled, damaged people?

I feel dreadfully sorry for everyone really. I don't think it's kind of us to pull them apart. Everyone involved seems so vulnerable. I think people do make mistakes, sometimes really public, catastrophic ones like this. It's just awful, however you look at it.

agree 100% 100x

Maybe pulling this one apart will stop another similar car crash happening again, 100x?

Yes yes Muffle I couldn't agree more. People often promoting their own agenda and forfeiting their child's privacy in the process. And it's boooorrring. Nothing to realy think about.

Agree that it was an account of how not to parent. But somehow she didn't seem to realise that. Instead she seemed to revel in it and almost encourage the poor behaviour. I used to wonder if 80% of it was made up in order to sell a story, sadly it looks like it wasn't.

It would be nice to see the resurgence of proper debate and an end to introspection ... I might even start buying newspapers again then.

You are right 100x. I've said some rude things about her on here because I'm angry with the way she has treated her kids - it may possibly be personal too, because she reminds me a bit of my parents when I was a teenager (not the national press part! - but the abdication of responsibility and emotional blackmail instead of parenting part). But, you could argue she can't help it if she's ill-equipped to cope with her kids and had horribly unrealistic expectations and was deluded about whether they would suffer from being written about. And I do feel a bit sorry for her being in the middle of this mess now.

Maybe Ponders, I don't know. I thought perhaps it was just one selfish force (writer) meeting another selfish force (teenager) but now I think, it's as much to do with her need to write it all down, and damage in her and in the family and the need then to have it out there, and that is what sits uncomfortably with being a mother. And she's made really bad decisions. And perhaps it will stop it, I don't know. I do feel for her though. I know she's got it wrong, but I don't suppose she knew how wrong it would be. And we all know, but that's easy to say, I guess. I dunno. It's just sad.

sadly i do agree with posters who say 13 too young to go off the rails

I have had a 13 year old try to drop off the radar....

pull on the reins

become the adult

take control

Is it just middle class angst and she is trying to 'justify' as much to herself as anyone else why he has failed to materialise the way SHE had hoped?

it's just such a SHAME that she didn't channel this into a bloody good NOVEL

Exactly, mp - with one of those "any resemblance to any person living or dead" disclaimers at the start

Listening to the ridiculous simpering interview on Front Row, I could only think "Mark and Julie, sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G". He gave her a very easy ride. And either she or Jonathan is lying - she said (on Front Row) she would still have published even if Her Boy had asked her not to, Jonathan says (in today's Guardian) of course she wouldn't have done.
And as for saying she's not the LWT author - well of course she bloody is, unless there are two exactly similar families living the same lives, one in North and one in South London, and how likely is that?

So agree MP -- baffling!

The thing that strikes me from all her interviews is that JM is now in a headlock with her son's best interests. It's as if the only way to possibly justify the book is by convincing us all that the boy is totally lost to his addiction -- a point which most of us feel so very uncomfortable about.

The more she emphasises how wrecked he is, the more she can claim to be Revealing the Truth about skunk.

But if she had done it as a novel, don't you think the DM still would have sniffed around, found out about her son and done pretty much as it has done anyway but accused her of being a fraud trying to prop up the image of her perfect family life as well? If she was going to write about it (and publish) then I think she would have been villified either way.

Incidentally, I watched the Newsnight interview and felt she came across quite well. I think, sadly, this is a case of two people with very entrenched views recalling the same episode and coming out with entirely different versions. I don't think either of them are lying, but their versions of events are so coloured by their own opinions and subsequent events.

I'm baffled that she bothered denying the LWT connection to the Telegraph only to be outed by the Guardian. Oh the irony of the Guardian pulling LWT off the web to protect her children's privacy.

And yes, Dandy, I feel bloody sorry for them too.

Certainly didn't think this thread would end up with Mumsnet being quoted in the Telegraph! But it's thrown up some really diverse discussion. My overwhelming thought is that she is being soooo disingenuous. She stopped writing the LWT to protect her son's identity and then came out with The Lost Boy?? How does that add up? Did she not think it would come out? Did she really stop the column so she could concentrate on making a book out of it? And then obviously when people DO make the connection between the two you cannot help but make some judgements as to her and her partner's parenting styles - she has catalogued it on a weekly basis over a long period of time for all to see. Warts and all.

I always read LWT - I remember always trying to hold back from ever thinking "God, I would NEVER do that" or "If that was me I would have done X, Y and Z" but I think in a way she was inviting that sort of thinking. She was laying bare in a way how ineffectual you can feel (I am guessing) when parenting a teenager. Of course a lot of times I just gave in to the judgey-ness and thought "Get a grip FFS woman!!

She can obviously write and I agree she should have just gone and written a novel.

One thing I am starting to wonder is that if she ISN'T the author of LWT would she be able to sue Mumsnet for slander?

glasjam the Guardian has confirmed that she was the writer of the LWT columns

she has admitted she is the author glasjam. Don't worry about slander.

Sorry I didn't mean to come over all J M Barrie - I meant The Lost Child not The Lost Boy.