Big City Dialogue: The Henry Wachtel Case In Sunday's Big City column, I wrote about Henry Wachtel, the West Side teenager who is accused of killing his mother, Karyn Kay, in their apartment on April 10. Mr. Wachtel allegedly attacked her during an epileptic seizure. A 911 call has Mr. Wachtel screaming for his mother to live, which suggests that he did what he did by accident. His lawyer has suggested that epilepsy medications he was taking may have been at fault. Mr. Wachtel did not seem to me to be a vicious killer but a troubled boy who did not have the easiest relationship with his mother, a beloved teacher at LaGuardia, the high school for the performing arts. Many readers wrote in to express anger and frustration at what they believed to be an attack on Ms. Kay's mothering. I wrote about Mr. Wachtel against the back drop of "Our Time," a short film which is promoted by its creators as a hybrid of "fiction and nonfiction" and "based on the real-life stories of the two stars, nonactors Duncan Figurski and Henry Wachtel." My object was to better understand Mr. Wachtel through the world depicted in the film. In it, the two boys are at a crossroads; they don't have much direction and seem alienated from family life - their parents are barely seen. They spend their time in parks and in subway stations. We welcomed comments from readers who knew Ms. Kay well and offered their perspective of her. The objective of the Big City column is, in no small part, to engage in a dialogue with readers. Because this column struck such a nerve, we thought it might warrant a more general conversation on the difficulties of being - and raising -a teenager in New York, where spaces are small and parents are burdened so often with punishing work schedules as they try to do everything imaginable for their children. What is that landscape like for children and parents?