I once told my friend Anne that she lived her life through her children, and she was proud of that fact. She was jealous when her two boys married; it's like she wanted to keep them to herself. She is disparaging of the daughter's in law. She has a habit of dropping in at her children's homes without calling first, and making comments about the housekeeping or lack of it. She makes her opinion known to her kids about every facet of their lives.
On the other hand, she is very generous to them, buying her sons and their wives gifts she can't afford. As an outsider looking in, it seems she wants to buy their affection. And she has always been a wonderful grandmother. Both her sons divorced their first wives, and Anne dotes on their daughters.
Now, as the little girls are growing up, one of them, a spoiled rotten little beast whose every whim is indulged and catered to, is making everyone's life miserable. Anne realizes someone--be it the child's mother her father--someone has to discipline that child or there's gonna be hell to pay along the line. But the eight year old plays her divorced parents off one another--she snaps her fingers, and everybody jumps.
Okay, I'm an old fuddy duddy, but if I had ever tried to tell my parents what to do, and whined when I didn't get my way in everything--and I mean everything-- my backside would've hurt for a week from a peach tree switch liberally applied by Mama or Daddy. I fear that Anne and her son are gonna have their hands full when the little beast matures into a monster. Susil.