OTBKB reader Peter Loffredo sent this post by Jamie Lee Curtis from Arianna Huffington’s blog.

As
the denouement of a really upsetting celebrity scandal came to its
close, a tearful child pleaded to her mother… "Mom, it’s not right."

It was a painful episode to watch. A young woman, begging her mother,
the person who should have taught her right from wrong, to help her, to
teach her the rules of life. It was a little too late. And so she wept
as the Universe was bringing the teaching and settling the score.

I’m in no glass house. I understand only too well the pitfalls of
maternal amnesia and denial. I am not throwing stones but merely a
lifesaver, a buoy of sanity and understanding.

"My analyst told me, that I was right out of my head," Joni Mitchell
sang in the song "Twisted." I was twisted. I am twisted. I am deluded
that my attempts at being liked and loved by my children and friends
with them — all at the same time — were going to result in "well
raised children." We were the generation that would take the job of
raising our children and turn it into… PARENTING.

We were the
generation who applauded every move they made. Every step they took.
"Good climbing, Brandon" was our hue and cry. We were raised by people
who didn’t "understand" us and now we don’t "understand" why our
children are so messed up.

It is a national epidemic. Omnipotent children running amok or sitting
amok as they watch TV and play electronic games and shop on eBay.

The sad paths of the three most popular young women — privileged but
from varying backgrounds, talented, beautiful and spectacular — have
ended in prison, rehab and mental illness. I hope their mothers are
worried sick and wondering, "What could I have done differently?"

And
our culture should be asking the same question too.

What we need to do is look long and hard at our part in all this. Where
did our children get the message that the rules don’t apply to them?
And where did we, the Mothers, get the message that if we abdicate our
responsibilities as Mothers, the Universe will do our job for us? And
it does, but without any of the love and tenderness and compassion that
we could have given, along with the lessons.

Now it’s just the cold hard facts of a jail cell or the emptiness of a rehab room.

I’m not pointing fingers. I’m asking questions.

Can we take the wrenching sight of Paris asking her mother, "why?" and ask it of ourselves?

My analyst told me this: "Children are paparazzi. They take your
picture mentally when you don’t want them to, when you don’t look good,
and show it back to you in their behavior."

Let’s hope that we all learn what is RIGHT and what is so WRONG. Wake up, Mothers and smell the denial.