Sigh… It’s nature’s way of making sure we don’t miss them too much when they grow up and move out.
And if you do miss them just adjust your aim. 
Pre-teens and teens are weird animals. Strange moods, unusual smells, weird taste in music and clothing all add up to make for some bizarre times. ** Ca3799**, your beautiful baby girl has begun mutating into Teenius horribilii. This stage is punctuated by periods of door slamming, irrational mood swings, screaming declarations about your worth as a parent and frequent attempts to destroy your sanity. Then it gets worse as time progresses.
Fortunately, if you survive the next 10 years without a fatality or involuntary psychiatric commitment, your daughter will have transformed into a well-adjusted, stable and pleasant woman who will suddenly discover that you are a wise and kind person and wonder when you developed those skills.
The bad news is pretty much everything everyone else has said thus far is right.
The good news is that one day in the future, your child will utter those magic words to you: “Remember, Mom, when you told me to do X? You were right.”
That’s probably the most wonderful day you’ll have with your child since the day they were born…
My dad has remarked that it’s amazing how much smarter he and mom got the older I and my brother got.
Somewhere I remember reading that a study had shown that a teenager’s brain is physically different from an adult’s, although I forget in what manner. They postulated that these differences explained a lot of the behavioural angst.
Wish I remembered where I’d read that.
The average female brain doesn’t finish maturing (myelinating) until about the age of 25. For males it’s a year or three later.
Which means I’ve a few years to go for both kids…
Fortunately, when my daughter developed lycanthropic tendencies, it was mostly aimed at my wife, and thus we could play Good Cop/Bad Cop. Unfortunately, for a short while I had one beloved female going thru puberty and the other menopause at the same time. Any chocolate brought onto the premises lasted about forty seconds.
Regards,
Shodan
I appreciate everyone’s advice and stories.
Dinsdale I’m hoping the same thing- that by suffering this now, we won’t have to repeat it again when she’s 16. Perhaps I am deluded.
Ivylass It seems this started about the first of December and has been getting worse as time goes by.
Slypork Your middle parageaph is a pretty accurate description of life here right now.
Mama Tiger Can I hold you to that prediction? Please? Pretty please?
Shodan We are playing good cop/bad cop right now, and I’m the bad cop. We decided to do it that way because DH is a stay-at-home-dad and we thought that making him the bad guy would make the house miserable for too many hours in one day. And thanks for making me look up lycanthrophic.
After I wrote this last night, DD finally came out of her room and she was all cute and cuddly again but I was in no mood for her by then.
After much discussion, I gave her a contract last December with her requirements, punishments, and rewards that she promptly tore up and threw away. I told her I didn’t care what she did with the paper as long as she knew the rules. She did follow them somewhat for a while, but I guess has decided that she don’t need no stinkin’ rules afterall.
Since she refused to turn in homework this week (GAH- why DO it if you won’t TURN IT IN?!?), she gets no electronic entertainments this week. She tried to sneak some, so I put away the controllers and the mouse. Turning in homework earns skate rink trips, putt-putt golf, and sleepover type events. An assignment book is not working now because she writes the assignments down (with estimated time for completion!) and does most of them. This is math class that she’s protesting. She has resumed doing homework for her other classes since December and even got a 93 on her science fair project (a double major grade!). She has a zero for math so far.
I was thinking about this the other day…when my daughter is 11-12, I’ll be 48-49. Not looking forward to it.
Did this thread remind anyone else of that classic Mark Twain* quotation:
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
*And yes, I know it is possible that Twain didn’t really say this, but it is most commonly attributed it to him
Twain was very generous to his fellow humorists, such as Petroleum V Nasby (David Locke), amongst others. He habitually referenced a witticism of them, fully crediting the source, but people only remembered him saying it. Thus, he ended up stealing material while trying to spread the fame around a bit.
For instance, “lies, damn lies, and statistics” was Disraeli, and Twain said so. Didn’t matter, it sticks to him to this day.
Let’s add some more good news. I firmly believe that teenagers, with all their angst, are an anti-aging machine if used according to instructions.
You are middle-aged. In many ways you are set in your mind-set and views. When our daughter was being argumentative, I did a lot of tongue biting, ignored the delorable state of her room, tried not to think about homework and calmly asked for her opinion on things - a TV show she liked which I couldn’t abide, for example. “What is it which makes you like this?” NOT “How can you stand this crap?” Then listen to the reply and ask more without ANY personal opinion of your own.
“What do you think of what she’s wearing?” “Why do you think that guy shot those kids?” I found I started looking at things differently. Being an earth-mother hippie who’d produced a materialistic hedonist meant a lot of having to question my values. But there were times of real intellectual stimulation for me as I saw the world from a different perspective. As she matured into a wonderful woman, still with significantly different views, the relationship also matured into a strong friendship as well as mother/child one.
**Tupug Anachi **wrote: (in jest, I know) “Sigh… It’s nature’s way of making sure we don’t miss them too much when they grow up and move out.” I think there is a grain of truth to this. The teenage years are as they have to grow from total dependence into an independent adult, to eventually take over the ‘parenting’ role as you get dependent in old age. Or so the pattern goes. We also have to be retrained. Their teenage years are also a time to refocus on our own interests and who we are going to become as they leave.
What are you going to devote your time to when the nest is blissfully empty? Start now - even if it’s only in planning and dreaming and collecting ideas. It will take your attention off her every move.
From watching many teenage relationships as well as my own parenting experience, I would strongly advocate you see the good side. You said your daughter came out and got cuddly. The evil-teen bit isn’t 100% of the time. She can’t help the roller-coaster. You, as the adult, have to learn to ride it.
I know it sounds idealistic, but I have seen many parents really engage with their teenagers and see the world through young eyes. The reason I enjoyed teaching teens so much - and never lost the joy of their company - is that you are playing with a wonderful balance between a child who needs framework and guidance, and an emerging adult who has opinions well worth listening to - they are so fresh because they are not yet burdened down by mortgages and children and endless responsibilities. Unrealistic usually - true - but don’t bother telling them that. Apart from leading to an argument, the point is to use their ideas to reflect on your own.
Although there were difficult times, I look back on my daughter’s teenage years as years in which I grew younger in my outlook and challenged my own path which was, like many ion middle age, dropping into a boring rut. And the rewards of a really close relationship post-teen are tremendous. Don’t risk that by being an ogre. You may never get her back.
This thread immediately made me think of the My Chemical Romance song “Teenagers”, which I am listening to as I type. I am also considering my own pre-teen and early teen years, which I spent crying, reading young-adult novels, and enduring intense, embarrassing crushes on several of my male classmates. Try to remember that everyone goes through this stage at some point, and that she (and you) will get through it eventually. You also mentioned that she is “protesting” math class. Perhaps some tutoring is in order? I am only saying this because I was in that situation once myself, and wouldn’t have met the math requirement to get into the CSU system if I hadn’t had math tutoring. This is just my personal situation, your daughter’s may be different.
Also, my daughter is now 6. I am dreading the day when she is temporarily replaced by some character out of “Degrassi Jr. High” or something. (shudder)
Update: The good daughter has returned… at least temporarily.
We did several things, and many of them we started before my OP.
I scored some sorely needed social contacts by cold calling some parents. My calls were very pleasantly received and all invitations were accepted and acted upon. We returned dinner to the dinner table as it had migrated all over the house, we bought a bunch of board games and played them, and, best of all, tonight DD reported that she has decided it is in her best interest to turn in her homework assignments from now on (she always did the work, but just wouldn’t turn it in).
All of these things helped, but the social things seem to have made the most difference.
Go kid!
I’ve read some controversy regarding whether or not it did originate with Benjamin Disraeli, but you are correct in that it certainly did not originate with Twain, nor did Twain attempt to take credit for it, but Twain still is often erroneously credited with the saying.
Ca3799, been there, done that, the scars are still healing (probably because they are reopened daily). My daughter is 15 years old, and I never know which daughter I will be dealing with minute-to-minute.
Only advice I can offer is to hold on tight. I remember when my sister went through the same thing. As Irrational as I was as a teen boy, she was utterly insane. What works well though is keeping in mind her age, allowing more and more freedoms on minor stuff and only clamping down hard on the big issues.
I feel your pain, being as I have a 15 yo daughter myself. All the advice in the thread has been good and what you are doing is great. My first thought when I read this post was to feel sorry for the kid. OMG, puberty is shitty enough to deal with as a young girl without adding new school/no friends. I am glad she is making friends, and seeing that things aren’t so bad.
My daughter went through some of the weird middle school crap before she finally heard what I’d been telling her for years – friends are friends no matter what, people who are only your friend under specific circumstances are cumstains and not worth the bleach to get rid of them. At 15, she’s an amazing, well-rounded, sweet kid who has moments that are easy to overlook thanks to the fact that they’re fairly rare.
Stay involved, keep talking to her and she will be ok. You might need medication, but that’s just the way it works with teenaged girls’ parents.
When I worked with teens, I would always tell them, “This is the worst time in your life, but it will eventually get better. Hang in there.” It is, and it does, for both the teen and the parent.
When she does eventually outgrow this, please, please, please let it go and be forgotten. I’m 41 years old and my mother is still complaining about how I was such an angry, pissy, foulmouthed bitch at 15. :rolleyes:
I heard something along these lines recently, and it helped me empathize more with teenage girls. Maybe it will help you, too:
You know how you feel on your worst days of PMS? When you don’t want to be a bitch, but you find yourself saying something truly mean, and then you feel like shit afterwards? When you find yourself crying over TV commercials? When you don’t feel comfortable in your own body? Young teenaged girls feel like that all the time. Hormones have your daughter captive, and you’ll get her back in about 4 years.
In the mean time, love her, hold her, but don’t let her treat you and your husband badly.
A funny: A couple of weeks ago, I bought her two books- “The Care and Feeding of You” and something like “Doing Homework Doesn’t Have To Make You Throw Up” and casually left them in her room. That night, she went off to bed, but then came charging out of her room demanding to know “Who left these books in my room?”
“That would be me.” said I.
“Well, I’ve already suffered through TWO painful puberty classes that have ruined me for life. I don’t think I need this book!” she told me forcefully.
“What about the homework book?” I asked.
“I don’t need that either.” she said.
“OK” says I, “I’ll just leave them here on this table, then…” and I set them down in an out of the way place.
I found them under her bed two days later!
I read something similar at LiveScience . My oldest daughter is nearly 15 and cycles in and out of her hormone fueled lunacy. In all fairness, she’s not nearly as bad as I was.
I can remember being a very nasty teen, with dismaying clarity. I can recall marching off to my room and slamming the door, followed by shouting “I HATE you!” at my poor mother. I think she had asked me to clean up after dinner, or something just as reasonable.
This too shall pass.