*Thanks for the cross stitch pattern Grandmother. Might have to dust off my needles.
Well yes, I realize it’s nothing she hasn’t heard away from home. I’m not a prude myself, and my kids have heard me use use mild swearing in casual conversation (nothing stronger than “bitch”) many times. But to present her with it on a silver platter like that seems a bit like condoning it. I too, was struck by the picture you mention, and wanted to show her at least that much. It’s not that I don’t think she can handle it, it’s just that she’s not “into” the celebrity culture enough to even recognize a lot of the references.
Actually, that might be part of the problem. When all the girls in middle school were putting on make-up, listening to music and talking about boys, she wanted to play pretend games based on characters in books she’s read. She thought that other stuff was stupid and pointless. And in a time when girls are growing up waaay too fast, I don’t see the harm in letting her do it at her own pace. I honestly can’t say how far down the road dating is. She doesn’t seem to be interested right now, but that can change in the blink of a cute boy’s eye.
Her creativity and imagination are limitless. Yet she is maturing at a slower rate than most of her peers. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen.
No, somebody was what her brother perceived as a golden younger sibling. We’re about equally intelligent, but he has ADD that was undiagnosed when we were kids and…well, he was the sort of kid that every. single. little. thing. had to be a fucking fight. Getting him out of bed was a 30-minute ordeal, as was getting him in and out of the shower. Getting his shit together and getting him out the door for school was like herding cats. He got in trouble at school quite often for not doing or forgetting to bring in his homework, or for having personality conflicts with other kids or his teachers and not knowing when to shut the hell up. Getting him to do his homework or any household chores practically required a whip and chair and was a guaranteed hour of bellowing about how stupid it was and why should he have to do it and blah blah blah. Getting him to bed took somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 hours. As you can imagine, he got in trouble very frequently. I was, overall, not a better kid, but certainly an easier one and seldom got in trouble.
To this day, my brother believes that he was the whipping boy who couldn’t breathe without someone yelling at him, and I was everyone’s Perfect Little Golden Princess who could do no wrong. To certain extent, he’s not entirely wrong; if Mom told us both to clean our rooms, he and she would have a 4-hour argument and he’d usually wind up getting a spanking before it was all said and done, so by the time she realized I’d quietly shut my door and read a book instead of cleaning, she was too damn tired to do more than tell me to do it or I wasn’t getting dinner.
I know this won’t seem like much comfort now, but I too was once a 14 year old girl who hated hated hated her little 10 year old brother with a fury. Before he became a black belt in karate, we would physically fight. Once he cracked my head on the end of the sofa, another time I threw him towards a window and he cut his back on the ledge in a deep scar that remains today. We would do everything to push each other’s buttons constantly. He was the schmoozer, the popular one, the one with mediocre grades, and I was furious as a Type A personality that my parents weren’t as “hard” on him as they were on me.
Now at 19 and 23 we aren’t the best of buddies and we have utterly different outlooks on life, but we get along and even enjoy spending time together every month or so. He recently had a medical scare and called me about it first. He actually looks to me for advice now, and I listen, something I never used to do.
Glad to hear it. I really like The Desiderata myself - it gives me a good perspective on many different things.
14 year old girl, eh? Nothing wrong with her that about four years won’t cure. God, you’d have to give me A LOT of money to make me do my teen years over again. I mean, A LOT of money.
ETA: Forgot to say, I’d also suggest telling her things that you think she needs to hear. Don’t expect her to agree with you, or change right away, but just plant the seeds. She still hears you, even if it seems like she doesn’t.
This sounds a little like my situation - oldest was the over achiever. The second child did very well, too, but in a A’s and B’s instead of straight A’s second best choir vs. first best orchestra kind of way. They got along OK at that age and are now very close.
There are three things I can add to the thread.
Try to minimize competition at all times. If you give them each a piece of pie and one screams that their piece is smaller, DO NOT react by defending the sizes and insisting that they are equal. Instead, reply, “If you want more pie, you can always have another piece.” Make it about the kid not getting as much pie as they would like, not about getting the same amount as their sibling. Lucky for me, this dynamic never once happened in a situation of limited resources where there was no more of whatever they were fighting over.
Spend time with your daughter - one on one, “girls only” time, but don’t use that time to lecture her about sibling relations. It would be best if the brother’s name didn’t come up at all.
3)My ex reacted to the over-achiever vs. above average thing by telling the middle kid that she was actually, secretly, better than her older sister. He told her stuff that she knew was not true - making her think she must be really horrid if he had to lie to her like that to make her feel better. The relationship between my ex and both girls is fairly strained, and the way he put down the achievements of the oldest and glorified the achievements of the middle couldn’t have helped.
God, you’d have to give me A LOT of money to make me do my teen years over again. I mean, A LOT of money.