A cautionary tale of how not to parent

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11/06/2019 11:49

Subject: A cautionary tale of how not to parent

quote

Anonymous

An acquaintance of mine, a very ambitious lady, raised her son aiming for stars. From early on he was a perfect student - in a gifted program, 99 percentile test results, straight As. She signed him up to volunteer at the right places. She was aiming for ivy league.

Not only Larlo was driven by her, she also kept close tabs on him. For example, you know how you can go and have lunch with your kid at school? Well, she did it every day for the first few months of school and then 3 times a week for the rest of school year. Until 7th grade. Because they had a loving relationship she said. She volunteered at school, signed him up for all the right activities.

At the same time, his father is just an a***hole - criticized and put him down all the time, was very stingy with money, but paid for good grades. It was not a healthy dynamic at home.

I don't know the full extent how controlling mom was. At first Larlo would tell her everything, but then he figured it out and stopped talking. She would use different tactics like go to his room and sit there under pretense of reading a book to try to get him to talk or just watch him. Later she started to go through trash, his backpack, his things, spy behind the door, etc. It was about the same time he began to unravel.

At first, he found getting As in AP classes was not easy. He was deeply disappointed that after all his hard work he was not in top ten students in school.

Then he was disappointed he did not have a high ranking as a tennis player. You see, he had been in school's tennis team, but his stingy father didn't want to pay for private lessons, so while others got better, he didn't. He missed a few practices and when the coach asked him why, he replied that he didn't feel like it. The coach kicked him out of the team. Larlo's mom tried to fix it behind his back, she tried to make excuses for him and begged the coach to take him back. The coach said no.

Then he began to take risks - like jump off trains with his friends, driving a car without license with cops nearby and posting some videos on Instagram. His mom was concerned it was not going to go over well at school and Harvard.

Then she decided to find him a job. Note, not Larlo decided to find a job. His mom decided to find him a job. So she asked some friend's to hire him at their restaurant. Larlo worked there a few months and things seemed OK.

Only recently I find out the Larlo got fired for stealing money from the restaurant and now showing up for shifts. Guess what? His mom wrote to the friends/restaurant owners how disappointed she's with them, that she trusted them with her child and they let her down, but he's a good boy and not to worry, they will find him another job.

I don't know what's going to happen to Larlo. After watching this story unfold I'm just anxious if I've been doing anything similar with my DC. I'll stop it this minute and free range, free range all the way.