Ask Annie for Feb. 4, 2004 Dear Annie,
My wife has let our son go his own way for so long that now, at age 16, he's a lazy moron who won't get out of bed in the morning. He has to be nagged out of bed every morning. He works, but it's only at the local pizza place. What kind of career will that lead to? My wife's always standing up for the kid and telling me to calm down. How's he going to amount to anything with her coddling him all the time? She reads your thing every week. Please tell her she's not doing him any favors, spoiling him rotten.
(No Name or Town)
Dear Man,
Don't ever refer to your son as "a lazy moron" again. No wonder your poor wife tries to act as a buffer between you and the boy. When you say, "My wife has let our son..." it makes me wonder where you've been the past sixteen years. What kind of parenting have you been providing for this boy? Suddenly, you wake up and realize you have a teenage son to help raise? You have a lot of nerve, asking me to talk to your wife when you're the one who needs to wake up and smell the coffee. You've got a wife who's trying her best to raise the boy, sounds like without much help from you, and a boy you criticize and only see the negative in. He works! Hallelujah! Who cares if it's at a pizza place? He's learning and earning. I have yet to see a teenager who leaps out of bed in the morning and welcomes the world, let alone another day at school. How about you start looking for the positive and treating your son like a valuable human being?
Annie
Please write to: Annie, P.O. Box 1084, Eatonville,WA 98328
E-mail: letters_annie@hotmail.com
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