Being a girl and having a girl is interesting work. I’m very worried for my future with my girl because of the way girls can drive their mothers crazy.
I didn’t drive my mom crazy. Well, maybe once or twice in high school. There was that time I was making out with a boy in his family’s pool and I lost track of the time by two hours. I wasn’t being sassy about it, just stupidly crush struck by Stan, The Man (with the van). There was that one time I got drunk. I was busted. My punishment was a nice long chat about my drunkenness very early the next morning with my mother. Hung over. I am not even kidding. I think I pretty much became designated driver for all my friends (score for them) after that morning.
Wait! There was the one time I was a complete beotch to my mother and she was actually doing something nice for me. She’d bought me a watch – for no reason at all, the nerve! – and I said it was ugly. I was 16 and stupid and I never acted like that again. I think I was a pretty easy teenager to raise but as I watch my mother watch me I think she is happy I have a drama girl. She laughs! She thinks my life is a comedy. “Well, my sweetie, that’s how it goes!” says Barbara, the watch giver.
Now my girl? Sassy. Overly dramatic. Abundant with her eye rolls, out loud sighs, head flips and all of this is completed with at least one hand on a hip. This is to say that even though she is just 9, I am picturing her at age sixteen. We’re working on a behavior plan strategy (another post entirely) but I’m not feeling too confident.
I sincerely doubt that my daughter will realize her wrongs as easily as I did in my youth. This girl has conviction. She is sure as sure can be in her wrongness. She feels she has a right in her sassiness. She walks around like it’s her BIRTHRIGHT to sass. I’m so ready to take away all the comforts of home to teach her a lesson!
I somehow thought it would be better by now (she’s 9), like she would miraculously turn into the little smiling cherub I had pictured when she was standing on my bladder and later toddling on the playground. Sometimes I catch myself fantasizing about how her righteousness will help her confidence as she moves into the age of mean girl gangs and when boys want to get their hands up her shirt. Yeah, that’ll work.
Right. RIGHT?
About Julia Roberts
Oh my, I’m so glad it’s not just me. I’m going to have to move before my daughter is a teen. She is six and last night we had a battle of the wills. I’m still not sure who won, but in the middle of it she growled under her breath that she hated me and when I asked her to just stop talking she said I didn’t’ have control over her words or her feet.
I know there are 2 kinds of kids the ones who you tell they are grounded and they sit pouting for the weekend and the one who when told they are grounded go out the window. Mine is going out the window!
Well your girl is ahead of mine! She didn’t say she hated me until 7 1/2! Clearly that makes me feel better you must know!
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I thought I was a pretty easy teenager too – and I see my 13 year old niece with her epic eyerolls and think “oh I’m so glad I had a boy!”
And see there? I have one of each. What kind of trouble am I in? I shutter at the thought of my girl being 13.
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I was one of those teen girls that make their parents INSANE!!!
My daughters (and son) are the most responsible kids I know. I frequently lament that they are more responsible, wise and grown up than me.
My Mother recently said that sometimes life is just NOT fair… She was so waiting for me to realize the HELL I put her through. Sorry Mom.
I have to agree with your mother! Life is not fair! You shouldn’t get all the hellaciousness as a teen AND easy kids! In the South we say, That Just Ain’t Right!
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
Okay Julia – here is the deal…..having already raised two daughters (now 22 and 21) my ONLY words of comfort to you are “it will get better!” I have a new game plan for the last of the little females of the house (who will be 7 next month). The older girls came downstairs one morning with horns coming out the tops of their heads. There were different – over night – VERY different! I told them to go back upstairs and find where they left the original kids. If they had stayed upstairs until they found them, it would have been a very long THREE years. Luckily for me, they got to this stage much later than Q. But it was still a stage that will forever be in my mind. It was not all bad – don’t get me wrong….it was just different. Buckle down – stay strong(er) than her – be consistent…..you know all the parenting tips they talk about in the books. And then, make your own game plan for Q since you know her better than anyone else. It will get better (but it will get worse first).
PS – You two will become the best of friends when this stage is over and that my dear is fabulous!!! :-)
I’m going to hold you to the “best of friends” part, just so you know!
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I’m right there with ya, sista! Geez. It’s really going to get worse?
I don’t even know what to say because I have TWO of them! The oldest is sass personified. The youngest vacillates between whine and defiance. The only thing I’ve found that comes even close to defusing any of it is humor. I don’t always remember that when I should, either. That is so not funny!
I was one of those complaint kids doing what I should with a few meanderings into the dark side of getting away with something. But the fear of getting caught was mostly too much. I was independent and think very differently from my parents, so I suppose they view me as a wild child, especially since my brother came in perfected form.
Still, I don’t think anything I did could be a karmic set up for what I get now from my oldest. At 11, she is exasperated by the simplest of things and pronounces judgment from a place of highly glossed scorn. I suppose I should be lucky she speaks at me at all. LOL
It will be interesting to see who these fiercely independent, sassy girls are as women. I do not relish the getting there, though. Not at all.
Twitter Name: SiobhanWolf
Is the universe poking fun at me when I write above “complaint” when I meant to say “compliant”?
Not you, too, universe! Not you, too! ROFLMAO
Twitter Name: SiobhanWolf
Really…that was your brain HOPING compliant could be used more in your (and my) vocabulary! ROFLMAO too!
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
It was more likely my brain saying, Compliant? In your DREAMS! Complaint is what ya gonna get! Bwahahahahahaha!
Twitter Name: SiobhanWolf
Oh My God, this is funny! I didn’t know about the watch story. I do know that one of our sisters had tantrums as a child…and she got a child who had tantrums. The Momma said “God has a sense of humor”!
Imagine how it was in the house we grew up in…4 girls. Uff Da! It’s amazing that we all lived through it.
And Yes, Quinnnie is Miss Thang! I feel for ya, sista!
Twitter Name: Pat Cowan
Whenever you want a girl, you know where to find one! Will trade for something!
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
My 5 yr old might deserve her own reality show for all of the drama she can create! In reading the other posts, I can safely say: I win! Not a great prize to say your kid is the sassiest but I’ve been told “I hate you”, “I’m running away”, and “I wish I had a different family” all by the ripe old age of 4. Now 5 and in preschool I hear these gems: “But all of the other kids get to…!”, “I hate living here!”, and “You are the worstest mother EVER!”. I pretty much introduce her to people as “this is my 5-going-on-15-year-old” as a way to explain away whatever verbal diarrhea she might dole out next.
Four is pretty young to be spouting that (I feel your pain)…but look at it this way, she’ll probably speak her mind when it’s really important! Like when he IS 15…
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I have a 10 year old daugher (among other kids of course) and she is a grade A smart ass. She has a sassy mouth on her but I was the same way when I was younger. NOT THAT YOUNG though. I didn’t get sassy until I was 13 or 14. And it doesn’t get any better. It gets worse the older they get. Some days mine makes me so mad I wanna slap her teeth down her throat. If I were a violent person, I would be doing some child abusing for sure.
Twitter Name: PeggySueCusses
I know. Let’s have a moment of silence in our honor for parenting girls, okay?
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
My mother warned me, paybacks are a beyotch. So when I had boys I was all, “HA! BOYS! NO DRAMA!”
Boy howdy, was I wrong. That boy is ten times what I was. Drama, acting, you name it. Gah help me.
Twitter Name: thedgoddess
I hope my own aren’t half as difficult as I became during a few years there… oh boy was I pain! From perfect (ish) to nightmare overnight!
And so…we enter puberty! My oldest son just turned 12, so just as he is in the middle of puberty hell my daughter will be at the start. Awesome!
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I tell ppl that my 7 year old has the emotional life of a 16 year old combine that with the whining which she refuses to give up on and you will know very clearly why i’m medicated.
I do not understand, I was a perfect daughter and now have a house full of boys. I’m the queen! :)