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...

I'm wondering why it's relevant that she looks "10 years younger than her 48 years" (or whatever).....? (Times article....)

I'm not sure I agree that all this reality/misery fiction is helpful.

This whole story has made me feel miserable too - really. properly miserable.

From the first moment I came across it, it has made me incredibly sad. It's real, it's ongoing, there's a real person involved, and this is not good for the young man.

Having stumbled across it (it's having been delivered into the public spaces that my life is partly lived in,), I now find I am involved; on a necessarily superficial basis. I'm impotent to do anything other than offer a redundant opinion or gawp. And yet it is, actually, rather traumatic.

It pulls you to an involvement, on a personal, human level, but leaves you with no recourse to do a sodding thing.

That sounds over-the-top and hysterical but ... I'll bet I'm not alone in this having really upset me.

This drive to reality/car-crash media has to have the lid on it. Maybe we, the public, should start complaining a bit more. Some sort of looney class-action for recompense for the harm it does us! hit them in the profit-margin, maybe ... .

LOL @ her Satanic Verses comparison

Illusions of grandeur, anyone?

i am Officially Bored at Work and I have just noticed that 'Chloe Myerson' has joined the Support Jake Facebook group. I assume this is JM's daughter.

What a hideous car crash. I am ashamed how interesting I am finding it.

Think you'd call it grandiosity, Cote.

I think the whole family should be put in the Big Brother house - or similar - with Derek Draper and not let out until the parents have achieved an emotional age of more than three. It would actually be useful to see whether people can overcome personality disorders to become more human. And whether a mercilessly scape-goated first-born son can escape his parents successfully and build his own life.

I'm not even on the edges of the MN journo world. As a mere mortal, i assume this is your version of big brother.

i can say that i feel sorry for her and the way she is being battered by her peers.

of course parenting teenagers is inconsistance. yes you will try to be hard on them - then you might lose them forever

no matter what they do - they are your children, even at aged 30 they are your children.

maybe for some it should be a little less hate and a little more 'there but for the grace of god..'

I am still flabberghasted at this whole debacle. But the big question I haven't yet worked out is this - why on earth did she need to publish this book under her own name?

If she truly wanted to help other parents dealing with the 'skunk emergency', then why all the nonsense about Mary Yelloly and all that? And why did she need to use her name, and risk exposing her son?

Told DP all about it last night (he never reads a newspaper if he can help it) and he was completely amazed that someone could do that to their own son.

But having been thrown out of home himself at 14 (not for a skunk emergency though) he thinks it will be the making of Jake.

LOL, Cote, hadn't even seen your post re scape-goats and first-borns. Glad to see it's blindingly obvious, though.

Are you meant to be a journo, then, to post on this thread?

But custardo,she's being battered for the publishing, though, not for finding it hard to cope with her teenagers.

I actually feel a tiny bit sorry for her. At some point in the future the penny will drop and she will realise that she's tried to take all her own personal demons, and disappointment at her boy not living up to her middle class fantasy, out on him and his future. Her childhood was clearly very painful and maybe prepared her to avoid dealing with things. If this is the case then she can't really be accused of simple malevolence or narcissism. She clearly believes herself to be the very example of maternal devotion (!). She is probably like the rest of us just what her life has made her and that would appear to be: unable to too accept responsibility for things in some way.

Custardo, What is getting everyone worked up is not that families have these issues,and indeed, when it comes to addictions, all bets are off. but her shamelessness in using her family's private lives as fodder for her own attention seeking while wrapping it up as "trying to help other parents" . As a parent our job is to protect our children, not strip them of all privacy and dignity for years on end, and only showing one side for all that time.

No I have been critical of her parenting too, and I own up to that. I had parents like that - who wanted to be liked, who were needy, immature and inconsistent - and my point was really that I think she is trying to make his drug habit the source of all their woes and his bad behvaiour, instead of looking at their family dynamic and their failure to act like parents to him.

I realise it's thin ice saying anything about other people's parenting and I know having teenagers must be bloody hard. I just hope I will learn a lot from this (as well as from my parents) about what not to do.

There are some rather sensible people on that facebook support group ... .

It's been confirmed that she did write Living With Teenagers. Do you think her fifteen minutes will be up soon?

My first toe dip into this debate and the raging torrents around it, but i do wonder know we know she did write 'living with teenagers', the book and all the other articles, what does she intend to do next?
It does appear as if she fell into a very comfortable self delusion with the guardian articles, like most addictions its easy to carry on when no one challenges you for two years.
She has grown up children who are all going to leave home eventually, what on earth is she going to write then. A book about the pain of writing the book?

Those of you in the know - how much will they have been paid for yesterday's Guardian spread and today's Times?

Couldn't believe they were in the Times as well! It''s all getting a bit incontinent now, I think.

If JM wasn't middle class and attractive nobody would give a hoot about this story, certainly not the horrible papers who have so gleefully berated her.

Personally I have no issue with any parent writing about their experiences with drug addicted kids, especially if it can help others.

This is the storm in a teacup story to end all storm in a teacup stories in my view. I think people just resent this woman for being middle class, living in London and making a good living from being a writer.

It's inverted snobbery imo.

grammaticus - cracking question.

And the reply will be interesting - we'll find out the going rate for misery memoirs (this one's a first, mind - Myerson has written a misery memoir of her own child, barely grown up to boot.)

I mainly resent her for her previous smuggery, actually.

Ooh, and remember - don't buy the book unless you support Myerson - she'll be getting at least £1-2 a copy.

Morris, I don't think that's the case.

If she was working class she would be derided too, but probably in a different way. She would have been slated for selling the story of her drug addict child and identifying them.

She won't have been paid for today's Times piece - that was an interview which broadsheets don't pay for. They will have been paid for her husbands piece in G2 yesterday as he wrote that himself - standard rates for features at the Guardian are between £200-£300 per 1,000 words depending on how much they like you - so around £500-£600 if it was a 2,000 word piece. Columnists tend to get more - but never having had a column I wouldn't know how much more.

Blimey. On the one hand we are all living in journo world, on the other we are resentful of people living in journo world. Too simplistic.

Look, she decided to publish, her publisher wanted to make money, they actively sought out publicity and they've got it. This is a forum for parents. So my take on it is as a parent. If she offers up her life for public consumption, then the public will consume it, and deliver a verdict on it. My verdict is that its appalling. not because is is middle class, not because she lives in london, and not because she earns a good living from writing. Its because she used her children with no thought to their well-being. And it's hurt them. And she will not take responsibility for it. Up to her of course, but public opinion comes with the territory.

'I had parents like that - who wanted to be liked, who were needy, immature and inconsistent - and my point was really that I think she is trying to make his drug habit the source of all their woes and his bad behvaiour, instead of looking at their family dynamic and their failure to act like parents to him.'

I agree with muffle, I get the impression that they wanted to be 'trendy,' best friend, parents and it has all gone wrong. A parent is the adult and has to behave like one, it is too much to expect the child to fulfil your emotional needs.The parent has to give the security of knowing that when a DC says 'I hate you' they don't mean it-breaking down in tears is the worst thing to do. After reading the Times article, I would say that a lot of it came from his problems in early childhood.

Another thing that really angers me is her claim that she whisked her son's 16 year old girlfriend off for an abortion.

This might be something the girl has never revealed to her friends and family. Unless her son was some sort of lothario, it would be pretty easy for their peer group to identify her as his girlfriend at the crucial time. How on earth must she be feeling?

JM comes across as some sort of sociopath. Has she no grasp of how damaging her actions are?