I'm going to indulge in a shameless fit of hypocrisy. I'm going to use this forum, which few if anyone besides myself are (is?) aware of, to complain about a person who is currently complaining about me. The reason I feel no shame about this is because the complainer is my teen-aged daughter and I've been able to hear her complaints about me for well over an hour now. I'm sure the neighbors have heard it all as well.It's sheer hypocrisy of course because there's no way a person who can't hear the charges can defend themselves. Of course, she can't hear them when I'm telling them to her face.
Obviously, every parent of every teenager ever born has to deal with "You never let me do anything!!!" along with the associated slamming of doors and heavy sulks. Until I had a teen I didn't know that 'heavy sulks' could actually be felt. I've walked into them in my own home now and been convinced they're a form of emotional spider web. She manages to give a depth and breadth to sullen I haven't personally felt since my younger sister moved out. The few times I've slipped and called her by her aunt's name haven't helped I'm sure.
The door slamming itself might not be so bad, if she'd keep her fit inside the room. Instead, she gets on the phone with whichever one of her cronies she's not currently fighting with (aka her BFF!) and maligns me as loudly as possible for as long as her voice or her listeners' ear holds out. So far the max has been 3 hours, but I think she only gave up then when her phone ran out of battery. Sadly for me, since she has constant fights with all her friends, she gets to recount her story multiple times in one week. By the end of the list I'm 70ft tall with fangs, and I've never let her out in the sun since the day she was born, and I eat babies.
Sometimes, in a fit of outrage, she'll send really nasty texts to everyone on her contacts list informing them that she's had it with living here, she just can't handle it, etc. This produces instant results with worried parents calling me having found these things on their kids' phones or my own parents racing over to the house. What normally happens then is yet another visit from CPS or the school counselor, yet another round of "so where is she going to therapy?" questions, and in the end everyone except the teen figuring out that this is yet another time she's cried "wolf!" None of this registers as excessive to her of course. No matter how much help she's been given it's never enough and there's just never quite enough attention to satisfy her. The difference between good and bad attention never enters into it.
I love my daughter and I have every hope that she'll grow up to an intelligent, useful, generous member of society. Some days I have to sit on the floor in my closet telling myself that over and over, but I truly believe it. One day, when she is a mother of a teen, I will do what my mother is doing now. I'll come over when they need me, I'll always try to have an encouraging or distracting thing to say and I'll call once a week to make sure everyone is still alive.
I can't wait.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Don't feel alone. Her attention needing and crying of "Wolf!" is not only limited to you.
ReplyDelete