Posts Tagged: Parents
Turning The Screw
30

Ask Polly: I'm Afraid To Leave My Abusive Parents' House

| June 5th, 2013

Dear Polly,

My birthday is coming up in a couple of days and I'm turning 25. Ever since I was young, 25 was the big year. The year I thought you become an adult, have your life figured out and making your way through an impressive list of accomplishment. Life hasn't shaken out for me in that way.

I come from an abusive family. When I was younger, I chalked it up to cultural differences. My parents are conservative and traditional minded parents. They favor boys more. I am a girl. So when my brother was born, 9 years after me, I became no longer worthy of love. I [...]

The Youngs
17

How Hard Can You Helicopter Parent?

| August 13th, 2012

You can all stop writing your kids' college essays and letting them live at home till 26 now and telling your friends that they're doing great, because someone finally took gold in "making excuses for your kid."

Police said a 14-year-old stole a car on Sunday then led officers on a chase that ended in a crash on a Parkway East ramp…. "My son was wrong for taking that vehicle but someone jumped out of their car and a 14-year-old seen the opportunity to take the car. He didn't break the car to steal it. They left the keys in the car. I think as an adult we [...]

Turning The Screw
21

Ask Polly: I'm Angry At My Mom And I Can't Talk About It!

| March 13th, 2013

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Spare change for when your stock hits a 52-week low."

Dear Polly,

I hope that I can get this out in a coherent manner because I am a jumble of emotions right now and it's hard to sort it all out.

Some background: I'm 22 years old and when I was 18, my parents separated. When I was a senior in high school, I was looking for some of my clothes in my mom's dresser and found an envelope of printed-out emails between my mom and—get this—my old middle-school teacher. They were love [...]

What a World
18

Parents Give Their Child World-Record-Breaking Wedgie

| June 28th, 2010

The quote that sums up a 10-year-old's attempt to break the world record of wearing the most underpants at one time: "By the time he had on 195 pairs, Jack's feet were asleep, so they laid him down and kept going." He only ("only"??) had 20 pairs to go in order to reach the record-breaking threshold. [Via]

The Way We ____ Now
3

The "Parental Anecdote" Rule of Columnizing

| March 11th, 2013

Even speaking as someone with 126 emails—oh Lord, 128 since I started writing this—marked as "important and unread" that I really do intend to answer as soon as possible, which is proving to be something of a struggle, and also sort of humiliating given that some of them date back to, like, January, this claim that people are digitally wasting our time with politeness is, as the publisher of Little Brown put it this morning, pretty much the day civilization died.

But here's the deal. For each member of your family that your column cites, it becomes doubly as dubious. (This tactic is a hallmark of columns [...]

13

This Be The Curse

| October 14th, 2009

Research suggests that our fathers' genetic material has a stronger effect on the development of our instinctual behaviors (eating and mating), while the higher-order cognitive abilities (language, socialization, etc.) are the result of a greater contribution from our mothers. So now you know who to blame, and for what. [Via]