That is a valid reason. And irrelevant to the discussion.
Cutters are mentally ill. As I’ve told you folks before, I’m not a cutter, but I am a head banger, so I know what I’m talking about. If my daughter were self destructive like that you can bet that I’d be nosy. And I might come up with something as lame as “looking for candy.” I have enough trouble with mice without uncontained candy attracting them.
As for your percieved rights, which it makes you kids so angry to think I how I trample on them, it is not my fault that you don’t really have any. Blame a legal system that treats you like, um, CHILDREN.
And Falcon, my friend, please do not allow your own screwed-up childhood color your perceptions of Hypergirl’s situation. I do not know if your parents had cause to snoop into your life. I know that hers do.
So, now I’m “abusive” because I think parents should keep an eye on their kids. That’s a nice way to twist the situation.
Take her with me to therapy, yes. Tell her that it was all my fault, no. Mental illness is normally nobody’s fault and I am surprised that you would use such an archaic argument.
My point is that I have the legal right, sometime even the duty, to read her journal. I have to know what is going on in her head and even in the BEST parent-child relationship, or patient-therapist realtionship, the angry person is not always forthcoming. Even your therapist would agree with that.
I didn’t mean to imply that you are abusive, in fact I was going to mention that I didn’t think you were abusive. I was just stating that I have seen the other side of relationship.
What about a little patience? And if the parent-child relationship is as solid and secure as you allege, the “angry person” would eventually cool down enough to be forthcoming. Furthermore, suicidal is suicidal, no matter how much the parent snoops. I know from personal experience. After my mother went through my things, including my journal, she treated me worse than she did before, up to, and AFTER I tried to off myself at 16. I’m unable to trust anyone. Not even myself. It’s interesting how women have fought for hundreds of years to keep from being chattel, but no one cares about kids. There’s a difference between caring for and taking care of someone, and completely trampling their sense of self. Which, I can guarantee, you are doing.
As have I. I have just been trying to keep alive the other side of this discussion, to keep it from being a “poor, abused hypergirl” teen pity party. There are other boards for kids who imagine they are being abused, versus those who actually HAVE been abused. To compare a nosy and whiny mother to a brutal and truly abusive one is to make a common, but false, comparison among teens. And, as we have only heard hyper’s side of this, somebody had to defend her mom’s side and show there might have been some cause for her actions.
BTW, kids, your journals, if they are anything like mine and my friends were, are pretty boring. No matter how hot you think they are. Your parents, if they are anything like me, led more interesting lives BUT WERE SMART ENOUGH NOT TO PUT IT DOWN ON PAPER! You think that crappy lock and the possibility that you might cry are enough to keep us out? It is to laugh! It is the possibility of tedium that keeps us out. Our lives are boring enough without knowing who has a crush on whom.
Ok, now, let’s set the record straight here. I just happen to be one of Hypergirl’s closer friends, and I think I know what’s going on a bit better than most people chiming in here. [Sorry to be rude, but I have to get my POV across.]
First of all, her mom is someone I wouldn’t trust with dogs, let alone kids if it were up to me. I have never been around her and Hypergirl without her yelling and demeaning her for no reason whatsoever. It seems hypergirl’s mother has trained her son well: he starts yelling as an automatic response and will no doubt be a total bastard when he is fully grown. Hypergirl is a good student and is on scholarship; any time her grades go even close to A-, her mother goes on and on about how she’s not even going to be accepted at BCC, the local community college. This is not something you tell someone who makes good grades. Maybe someone who has a D- average, but not someone who does well in school and isn’t getting in trouble either.
Second point: her mother doesn’t know she cuts, and shouldn’t be going through her diary because that is an infringement of her privacy. My mother trusts me to some extent, and proves it every time I have friends over. I don’t have someone “checking in” on me every five minutes, or even every hour, and I am glad that my mother does trust me with my friends. I mean, what good does it do to make your kids paranoid just because you want to protect them? Please, enlighten me, I haven’t been around enough adults that think like this that have had kids who were perfectly normal and mentally sound. [Well, just to inform you, most of my life has been around adults and parents. I don’t remember being around kids my age much unless it was friends from school until a few years ago.]
[sub]If I sound pissed off, I am just a teensy bit. Right now I’ve got a guest in my house that wants me to entertain her 1 year old baby, and I don’t like kids. I just want to get away from the screaming for a little while. Correction, my mother thinks I should entertain the kid. At least they’ll be gone around new year’s. I don’t want to ever have kids. I wouldn’t be able to deal with the baby to toddler years.[/sub]
HAH! I was wondering when somebody would pick up on that!
Every reasonably intelligent kid eventually realizes that he or she has no legal rights. In the past Blacks and women fought for their right to be human beings. Kids start fighting for it but, at the moment they get the power to change things, stop being legally children. The battle dies in that person and goes nowhere.
Well hypergirl, now you know why I haven’t lived at home much since I was 17. Mom Mom is almost the exact same way. Move out as soon as you can and don’t call for 3-4 years. It really works.
Or maybe you’ll get lucky and trap your Mom into admitting she smoked dope and lost her virginity at 16, like my Mom did. Forever after I could use this against her if she tried to lecture me. The joy this brought me is impossible to describe.
Yes Dropzone, we all know you were a head banger. Looks to me like you knocked your common sense out somewhere around age 16. I have know several people who were and are cutters. In no way would I classify it as a “mental illness”. In most cases, it is a maladaptive strategy for dealing with a life that seems empty and pointless. USUALLY brought on by a lifetime of emotional abuse from a parent or parents. Cutters cut to feel something in their life besides emptyness and dispair. I know you poo-poo emotional abuse, but it is much more dammaging than physical. I think I read somewhere that you sought professional help for head banging, and some drugs worked wonders for you. Congratulation. My WAG is that you deal with your problem by classifying it as a "mental illness’ and the drugs as a “cure”, and refuse to delve into the deeper issues behind. Afraid to maybe consider the fact that your dear sweet folks aren’t perfect? Maybe not, maybe they are Ward and June Clever, I don’t know them. What I find sad is that based on your posts in this thread, you are raising a brood that will probobly be prone to the same thing. Your lack of compassion and reliance on confrontational tactics as a first line of dealing with your kids puts them at great risk for doing the same thing. Such tactics are valid IF and ONLY IF you suspect your child of doing immediate and lasting harm to themselves,(drugs, suicide, alright, even cutting, to a point) AND they have consistantly refused to discuss things with you, seek help on their own, or blatently lied. Even then Iwould NEVER read a private journal. " Boring’ as it may be to you, it is the personal and secret thoughts of your child. You may not violate them with impunity. Unfortunately, the form that prolly will take is years of emotional scars for them while you waltz free.
Well, based on the comments of her close friend, nope, looks like we had a damn similar childhood. And I’ve been in and out of therapy for almost 10 years because of it. And attempted suicide twice.
I recognize MYSELF in hypergirl. And if I can save her ONE OUNCE of the pain I live with, I will. No matter what you or anyone else say.
I don’t give a shit about legal rights. What I’m talking about are emotional and personal boundaries. You can’t walk into someone’s house and start rifling through their things. You wouldn’t even do that to an adult family member’s house. Why should you do it to children just because they’re not 18? Do you get some sort of ego boost through it? That’s incredibly pathetic, dropzone. If you took the time to TALK to your children, and develop trust within them they won’t NEED to lie, dissemble, or obfuscate. And you wouldn’t have to snoop. There’s a difference between being a responsible parent and being an overcontrolling asshole.
#1 - The main reason I would tell her it was my fault is because guilt is detrimental to the theraputic process, and by taking the blame, I would free her up emotional energy up to address the problems
#2 - Nobody’s fault, yes. However, to say that the parent’s behavior has no effect on a child’s mental health is unrealistic. Psychology is still very young, and the origins of different health problems are still unclear - while some are probably physiological in nature, others are probably learned behavior. IMHO, when you can get an 80% success rate with a behavioral intervention, as is the case with depression, then depression is a learned behavior
In the fifties, you had the legal right (and in some cases responsibility) to segregate black and white people. Legal right does not make moral right.
My therapist would also know that violating an angry person’s trust will only make that person angrier and less forthcoming. He also recognizes that the patient must trust him if the relationship is to be effective, which is why therapists have the same confidentiality agreement with their patients that doctors do. And the first half of that statement makes you sound like the thought police.
Another good reason not to read your child’s journal is that the journal is an effective therapeutic technique; but only if the patient is confident that nothing in the journal will be read by anyone without permission.
That seems a little convoluted to me. Are you saying that, if you knew your child was cutting himself or herself, you’d leave broken glass and razors in their bedroom? And, don’t think that I’d just stop at removing the potentially harmful items. The discussion(s) that followed would go a long way in determining that child’s future. If it was me and my child, we’d be in counseling asap.
**
No. You’re wrong. A child that cuts is a very small step away from a child that dies.
My son can come to me with anything, but Hypergirl doesn’t seem to have that option with her mother. She should (must) explore other options.
Hypergirl…I like you. Alot. From what I’ve read here, your home situation is, well, less than perfect. You can’t change your mother, but you can do something for yourself: Get help. Find someone to talk with, someone that can help you. Someone you can trust. Take control by taking control.
You’re not at all alone. Many teens/young adults feel the same way you do. The sooner you start working through your (justifiable?) anger, the better. The longer you hold on to it, the worse you will feel about it, and the longer it will take to get past it.
Stress/rage/insecurity/teenage angst/whatever are powerful emotions. It’s your responsibility to make sure that the outlet through which they’re expressed is positive–not destructive.
My heart goes out to you. My parents denied me just about any kind of privacy. I hated that. Maybe that’s why I try to safeguard my privacy to such a degree today.
Make a choice, make your own choice, that you are not going to let your home life interfere with your health and happiness. Talk to someone who can help. That’s something you can do, and nobody can stop you.
If Hypergirl can’t tell her mother herself, someone else should. It might, it would have to, lead to getting some help.
Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting a different result. (No, I’m not calling you insane, Hypergirl.) But things aren’t good the way they are, so, please, make a choice, and make a change…for the better.
I agree with Rysdad. I feel terrible for you Hypergirl and I wish there was something I could do to help. Maybe if your mom knew, she could help you? I’m crossing my fingers that this ends in some kind of a positive resolution for you.
First of all, by taking away obvious things, like glass and razors, parents wouldn’t be able to stop what I would be doing. They only force you to be more creative. Practically anything can be used to hurt yourself. Secondly, I am not a “cutter” just because I cut occasionally. It really isn’t a big deal, and that’s not what this thread was even about. And cutting is certainly not a step away from death. If you saw any of the cuts I had ever done you would laugh. Half an inch long and barely a scratch, and over my ankle. Yeah, that’s really going to kill me. It’s not like I am slitting my wrists here, and I think that’s what people don’t get. There are degrees of everything, and I am hardly bad. And my mom does kind of know. But she doesn’t really care. She has seen cuts on my upper arms and she asked me about it. I never really answered, but she got it. She wouldn’t do anything about it though. Therapy is out of the question. Why should she waste her money on something that I should grow out of. According to her I shouldn’t even be feeling this way in the first place. Thanks for the concern, but I really don’t see anything I can do. I can’t put into words the bullshit that my mother puts me through, the things I have mentioned in this thread isn’t the half of it. I don’t want to make this into a pity party, and I feel bad about even feeling bad about the way she treats me, because I know that there are people being treated much worse. Sigh.
A girl whom I loved in high school used to cut herself. Just a little. Nothing much. She didn’t think anyone cared.
She committed suicide by a means I won’t mention, but it didn’t involve any kind of bloodletting. She left a note asking her husband to take good care of her 18-month old daughter. She said that she wanted to die before her daughter was old enough to remember her.
It seems to me that you’re asking for help, and I wish I could be there to give it to you.
By the way, couseling is generally covered by health insurance, so the cost would be nominal, if any. Your school might also be able to direct you to someone who could help.
Don’t internalize your anger at your mother so that you hurt yourself.
FUCK, dropzone! I couldn’t read the rest of the thread because of your bullshit! Yes you are abusive for invading your child’s privacy! It’s called EMOTIONAL ABUSE and I’ve had to live with it for 18 FUCKING YEARS and I STILL have to put up with it, and so have lots of other people in this thread including Hypergirl so don’t tell us it doesn’t exist! I was afraid to tell my parents the happiest news of my life, my engagement to Sailorboy, because I was afraid they’d refuse to pay for college. How sad is that? How would you like your children to shut you out of their lives forever, because of what you are doing now? How would you like your children to feel like they can never succeed in anything because you always have to check up on them all the time? Stop now, if you love your childern. You’re afraid they’ll go astray in life? TALK TO THEM!!! BELIEVE IN THEM!!! This is coming from some one who knows, who has gone through this herself, who has seen countless others go through it. By doing what you are doing, you are FORCING them to do the things you are so afraid of. I say again, to all parents, all prospective parents, to all who are having sex, because you may end up a parent, TALK TO YOUR KIDS! TRUST THEM, AND THEY WILL BE TRUSTWORTHY! Please, stop treating them like they can’t take a step without screwing up, and you will be amazed at what they can do.
Ariele