My oldest child turned 14 in March. She has always been a stubborn, defiant child, but once she hit the teen years it got so much worse. I realize her hormones are all over the place and that, in her life, she has stress. I don’t discount that children experience stress. I have seen it with all of my kids. But why did I have to get the child who thinks she is queen of the world? I know I was far from perfect as a teen. I am a shy, quiet person and I get nervous. When I get nervous I get a little mean. When I was a teen and I would be nervous I took it out on my mom. And what does my lovely girl do? Takes it out on her mom. But she is a lot worse than I was. She only wants to be helpful when she wants something. Thinks I should drive her around everywhere, buy her everything, do everything for her. Ok so she may be the typical teenage girl. But she also is so disrespectful. In our town the school went from kindergarten to 8th grade, so she just graduated 8th grade. And, here, they make a big deal of it. Something I have never seen. I live in Canada and grew up in Ohio. We didn’t have a big 8th grade graduation ceremony or dance. So we had to buy her a dress (a prom dress), got her nails done, I did her makeup, paid to have her dress altered and curled her hair. And let me tell you her hair. The most beautiful hair I have ever seen, but it takes work to curl it. So, in between taking care of my 5 mth old and 3 yr old(thankfully the 6 yr old had school that day), I curled her hair. It took almost 2 hours. But I did it for her. And she looked amazing. I couldn’t have been more proud, my heart was bursting when I saw her smile. My baby girl is growing up! Now, because we have a lot going on, we were running behind. Yes we are always behind. I say I wish I could live on Duggar time(you know the Duggars from the TLC show), they say they are always late but they can be because they don’t have school or places that they have to be at a certain time. So we hurried to my inlaws house to snap a few pictures of her in their yard and I said I would do more after the dinner. I wanted some of all of the kids together. And the entire family, because when do we ever get the chance?
We had the dinner and went to the ceremony. My girl got an award for art. She is very shy and ran on the stage and ran off. She was annoyed she had to go up. Doesn’t like the attention. Then afterwards she wouldn’t even let me take pictures. I got one picture of her with her diploma and one with her grandparents. I was so sad and disappointed in her behavior, because she acted like she didn’t want anything to do with us. It broke my heart, especially later when I found out she posed with her friends for their parents to take pictures. I let her go to her dance and went home and cried. I am a very emotional person and I am still breastfeeding so my emotions tend to go nuts but it was so sad and hurtful. All that I had put into this day, for her, to make her happy, all I ever ask of them, is let me have my pictures. And she couldn’t even give me that. My husband says one day she will realize how she has treated me(because this is just one small example) and she will feel terrible about it. I will probably have to wait until she is my age though and has a daughter that treats her like this. I hope not. I do know I feel terrible for doing it to my mom. I wonder sometimes, did my mom go home and cry? Did she feel awful? I hope not.
My beautiful daughter on the day of her 8th grade graduation.
A Mom of Many 