July 20, 2009 My Troubled Teen Part I

Back Story: Tough Decisions
This is about my daughter mostly, but also about the struggles of being her mother and making tough decisions. My now fifteen-year-old-daughter has always been one to challenge me – my authority, my intelligence, my patience, my temper. She was born strong-willed. Born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and totally blue, she fought through it without missing a beat. She was always tough, and intimidated the boys in elementary school when she stepped onto the four-square court.

Fast-forward to age twelve, when she was in full blown adolescence with the moodiness and surliness that goes with it. I thought I had at least another year before it hit, but she was ahead of schedule. Her talking back and defiance became rather pronounced, and she started to wear black and be interested in a more edgy crowd. I didn’t allow it to go to far as far as dressing, but her attitude was difficult for me to combat and harder for me to cope with. We began fighting quite a bit, and just not relating at all. I still didn’t think much of it, and didn’t realize that she needed (and still needs) me to be a different kind of parent.

At age thirteen, she was so difficult to live with, alternating between dark moods, alienating herself, and total defiance, that I allowed her to move to another state to live with her father. In one of her more lucid moments, she had me believing that what she was after was to get to know him better. In my mind, I thought this was the root of her problems and this might just be the answer. Perhaps she was uncomfortable or frustrated living with me – and my long-time boyfriend, and a total of four teenagers (she being the youngest) – and needed to find out for herself what life was like with her bio-dad.