Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Why tough love doesn't work, 19 April 2009
I wanted to read this book because I had been through a similar experience with one of my children. I had followed the story in the press and on TV and I wanted to know just how bad it had been for Julie Myerson that should could throw her own son out on the street and call it tough love.
I found the book totally confusing with three stories running through it and I was only really interested in reading the account of life with her teenage son. As I suspected things really had not been that bad. At least Jake was still attending school sporadically and he was not smoking skunk in their house. Ok he hit her which is bad but I got the feeling that this was a very one sided account of what actually happened that day. Having been through similar situations myself, I know that there are two sides to this story and her infuriating self centered attitude just shows why she has failed as a mother.
I was also confused as to why Julie recounted the story of her own sad childhood. Does she think it's an excuse for her own poor parenting. It's a shame that she didn't think about seeing a therapist before she had children. Hopefully it would have given her some insight and she would have realized that she was far too self absorbed to successfully raise a family. What the author has done by throwing her son out and then writing about it is to prolong the problem. "Her boy" is stuck. Had she loved him unconditionally and chosen not to write about this, I suspect that this phase in their lives would be long gone. I guess she decided that money was more important to her though. I wonder how she'll be able to live with herself in the future. How this mother could have thrown her son out at 17 when she owned two other properties that she could have escaped to when she needed a break is incomprehensible. That she has decided to publish this book at all is disgusting. To publish it when he is just twenty is unforgivable.
Setting aside the confusing story lines, this book is poorly written and only held my interest because of the subject matter. However, if you want a manual on how not to raise teenagers then this is the book for you.
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24 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A damp squib, 15 Mar 2009
I found the book dull to be honest. The two elements seem to run along such different agendas, I really couldn't see the point that Myerson was trying to make. I picked it up mainly because of all the fuss and the insight it might afford into addictive personalities and errant offspring. Unfortunately it brings nothing new to either of these two traumatising behaviours. Perhaps I was completely on the wrong tack in my expecting it to be a sort of self help book. It didn't help me with greater insight into my own addictive personality nor would I ever throw my son out; I've thought about it, even suggested it but always come to my senses at the 11th hour.
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16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bias, self-justification and bad mothering, 24 Mar 2009
When I started reading this book, I did so on the reliance on the author's reputation, without actually hearing the debate and knowing what happened.
I was very disappointed right from the start. I felt that the subjectivism had a profound detrimental effect on the literary value. This bias prevents the reader wanting to take part, as the story is obviously one-sided. Perhaps it's my fault - I couldn't deal with the fact that art imitated life and both of the two story lines were non-fictitious.
I don't believe that there is a real dilemma here. A teenager behaves as many others do. Statistically, one in five 15 years olds regularly used some form of cannabis (including skunk) in 2004. The real figure is believed to be higher. I am sure that the author provided her son with a safe middle-class environment, but I couldn't see, why she acted in such an inconsiderate way to throw him out. After all, who is to blame here? Does it matter? If you have children, you have to take them as they are, unless you don't believe in the power and purpose of family. I have no doubts that if the son would have been a heavy heroin user, he could have ruined his life without receiving the right care or support from the mother. For this, I think both can be faulted. But it would be simple to accept the mother's (parents') standing superior, as they are 'clean'. Seeing their plan to shatter in front of their own eyes, they are not. Parenting is not always a contractual relationship that in return of some safety, one should obey the rules. You can do that with most people outside the family. But family love should be more understanding, more able to use 'tough-love', when necessary.
Once you shatter the author's imaginary ideal of a family, you have no room in her house, which is not just sad but appallingly bad parenting, too. Children are not for fulfilling pre-fabricated dreams, they are to amaze us regularly and to experience what we never dreamt of. That is the excitement of life in its full glory and dirt. Something, that our calculated middle-class family life cannot always comprehend.
I also have problems seeing the parallel with a historic family, when many young ones did not reach adulthood. Every era has its own problems. The son's symptoms might suggest that he was suffering from depression. Letting him and then forcing him to live a separate life is a bad medicine to that.
There is some entertainment value to this book as a psycho-read, but it wasn't intended to be that. I have been planning to read 'We need to talk about Kevin' for a while, and what I've heard from it on Radio 4, it is largely superior as a morality tale. Or even Myerson's previous book, but both are fiction. Then it's easier to make a stand and I accept the limitation of anybody, who reads this piece without having been involved. But sometimes, you need a distance to be objective. Sadly, on this one I am not so keen to wait for that encounter. Motherhood is not a contractual relationship. If anybody see it as such, they risk getting a bad bargain and being left out of pocket.
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