I’m an ugly coot
Boo! Says I menacingly
Mom had a reason…
Okay, that was just to scare you. In reality, people’s haiku can be much, much worse.
Dropzone, I’m with ya. Thank (insert deity) there’s someone with sense arguing this case.
Relic, weirddave, … oh, nevermind.
I believe I am qualified to comment, here. I had a less than idealic childhood. Big neglect issues. No hardcore abuse though. I was a cutter. Started at 14, stopped at about 21. Never tried or even seriously thought about suicide. I used to joke about ‘self mutilation therapy’, write poems and songs about it… I’ve been through counselling like you wouldn’t believe. (Not about that specifically… just about life and things in general) I was a runaway and street kid when I was 15 and left home permanently when I was 16. I am now the Father of 2. One of which is going to have a challenging teenagedness. He’s 9 now and already ‘dark’, like I was, and how I sense you are, Hypergirl.
I’m not going to ramble on about how much your mom loves you. Yadayada. Frankly, I have no idea. And it’s not the point anyway.
Here’s the ‘Straight Dope’ on the cutting. If you allow cutting to be ‘no big deal’ to you, then you have effectively shot yourself in the foot. This is going to really suck as you walk up the long road of life. Unless you are part of some tribe somewhere that do this as a socially acceptable ritual it’s a sign that something is wrong. Depression, peer pressure, justbecausewhatthehell, whatever… get that figured out now, and you’ll find the rest of your life less of an uphill battle. No moral or legal argument here, just plain fact. My life only started to improve as my attitute and outlook did.
Here’s the deal with the parent schpiel. Your mom drives you nuts, get your sh*t together and move out. Just don’t do it like I did. Think responsible.(Here, the age of majority is 18. I’m assuming that you could expect to be on your own within a year.)
As for the ‘invasion of privacy’ issue, that is subject to parental discretion. Yes, you want to promote trust, which is why you must absolutely never get caught. Invading your childs privacy and launching into a confrontation over it is just plain dumb.
The parental responsibility is the ultimate, as far as I’m concerned. I believe firmly that I have a duty to give my children the best shot at life that I can. I can’t do that unless I know what’s going on in their lives and heads. That being said, I would never go out of my way to invade their privacy unless I had reason to be concerned. That being said, a parent who has suspicions about his/her childs wellbeing and who doesn’t investigate to the fullest extent possible is, in my eyes, despicable and irresponsible.
Oh yeah, and kids do have rights. Lots of rights. The U.N. convention on the rights of the child is the most broadly accepted treaty ever shuffled around the international tables. Here, read for yourself:
eep… that’s a little long… here’s the UN home page if the above link won’t work. Do a search and you should get plenty.
sorry for the long quote, but sometimes it’s important to be thorough. (This is from that long@ss link above)
**
er…
I didn’t come across privacy. I looked… really I did. (You don’t come across a link that long by accident.)
Still, in today’s ‘enlightened’ society, of which we a part, and which does not endorse ritual scarification, privacy could be argued as a right. I can accept that, but being a Quebecer, I put in a ‘notwithstanding’ clause when it comes to Parents making sure their Children are ok.
I’d have the U.N. Backing me too. After all, they believe (as stated above) that "the childs best interests shall be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children"
:: trips while stepping off of soapbox ::
See, all my friends know what I am talking about. It’s not this one thing. My mother makes my life hell. In every possible way. Other than the fact that I have no privacy, nothing I do can ever be good enough. I came home with a 1450 on my PSAT’s, and a 3.9 GPA, and she asks me why I didn’t do better. I go to hebrew school and to a youth group every week, I keep my grades up, and I have to maintain some semblance of sanity. She doesn’t make it easy. The cutting thing would not even be an issue were it not for her. Any little thing that I do wrong gets picked at. I have been called a stupid selfish ugly worthless bitch, and people wonder why my self esteem isn’t the best. I have this shoved down my throat whenever I am at home, and people wonder why I want to go out as much as I can. All I can say is that I am lucky to have friends like ssskuggiii, DigitalMuse, and PurePhreak, because if it weren’t for them, and my boyfriend, I am not even sure I would be here to post this.
I restate my point…
Her mother constantly abuses her verbally. It’s not right, and I kind of understand what she’s going through. No matter what, I’ll still be fat and not doing well enough in life and school, etc. to please my mother. Her mother has gotten to the point where she just doesn’t ever seem to be nice to her whatsoever. She shouldn’t have to put up with this, and if it were my choice, I’d gladly take Jess into my home so she doesn’t have to deal with her mother.
Just because someone has a child doesn't mean they can do everything they can to make sure the child knows that they're a burden on the parent. It was the parent's choice to have the kid, they knew/ should have known that having a kid means giving up a lot of things and a lot of time and work is put into raising a child. It's exhausting work, and if the parent can't do that without doing serious harm to the child because they resent the fact that they no longer have a life that doesn't involve near constant care of children then they shouldn't be parents. I know I'm not at this stage in my life where having a child is a possible option because I know I wouldn't be able to handle it. I plan on not having children until I know I am ready to deal with giving up most of my life and devoting it to people who depend on me for the next 18 or so years of my life.{{{{{{hypergirl}}}}}}
Thanks to the honesty and generosity of the people on this MB, my daughter and I have finally found a way to deal with her impulses to cut herself. It involves lots of 3am and 4am conversations.
Yes, when I was a scared mum who didn’t know how to handle the whole cutting thing, I did read her journal - I just wanted to know what she was feeling/thinking that she could be so self-destructive (you’ve “only” cut yourself 10 times; from a parent’s viewpoint that is 10 times too many).
We’ve now made an agreement - whenever she feels like she wants to cut herself she wakes me up first and talks about the issue which is making her feel that way; if she still wants to cut herself after we’ve had that conversation, I won’t stop her. I haven’t had a lot of sleep since we made that agreement, but I no longer live in a state of constant concern about where every knife in the house is. I no longer feel the need to read her journal because she has now proven that she will come to me and tell me if there’s something on her mind - that hasn’t been true for most of the last two years.
Perhaps your mum is just being intrusive; perhaps though, she is as scared as I was and simply doesn’t know how to deal with it. I certainly wish that I’d discovered this MB two years ago - it would have saved both my daughter and myself a whole lot of pain. I really hope that we as a community can bring you the kind of support that I’ve got from this MB. Just keep posting, okay? 'Cos as long as you’re posting we know what’s happening in your life and we can try to help.
Take care hyper, and please - if you need to talk, feel free to contact any one of us. 
I’m not going to get suckered into defending hypers mom, here. No way.
How long till you are 18, Jess? If things are as bad as you say they are, maybe it’s time to move out on your own. I’d also like to restate my case for getting counselling. If you have to count on your friends to prevent you from suiciding… that’s a sign there’s something wrong!!!
Escapism seems a pretty big theme here. There’s healthy and unhealthy ways to do it. Unhealthy: cutting, running away, suicide. Healthy, deal with the issues and effect some change!!! This is perfect training for the rest of your life. So how do you choose to handle it? Like a whining child, or the adult that you are so very close to becoming?
Ssskuggiii, Hyper has a good friend in you. Look, in all honesty, if you’re cutting, you guys aren’t doing all that well in life. Certainly a constant barrage of parental denigration is not going to help. All the more reason for you two to grow up and take some sort of positive control over your lives.
Oh yeah, one more thing… (just to think about) If your mom doesn’t think a 3.9 gpa is good enough, she obviously has a very high opinion of your capabilities, and expects a lot from you. (Even if she’s got a strange way of showing it)
Ssskuggiii, I think you should spend more time with small children…
(just kidding. heheheheheheh)
Well, I am going to graduate high school before I turn 18, so I’l be out of here sooner. There really isn’t anywhere else I can go for the next year and a half. But I really don’t see anything wrong with leaning on my friends. They keep me sane, but I don’t pretend that I don’t know that something is wrong in my relationship (or lack thereof) with my mother.
One Christmas night my mums found out that I lost the ring that her husband of 40 years, that died in 1996, gave her and then gave to me. All hell broke out. I’m just staying with her a week, but it was just like when I was a child. She is 63 and so I won’t hit her no matter what. But I have three lumps on my head and I really hurt my schoulder. I told her I just lost it, which is what happened, and she told me I was a lier and I pawned it. She searched the entire room where I was staying. I don’t hate her but she drives me crazy.
*Originally posted by dropzone ***
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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. **
[/QUOTE]
You also said that teenager’s journals are boring and all about “who has a crush on who”. If they’re that, how would you get crucial psychological insight from them?
As for your remark about “that puny lock and the possibility that you might cry” being “for to laugh” as far as safeguarding privacy, you are very very lucky that you weren’t in the same room with me when I read that.
You claim that you and your friends, as high-schoolers, kept journals. Then you say that parents have done more outrageous things than their children can conceive of, but “were smart enough not to write it down”. So which is it? People born before 1980 didn’t keep journals, or they did?
And I am so sick of that old tune: “I dropped 17 hits of acid and van-surfed all the way back from Woodstock with total strangers…so if you think young lady that you’re going to get away with smoking one cigarette…”
Finally, I don’t believe you’ve been asked this question, or answered it if you were. How would you have felt if you were hypergirl’s age, and your parent(s) read your journal? Or, if you didn’t have a journal, if your parent(s) had trespassed on whatever your personal space was?
" How would you have felt if you were hypergirl’s age, and your parent(s) read your journal? Or, if you
didn’t have a journal, if your parent(s) had trespassed on whatever your personal space was?"
Oh, I come from a dysfunctional family, I thought that was normal?
Something interesting to note. Hyper’s mother treats her like this when she already has one suicide attempt to her record.
I find that profoundly disturbing.
I have never attempted suicide. And even if I had, my mom certainly wouldn’t know about it.
Parents are children’s way to gauge how life works. If a parent demands that a child have no privacy or trust they will never have any. If a parent trusts a child to be a whole person, the child will grow to be one.
I had one of each. My mother is a wonderful person who goes out of her way to create private space for her children. If she even suspects that a bit of paper or computer screen might hold something private she will not touch it or will carefully move it out of the public eye.
My father opens my mail and will still walk in my room without knocking. He has no problem with reading my e-mail over my shoulder, and is upset when I ask him to stop.
My mother is one of my dearest friends. I would not really bat an eye if my father were to fall of the earth. In all honesty, I would rather he be far away from my little sisters due to his poor parenting.
My mother gave me unconditional love and support. My father would use statements like “If you want to be part of this family…” in fights. If you believe that your child can ever do or say anything that would make them “not your child” you are a poor parent. If you cannot trust them to be thier own person you are a poor parent. If you have set up the support structure correctly, they will come to you for help when they need it. Good parents are not the ones whose kids make no mistakes, they are the ones whose kids know that mistakes are survivable.
drop, I do not hate my dad. I tease back and forth with him quite like your exchange indicated. By no means do I ever discuss anything of importance with him. He has none of my respect. Regardless of the puns, wordgames, or movies we joke about.
Children learn from thier parents. From my mother I learned that I was a strong person of passion and compassion. From my father…I learned that there are people in the world you are better to ignore.
My mother is a mentally abusive freak who has been giving me crazymaking messages for eight years. When I was twelve she told me she wished she could trade me for a different daughter and that if she could beat the crap out of me and get away with it, she would.
When I had rocks thrown at my head at school for coming out of the closet, she told me it was my own fault, and that I would have friends if I weren’t such a big-mouthed freak.
She spent years telling me that I was lazy and stupid and useless, but lately she has been browbeating me for “wasting my potential”. What potential? I thought I was a worthless piece of crap.
I had emotional problems when I was very young, and she acts as though they make me a disgrace to her and her family, as well as being all my own fault. I was eight years old! How was I supposed to be impeccably socialized?
I started cutting two years ago and I am nowhere near stopping. If you want to email me and share war stories, or just talk about anything, feel free.
I’m trying to reconcile this with the picture in your sig. You are a parent?
Must have misinterpreted something in a previous post. Sorry.
I still think you’r mom’s evil.
Oh don’t worry, she is.
Hyper, you mom is not evil, she is human, with all the fun faults and disorders that gets to entail. It does not excuse her for how she behaves, which is completely wrong though. Just don’t fall into the trap of demonizing her completely, is all.
Aww why not? It’s so much fun.
The great irony with this whole idea is that a woman is complaining that her mother reads her journal, yet, journal details are posted on the Internet for the whole world to read!
Plus, if that wasn’t ironic enough hypergirl, they are archived here for many years. Your mother, father, aunts, uncles, your kids, when you have them, are going to be able to read details about your life for years to come, right here 24-7!
How do you feel about that hypergirl?