h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Gruesome twosome are now VeryNearly16 and 14andahalf

Over the last few months I've come to the conclusion that I don't like my younger daughter. She has flashes of lovliness, and when she is lovely and on good form, everyone around her gets it too. But more often than not she's not nice, she is rude, ungrateful, lazy and shouty. Inconsiderate, actually.

I know that it could be a lot worse since she's not (I think) drinking and doing drugs and stealing from me, but she is really horrible most of the time (mean spirited to her sister etc etc). And she never wants to be at home because we're too boring and "nag her all the time about her behaviour and not tidying her room"

Actually both their rooms are so disgusting I won't go in them. They won't tidy them (they are too lazy) and I don't know how to handle that at all.

But #2. I really just don't like her. last week we took them christmas shopping. As I get a little bit of Christmas money we gave them some (too much, actually) to get things for each other and their friends (and maybe even us... they do like to give us presents). #1 said "oh thank you, you don't need to give me money I saved some up" and #2? She just said "well, that won't go far".

I really really don't know what to do about her. She stayed out all night at a friends house, and now I've just had a mouthful of abuse because I want her home tonight.

That after I saw her briefly in town today (I dropped #1 off to go out with a friend, and then I went to see The Hobbit on my own, is out with some friends). #2 called just as I was leaving and when she heard we would be in town asked me for money to go to McD.

Frankly, it's my fault - more often than not these days I just say "yeah yeah" and let her do what she wants. I'm exhausted (I get home at 7pm, gets up at 4:15 and it wakes me up [not on purpose], I sort of doze until 6am but that's making me tired too). I'm suffering from a terrible lethargy with my OU studies (so much so that I'm considering giving it up) and I hate my job.

In short.
I just needed a whine and a moan. Unfortunately I've just spilled all that out to my mum and now she's worried about me.

Anyway. If anyone wants a 14 year old, I'll pack her bags and send her over

I already have one, thanks. Hang in there.

Mol

it can't be normal that i'm crying all the time. I mean, I know I'm generally a wuss and generally stressed and not having a good year. But seriously.

I want to away and join the navy!

Oh, Sho, I think you are run down and overtired and everything seems worse then. I had two boys so I am not an expert on girls, but I do remember what a pain I was at that age!

I hope she doesn't get to see your posts on here

It will probably all pass and she will be lovely again. Did your eldest go through a similar phase and you have forgotten, or do they just have different temperaments.

Being a Mum and swimming against the tide of peer pressure, and all the rubbish youngsters are faced with is damned hard work, and Christmas puts added pressure on us all.

I can only wish you and a Happy Christmas, and hope things settle down before you do or say something youi regret. If it is any comfort my eldest son and I used to fight like cat and dog, and were only saying the other day that we get on much better these days .... then my son said that is because we don't live together any more!



Websailor

thanks, WS. No she won't see this as she doesn't have any interest in h2g2 at all.

What I feel like is that I've lost her. And she doesn't want to come back.
(and of course, I would never actually tell her I don't like her. And I love her anyway)

I wouldn't have any useful parenting advice to give. But in answer to the "what if..."

...I think it probably means you're both human.

You haven't lost her Sho, she is just being a typical teenager There were times when I felt the same about my son and now we are close, though still able to rub one another up the wrong way at the drop of a hat.

Sounds like you need to get some rest, and maybe things will look better. Of course you love her, I never doubted that or you wouldn't be getting upset.

Take care of yourself,

Websailor

Exactly. You'll never lose her. She just needs to find the way that the world makes sense to her. Which isn't the same way as it is for you.

But heck, it's hard going through that part!

I've often said I'd rather face the armies of hell than a pissed off teenage girl. I don't know how my colleagues at the girls school handle it.

Now I've been there for long enough and gotten some perspective, I've started to see patterns in my teenagers at work: for a few years after the age of 13/14 a significant number of them become horrors. The consolation is by the time they reach 17/18 they become nice again.

Poor girl. I wonder how SHE must be feeling.

I know I couldn't stand my mother when I was a teenager. That's because the most important thing to her was always how others would view HER and judge HER, and how my looks, my views, my friends, my actions and my attitude would reflect on HER and HER qualities as a mother.
So eventually I gave up trying to please her and just took some small comfort in annoying the heck out of her.

Oh Sho...

I am so sorry for all the crap you have to put up with these days. As to #2 - it is so hard to tell what drives her. Seconds always have a different time of it. They always run against #1s. So when #1 says "Thank you, you are so kind, and look, I have already saved some of my own" - what, really, can #2 do to be not-#1? So she goes all opposite. If #1 is nice, I have got to be nasty. If #1 is all Gymnasium, I must be all Hauptschule. And so on. Then the age has got to be a factor.

I wish I had some advice for you, but all I as a teacher can say is that my pupils, when they are that age, are really good for nothing. (Some of my colleagues suggested that year 7 - 9, there should not be any academic type of schoolwork. Just shop, welding, gardening, practical work, and sports. Because frankly, whatever they teach their seventh graders, eigth and ninth graders, they have to re-teach them in year ten...

So anyway, Sho, I wish you all the strength you can muster

TBH, I think there are very few 14 yr old girls that are in any way likeable. They have stopped being that lovely, smiley baby & preteen and go full on into raging hormones and horrible attitude. I think boys do their real horrible period at about 9-13.

I remember my sister asking if she could have (her) portable telly back as she wanted to watch it with friends. I, at 14, unplugged it and threw it across the room at her...after years of downright loathing, she is now my very best friend. My brother has 4 girls, 2 at 18, one 22 and the 14 yr old from hell - I have noticed that even on FB, some of her longtime friends are now saying what a bitch she is. I came out the other side as did my sister & 3 older nieces so there is hope.

When you are tired yourself, there is not enough energy to fight back at them, so sod it for a while, lose the whole guilt thing, let her know you are available and still love her but look after yourself for a little bit. Maybe you are being too nice and a bit of distance will make her think?

Oh, Sho.

If it makes you feel better, I don't much like any children, no matter to whom they belong.

No... that doesn't really make you feel better, but I hope it at least made you chuckle a little.

Either you'll both outgrow it and learn to like each other, or... you'll both just learn to live with it (like I eventually learned to do with my mother). But knowing what a fab mom you are, I suspect that once the hormones relent a little, you'll be quite tight.

Incidentally, I meant *her* hormones, and not yours.

As everyone has said "it's just a phase". It might take 10 years for her to turn back into a normal human being. But you've got to get through those years in the meantime, coping with work and everything else as well.

We'll try and help if we can, even if it only is to cheer you up.

Send Miss Stroppy to her grandmother for a bit. Don't worry about if she can cope or anything ... grandparents have a magic effect on kids. She is old enough to help around the house and talk to people, and will enjoy being independent and treated like an adult. I'm not sure your mum will agree though, now you've poured your woes out to her! You could threaten her with boarding school, but I expect she knows that you would never do that, and anyway, you couldn't afford it.

As you have seen, Yelbakk and Iago know exactly what you mean - can you talk to one of her teachers?


I never didn't like any of my own kids, but I did have a period when I disliked the children of a very good friend. They are now wonderful people, hard-working, one married, one nearly, and the married one has a dog (what is there not to like?)

I'm feeling a lot better about it today, I think the problem is partly one of raging hormones, on both sides, and I'm definitely not on top form. That's probably why I'm so down about it all because I know that at times I am being unreasonable.

My mum suggested I send her over (even after I said all that to her). I'm wondering if she might like to go at Easter and maybe take a friend. I think my mum would like that, actually. #1 has her school leaving exams in May so it might give her some peace and quiet to do some schoolwork.

What I want to do is have more Sho/#2 time but since she doesn't actually want to spend much time with me right now it's not easy to organise.

We'll come out of it somehow, I suppose

Ah, memories. I sit here alone, in my lovely quiet bungalow with just my cat purring for noise, and reading this, instantly I am transported back to the hell on Earth that was teenagers. I had 2 girls 18 months apart. Then a boy 4 years after the younger girl, then a gap of 10 years before another baby boy appeared...the reactions of my 2 teenage girls couldn't have been more different. #1 at 15 couldn't wait to be mother hen, but #2 was acutely embarrased about her pregnant mother. I couldn't have committed a worse sin and I recall the words "social suicide" coming out of her 14 y.o. mouth. She began skipping school, staying out, shoplifting, smoking, drinking alcohol, I could smell it on her when she did come home. I was devastated because we had been through a lot - I'd raised them alone from their brother being age 2, and I thought we were close. The girls began fighting and actually came to blows (they shared a bedroom) and I remember #1 saying she couldn't stand her sister. Those 3 all left home at age 17 under their own steam.

Fast-forward 18 years and I have 2 daughters in their 30s whom I am immensely proud of. Both have Uni degrees and one has provided me with a (now teenage) grandson. Now even my youngest has left home and I've had people ask me if I miss him () I don't miss any of it and am in Heaven having the place to myself.

You are lucky you are happily married Sho, I've had a succession of boyfriends/partners and it rarely works with step-children involved. But I can forsee a time when there's just you and again and you will get thereI'd say at times of stress and angst, take a deep breath, close your eyes and imagine the time when there's just you two.

And if I could see you in 30 years' time, I'll bet No. 2 will be rallying round looking after you and her Dad and is the bestest daughter in the world.

GB

Sho