The New York Times Magazine ran a long piece on raising adolescents recently, entitled “Raising Teenagers: The Mother of All Problems. It was written by Oxford-educated writer Rachel Cusk, whose colleagues and acquaintances grimace when she tells them her daughters are 16 and 14. It paints an alternately dispiriting and disturbing picture of this stage of life.
Here are some quotes from this Mom’s experience. “The laptop has replaced me as the navigator of our lives. “Her temperature is always high. “My daughter’s friends encounter me with barely a word of greeting. Perhaps most disturbing is the scene after her daughters’ friends come over: “The kitchen is strewn with dirty plates and half-eaten food and empty wrappers; the bathroom is a swamp of wet towels, capsized bottles, crumpled tissues smeared with makeup… I tidy up, slowly.
In my northwest DC psychology practice, I heard complaints just like this. They don’t exist only in England. The Times editorial staff must know that it has a critical mass of readers who will either identify and commiserate with this mother, or protest loudly. And they did (be sure to see Comments).
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