Tuesday, August 16, 2005

It's All Relative

I have begun my journey as a mother of a teenage girl. She's only 12 and a half, but she is acting like a teenager.

I am currently surviving 5 teenage boys, but girls are a whole new ball game I'm finding out.

Today she and her sister helped with the little girls who were here and did an absolutely incredible job. They were so good with them and I was so proud.

However, on the way home, I said something she didn't quite like, and boom, all the sudden a new person took her place. A mean, vindictive, hateful face replaced the calm, cooperative mature one that had just been there. She refused to acknowledge any sentence I spoke for the next fifteen minutes until we arrived home.

I have been trying to help her understand that her measuring stick is a little warped. She wants to believe that because she is better than her brothers, who have tons of diagnosis, meds, and special needs, that she is OK. I tell her that for her to look around our home and believe she's perfect, is like me going to a Sumu wrestlers convention and declaring that I am thin.

I try to tell her that staring straight ahead and refusing to listen to me for a straight 15 minutes is no better than cussing me out or flipping me out -- the inward attitude is still the same. It is an attitude of disrespect and whether it is displayed the same way as her brothers or not, it is still not acceptable behavior.

So I'll let her choose to either live with the consequences of her behavior (an early bedtime, becuase anyone who responds that way MUST be tired) or she can change her behavior. EIther way it's OK with me.

It's going to be a long six years.

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