As most of you know, my daughter Raegan will be 12 soon- at the end of the month, in fact. And she's driving us NUTS! She's very tempremental lately, and extremly hormonal.
To give an example-
Yesterday our younger two children had school confrences back to back. Raegan agreed to watch the kids while were at the confrence for the bargain price of $.75/30 minutes. After Nick got home from work, we realized something in her room just did not smell right.
Being that she's about to go through puberty, her feet stink- bad. All the time. We're constantly on her to remove her socks and shoes, and to shower or at least wash her feet. Instead, most of the time, she walks around wearing her winter boots without socks. They reek. Sunday night, I got fed up with them, and stuck them outside on the balcony.
Back to yesterday. Her room smelled like feet. It was gross. We ask her at least twice a week to pick her room up, and at least twice a week, she pretends to clean it until bed time, then nothing. So we told her to clean her room.
She came out and asked me about 15 minutes later if I could let her play online for a while if she cleaned her room. I told her yes, we could do that, as long as she cleaned the room completely. I even told her that if she didn't have time yesterday after cleaning, she could use her time today.
As I was telling her this, she just started getting more and more angry, and started crying about it. I asked her what was wrong, told her I can't help her if I don't know what's bothering her, and she just stared at me, tears streaking down her face, with a rather livid expression.
I finally lost it, and told her to go clean, and that no, she wasn't going to get computer time until she explained to me what I did wrong. She stormed off to her room, and promptly slammed her door. Now, Nick was standing at her room, because her door is next to Chris's door, and he was talking with Chris. His hand was on the frame, with his finger tips in the frame itself, at the hinged side. He barely moved his hand in time to stop his fingers from being pinched badly in it, so naturally, he wasn't happy.
Not to mention, we have a no-slamming doors policy. So, he went into her room, and she was muttering up a storm about it, and crying her eyes out about how unfair we are, and how we hate her. Nick talked with her, she pulled the same act she did with me, and he finally told her the same thing I did, that until she could start talking to us and acting in an appropriate manner, she wasn't getting any online time. He also added that if she slams her door again, he's going to take it off the hinges.
To this, she started in with, "I'll report you to the complex- you can't do that, it's not allowed!" I'm pretty sure the complex wouldn't care one wit, as long as the door wasn't damaged when it was removed. That's beside the point.
I'm getting to my wit's ends with her. We ended up leaving her here to clean her room, and taking the younger two kids with us. Since their confrences weren't until after 5, and it's not a near by school, we knew it would be late when we got home so we stopped and grabbed KFC to bring home for dinner.
We get home, and Raegan is sound asleep in bed, no work -at all- done on her bedroom. I woke her up, she came out, and half dozed through dinner. She was perfectly happy with us after dinner, though, laughing and joking with us like nothing at all had happened.
She had already been told that because of something that happened Sunday night, she would be going to bed early last night. Well, having already taken a nap, she didn't go to sleep when we sent her to bed at 9. Instead, she played with her DS and read books.
Her and Chris both went to bed at 9, but it was probably 10:30 before either stopped messing around and went to bed. Because they kept playing in each other's rooms, and driving us nuts, we told them both an 8:30 bed time tonight. Then, it became 8. Then it became 8 for the rest of the week.
Chris is picking up on the talking back and the attitude from Raegan, and starting to do it himself, though he doesn't do it nearly to the degree Raegan has.
I think we had it easy with Raegan growing up. She was easy from birth- slept through the night at 3 weeks, was almost never sick, got/gets good grades in school, never used to give us a hard time- she was a good child.
But the change over the past 6 months is enough for me to want to lock her in her room for a month and not have to listen to her mouthiness. The thing with threatening to call the complex worries me for another reason- I certainly don't need her starting to threaten to tell her teachers how "mean and horrible" we are (regardless of the fact that we aren't- it only takes a child saying they get hit at home, or sent to bed without meals, and CPS is at your door), or calling CPS, or something equally insane.
She's driving me nuts!!!
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Comments: 32
It sounds like she needs some one-on-one time with Mom or Dad.....where you can ask some questions over a period of time. Many times teens like to do this in the car...when there is no eye contact.
I think I must just be having a rough few days, because I just got into it with Gilly. She's 6. She knows the rules. One rule is - stay out of Mom & Dad's bedroom. Because the kids tend to get into snacks, we hide them in there quite often. I -never- would have gone through my parent's bedroom, or their dresser drawers as a child. But, my kids seem to think that despite it being an actual written rule, it's ok to do it. All 3 of them!
Gilly got into our room yesterday morning, so this morning, I gave her a 5 minute talk about why it's not all right to go into our room, and that she's not allowed in there, etc, etc. She was all, "Yeah mom, I know!"
20 minutes ago, I went in to get my coat, and the mattress is half off the bed, my dresser drawers are open, and my pillows and blankets are all over the room. OOOOH, was I mad. I'm still mad. We have a lock on our door, but I'm of the beliefe that if there's a rule stating it is not allowed, I shouldn't have to go around locking my door- and carrying the darn screwdriver that unlocks it, because all the little keys are lost.
I'm off to take a long hot bath, read a book, dye my hair, and calm down. I'm not happy with any of my kids today.
Sorry I'm laughing, but I can laugh as I have a daughter the same age LOL. My daughter, Mary, will be 12 near the end of August.
We've already got a standing policy about door slamming. We absolutely will not tolerate slamming bedroom doors out of anger. My kids know, you slam your door angrily, we will remove the door for a period of time.
We too have a bedroom door lock and for a while the kids were behaving and respecting our rules to stay out of mom and dad's bedroom. Now we're back to locking the freakin' door! UGH.
I agree that technology isn't great when it comes to kids. As a kid, I had a radio in my room. Now, most of my friends did have TV's, but I didn't, and honestly, I never missed having one. I was fine without it.
My husband is a tech-junky, though. All 3 kids have a TV, vcr, and DVD player. I was just telling him I think it's time to remove all the technology from their rooms, and let them live without it for a while.
Good luck.
All I have to say is to definitely say what you mean and do what you say.