In article ,
"R. Steve Walz" wrote:

dragonlady wrote:

Nope, she was doing what was her RIGHT, and YOU simply didn't LIKE it!

She can't possibly "dishonor herself", that's YOU talking and making
judgements you don't even have a RIGHT to make.


and doing things that were dangerous.
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Her RIGHT, NOT YOURS!

I've seen what many pricks like you SAY is "dangerous", it being
anything that YOU don't happen to favor, nothing more! If you hadn't
been abusing her rights she'd have had no desire to do anything truly
dangerous. It is your dishonoring abuse of her equality that made her
want to take risks merely to contradict your overbearing attempts at
control!


Well, since her activities landed her in the hospital, and came close to
killing her, I'm sure I'm not imagining that they were dangerous. Nor
am I imagining that she'd rather be alive.

Even you admit that intervention to pull a child from in front of a
speeding car is appropriate. I believe that what I was doing fit that
category -- it beat the heck out of letting her die due to some
misplaced values that put her presumed rights over her life. All I did
was keep her alive.


I did what I felt I had to do to keep her alive -- and that
is NOT an exageration.
----------------------
You drove her to it and then justified it, like chasing a child
toward a cliff.


It turned out she was severely depressed, but
adolescent depression manifests in odd ways, which I did not recognize:
in her case, it was mostly phenominal anger along with acting out.
----------------------------
You don't even grasp WHY she was depressed and angry.
And "acing out" is a misused term by parents like you, more excuse
for what YOU want.

Since it turns out that virtually ALL the women in my family struggle
with depression, I suspect it's because she's inhereted lousy brain
chemistry. Contrary to your apparent beliefs, much depression is NOT
situational. And given her immediate and dramatic response to
psychotropic drugs, it seems clear that the primary cause was
bio-chemical. She took the drugs for about 3 years, and no longer needs
them.


You're incapable because her MIND and THOUGHTS violate your stupid
****ing little religion.

And which religion would that be? The one that thinks alive is better
than dead?

I'm not a member of any mainstream religion, and am not a theist. Or
even a dieist. Or at least I don't believe in any of the things most
people in our current culture mean when they say "God" (Don't consider
myself an atheist, either.)

----------------------------------------
Kids "get into trouble" with illegitimate authority. Everybody does.
Parents who don't try to assume unrightful authority never become
illegitimate, and kids never find cause to rebel against one who is
not trying to interfere with them.

You are delusional. Your ivory tower must be a great place to live:
"kids only have serious problems due to bad parents. If the parenting is
good, the kids will always be just fine."

Get over it: kids are independent beings with their own thoughts,
desires, and wills. Their parents are NOT in control of those things,
nor, unless they keep them completely away from the rest of the world,
are they the only influence on their kids. Life happens, and other
things influence them as well.



I remember one conversation with this particular daughter, where I said
that, in spite of everything, I thought I'd been a pretty good parent.
She said, "In spite of WHAT?" I didn't want to be insulting -- I mean,
what could I say? After a moment, I said, "In spite of the fact that
my kid's lives are not exactly what I'd dreamed they'd be." She put her
hands on her hips and said, "Well! YOUR job isn't to dream for us.
YOUR job is to just keep us alive until we grow up enough to have our
OWN dreams."

I figure as long as a teenager can put me in my appropriate place like
that, I've done a pretty good job of parenting. Not perfect, Lord
knows, but pretty good.
----------------------------
Now, if you only understood ALL that she meant by that, but she has
given up on that with you, now you're to be coddled and otherwise
ignored. She caught herself and stopped short, having long ago decided
that you're not worth it, and that she shouldn't bother.
Steve

It must be nice to be so omniscient that you know everything without
ever meeting me OR my daughter. She's a great kid. Fortunately, your
"announcement" that she hates my guts won't change how she really feels
about me.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care