Some years ago, my mother told me that she was looking forward to when AC became a teen. I truly don’t remember the exact conversation anymore (and I actually think it came up more than once), but the upshot was that I deserved a dose of what I gave her.
Whether I “deserve” it or not, she had very real reasons for feeling that way — because Polimom was not a nice teenager. You might even say I was a parent’s worst nightmare; certainly I was hers. I pushed every limit, talked back, broke rules — even broke laws — and however “normal” the process was generally, at our house it was really, truly ugly.
There were a number of reasons for this, many (maybe most) of which were beyond my control. Our family moved at the crucial elementary-to-junior high transition; I went from a controlled private girls’ school cocoon to an enormous public school; my parents relationship started falling apart… and the wheels came off. There were, in fact, so many other variables impacting those years that I truly didn’t think AC’s risk factors were as high.
Whether I was (or was not) right about the effects of external factors on those years in my life, I was wrong in a big way about how things would play out with Adorable Child.
Because Polimom and AC have hit a new stage in our lives… and it ain’t purty.
This past week, AC came home every single day with some new problem.
First it was spending part of PE with her nose facing a wall (time out) for talking instead of participating… Then it was a conflict with a substitute teacher that resulted in her name “being written down”… Then it was that she’d be staying after school one day next week in “homework hall”, because she’d again left her homework in the wrong binder… Then it was a “lunch detention” (that she’ll devastatingly serve on Valentine’s Day) because she was late for the second time to a class…. and it all culminated in a call from a teacher yesterday, telling me that AC had left the classroom on a bathroom pass and not come back for about ten minutes. Instead, she was wandering the halls with some friends.
Meanwhile, AC has acquired the habit of berating me, both privately and in public. If I ask her to do anything, she snarls at me — sometimes yelling — and one day I was forced to let her walk away rather than physically force her back into the car and home.
We are, quite clearly, “there”… and I’m totally lost.
She’s only 11. It’s too soon; I’m not ready.
More than that — because of my own history, I’m very afraid.