im just wondering is anyone having trouble with their 12 dd mine daughter has gone from this nice girl to a complete stranger shes swears all the time and you try talking to her and cant get boo out of her.she seems withdrawn from our family all the time i know its a teenager thing but im really worried about her .
Keep talking to her (even if she's shutting you out). Make time for just the two of you to do something she'd enjoy - even something a bit "grown-up" like a coffee/cake outing, beauty parlour, whatever you do as a woman. Has she gotten AF yet? I got mine a week before i hit 13 and i was a nightmare for about 18 months before....
I think if you treat her like a bit more of a grown-up and make it clear you expect her to act like a bit more of one too, while still allowing for occasional childish meltdowns (she's only JUST growing up after all) she'll come through it.
I think the most important bit (just like with toddlers) is to make it clear that even if you don't like her behaviour one bit you love her to pieces and want her to be ok.
has she started high school this year? i reckon that makes a huge difference to a lot of kids and can really change their attitude. her shutting you out is her way of establishing her independence
Unfortunately developing an attitude is the age! With the swearing I would probably say that its not really acceptable and that there are other ways of communicating her frustration. My dd has turned 13 this year and really goes up and down. For us it is a give and take situation, so we use privledges as rewards and they are taken away as well. For rude behaviour, Jess will often find herself grounded or her mobile phone taken away...as you can appreciate with your dd these can be huge things as their friends mean everything at this age! I hope it gets better for you...
hobbley she got her af this yr shes had it for about six mnths .i tried just me and her doing stuff together she doesnt like to be seen with me somedays and somedays she too angry with me to even talk to me.she did start highschool this yr which i know is part of the problem i just cant beleive the change already maybe i dont want her to grow up yet which i cant stop .i just think i cant leave her the ways shes going its schocking behaviour we tried everything she had her phone taken off her even her computer nothing works its like she doesnt care.i know shes changing and high school is hard for some kids but i want to be able to talk to her if only she didnt shut me out .sorry guys im just scared for her i dont want her to go off the rails
OMG you just posted what i have been feeling! Except my DD is nearly 16 and she doesn't really swear. I am going out of my mind with the attitude. We have taken Jess' mobile off her as we found that even though we have a rule of no phone calls after 9pm and we have spoken to her about it in the past and she is supposed to put her phone out in the kitchen at night, the last bill still showed her making calls at 10,11 and 12 o'clock at night on weeknights. The problem is she acts like she just doesn't care, she's so rude to everyone and gets all "huffy" all the time, its driving me nuts- where is my beautiful loving DD????
Sorry that turned into a rant about me, didn't mean to hijack just wanted you to know you are not alone and I have no answers either!
i hear ya mrs mac clarissa is so nasty to her younger sisters they just want to hang around her cause shes the bigger sister but she swears at them and tells them to go away all the time.im glad im the not only one .dont tell me it gets worse i keep on thinking if shes doing this at 12 imagine what shes like at 16 .
Gee... you guys are describing exactly how I was when I was a teenager! I guess I shut people out because I wanted my independance and thought that I was grown up enough to make my own decisions. I also hung around with people that were 3-4 years older than me, so of course they were allowed to do more than I was and I wanted to 'be like them'. I got to the point where I didn't care what my parents did to me ie. take my phone off me, ground me, ban me from the internet etc. I think that had a lot to do with who I was hanging out with though and their attitude (I had a friend who moved out at 15 with her bf and had a terrible attitude). For some unknown reason I thought she was cool and I guess I tried to be like her. I really don't know what you can do about it... but maybe like Hoobley said ... take some time out with your DD and do some girly things with her and let her know you love her and want to spend time with her. I am sure you do this anyway!!
Hope it sorts itself out soon enough... not sure if I have helped or not but I wish you all the best *hugs*
lol, unfortunately it's just adolescence! Reward her with more independence for good behaviour, and take away independence for bad behaviour.
Good books:
'Princess B*tchface Syndrome' by Michael Carr-Gregg.
And 'Queen Bees and Wannabes' by Rosalind Wiseman.
Thanks Sara Jane I will get those, I am finding it hard cause I so want to ask mum how she coped with me but she died 5 years ago so I have no one to ask (dad was always at work and I hated him so didn't have much to do with him in those days LOL)
Ive also found and have done so this weekend that I can plug in a bit more when we invite her friends over and just go and talk to them..they are pretty forthcoming with information in a group..i much prefer her being here with her friends than other places lol......then i know exactly what she is doing.
'Queen bees and wannabees' was really insightful too like SaraJane has suggested.
thanks sarah i will go and get those because today has been really bad its just clarissa me and jess as the other two are at their nans .and the whole morning i tried to spend time with me and the whole time she wont have a bar of me its horrible shes said that im an idiot .and then five mins ago she lost it and went outside hitting the wall i really dont know what to do i think there has to be something else bothering her .i just said to her everytime she swears im going to ground her for a day it didnt go now so well . parenting is so hard
My now 14 year old changed a LOT last year, his first year of high school. He was ALWAYS getting in trouble, being suspended, copping an attitude about everything! He's settled down a bit this year, although the attitude still needs adjusting. I just picked up a book the other day which I am still reading but might help. It's about changing the way we parent and apparently can help with the "opening" up and talking issues (which I'm excited about cos DS 1 clams up). It's called Children are from Heaven and it's written by the same guy who wrote Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. So far what I've read is awesome and I love it!
I remember when my sister went through this (I had the pleasure of raising her from when I was 17). For her it was about several things;
Having to adjust from being a big kid to "small fry" at high school
Having to make new friends (even though some of her old friends went to her high school)
Being bullied. This was one of the biggest things. My sister was bullied a lot at high school and her way of dealing with it was to lash out at home and pick on weaker kids - so she could feel stronger and better about herself. The bullying also saw her engage in activities she probably wouldn' t have engaged in - just so she could be accepted.
Sadly, the year my sister started high school also coincided with the year our Mother died and the year our Father announced he was remarrying. Either of these two events on their own would have impacted enough but combine the two - whoa! But the very presence of change was enough for her to feel lost and the need to feel important and better about herself. The only way a lot of adolecents know how to do this is to lash out at parents and "weaker" kids.
I tried everything with my sister. Positive reinforcement, grounding, taking away privelages. Unfortunately she just got worse and worse. It wasn't until she was about 18 that she realised what she as doing and began to alter her ways. At the age of 20 she regrets a lot of what she did when she was younger. She can still be a bit ratty but is a million times better.
I hope you can make some headway with your DD. Just remember, she may act as though she hates the world (and she might even believe she does on some days), but she will always be your little girl and will always love you. And rest assured, she will always need her Mum and Dad and come running back to you when she needs help.
I know exactly how you are feeling, I got a real shock when DD started this at 12 too. I thought it would be later, but that's the onset of puberty for you.
I started to feel hopeless with Belle, I found it hard to communicate with her, she was still my daughter but it was like the door was closed to me - very frustrating.
This worked very well for us -
I sat her down and said that I can see she is getting older and that it might be time we started to treat her like a young adult. I gave her the privelege and responsibilities talk and said that if she did all the things she was supposed to (make her bed, tidy room once a week, feed the cat each day, finish homework) by a certain time each week, she was ok to go out on the weekend. Her activities then would be go to the movies with a friend or have a sleepover etc. We wrote it down as I was not going to remind her and it worked a treat, as she liked not having to ask and she was in control of the situation, either she did it or not. She always did.
Sometimes she would seem really angry and rude, but unable to express it (she also started high school that year). We arranged for her to stick a different coloured post it note to her bedroom door to let me know if she was either - angry and didn't want to talk to anyone, upset and wanted to talk, or just wanted privacy. This was so she didn't run her mouth off and get herself into more trouble. It really ****ed me off when she was rude so it saved my blood pressure a little bit, and she learnt it was totally unacceptable to speak to me rudely.
I also explained that for the time being I was run off my feet with Mitchell (newborn then) and I missed having as much time with her and we arranged to book in an 'appointment' to go somewhere just by ourselves. This actually only happened once or twice as the little bugger kept going out with her friends instead! I know she resented how little I saw of her, but I couldn't change that at the time and she just had to get used to not being an only child.
I still slip into her bedroom when the babies are asleep and have a catch up, she is a very independent 15 year old now, and it isn't fabulous all the time (you should have seen the unbridled eye-rolling and and puffing when I just asked her to do some dishes). It may well amaze you just how SELFISH they can be at this age, I felt really disappointed at one stage, she was such a caring child usually, but when I asked around every single parent said their child was pretty much the same. In fact she was so horrible to her little brother (just being nasty and mean) that he still has never forgiven her and it's mucked up their relationship. He tells her to get lost when she comes home from school, so she is reaping what she sowed - and learning the consequences.
I really, really feel that lots of parents start trying to be their childs buddy at this time and it's not the way to go. Teens want boundaries, even if it is just to have something to push against. They rant and ***** about it, but it's what makes them feel secure and cared about. That is her safety zone that she comes home to. Growing up is hard and I can't fight her battles for her but this I can do.
Just remember, it's not going to be a walk in the park either way, your daughter is starting to stretch into a new skin, she may be shutting herself away in a cocoon right now, but in a while she will emerge a butterfly. It's a wonderful thing to watch.
please help me understand my dd
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