Farewell Eddie, Becca and Jack
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2285538,00.html
What do you think?
Since it began, Living with Teenagers has provoked a storm of interest from readers who have loved - and loathed - it. Tell us what it has meant to you and we will publish a selection of your responses next week. Email family@guardian.co.uk, putting Living with Teenagers in the subject field
First and foremost – hats off to the editor who pulled ‘living with teenagers’. I am tempted to start a social networking site just so I can organise a parade in his/her honour.
Secondly, a big thank you for the formal invitation to submit thoughts and comments about this column. I’m not sure how to translate what are basically chilling animal howls of inarticulate frustrated rage, but I’ll do my best.
In terms of finding objectionable things in your newspaper, this column was on a par with Burchill at her worst, Littlejohn at his ‘best’, Bushell at all, or fox shit.
So why read it at all? Why not just skip it? Three reasons. One, I’ve paid for it. Second, like a gruesome karaoke performance, sometimes you just can’t NOT look. Finally, there was always the slim chance that the column might improve.
I think my problem with the column was twofold. The first was that I just didn’t believe it. I was not convinced that a family that dysfunctional could actually exist, or rather, the writer didn’t make me believe that THAT dysfunctional family existed. I thought that it crossed the line from exaggeration into fantasy far too many times. Secondly, if a family like that does exist, then I wasn’t remotely interested in reading about them. The children were vile and the parents useless. If this is an accurate representation of that family, then a big thanks to the parents for raising three such anti-social, selfish people – I have to share a planet with these people!
Inspired by the right to reply in ‘comment is free’ I often thought of going further and setting up a blog, the premise of which would be to take each Saturday’s article and duplicate it to a certain point, where a more sensible reaction to some teen outrage would replace the usual parental reaction of sobbing and hugs. The problem was that I never got beyond line three before I had to describe in detail beating a teen to a puree with a cricket bat.
How to follow this column? How about living with monkeys, where primates screech at one another and fling their own excrement at one another and anyone who observes them. Too samey?
What do you think?
Since it began, Living with Teenagers has provoked a storm of interest from readers who have loved - and loathed - it. Tell us what it has meant to you and we will publish a selection of your responses next week. Email family@guardian.co.uk, putting Living with Teenagers in the subject field
First and foremost – hats off to the editor who pulled ‘living with teenagers’. I am tempted to start a social networking site just so I can organise a parade in his/her honour.
Secondly, a big thank you for the formal invitation to submit thoughts and comments about this column. I’m not sure how to translate what are basically chilling animal howls of inarticulate frustrated rage, but I’ll do my best.
In terms of finding objectionable things in your newspaper, this column was on a par with Burchill at her worst, Littlejohn at his ‘best’, Bushell at all, or fox shit.
So why read it at all? Why not just skip it? Three reasons. One, I’ve paid for it. Second, like a gruesome karaoke performance, sometimes you just can’t NOT look. Finally, there was always the slim chance that the column might improve.
I think my problem with the column was twofold. The first was that I just didn’t believe it. I was not convinced that a family that dysfunctional could actually exist, or rather, the writer didn’t make me believe that THAT dysfunctional family existed. I thought that it crossed the line from exaggeration into fantasy far too many times. Secondly, if a family like that does exist, then I wasn’t remotely interested in reading about them. The children were vile and the parents useless. If this is an accurate representation of that family, then a big thanks to the parents for raising three such anti-social, selfish people – I have to share a planet with these people!
Inspired by the right to reply in ‘comment is free’ I often thought of going further and setting up a blog, the premise of which would be to take each Saturday’s article and duplicate it to a certain point, where a more sensible reaction to some teen outrage would replace the usual parental reaction of sobbing and hugs. The problem was that I never got beyond line three before I had to describe in detail beating a teen to a puree with a cricket bat.
How to follow this column? How about living with monkeys, where primates screech at one another and fling their own excrement at one another and anyone who observes them. Too samey?
Labels: Guardian, Living with teenagers, Media
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