Posted by mair on March 14, 2005, at 12:58:24
And it frustrates the H*ll out of me.
She's 17. She's going to South America at the end of the week on a school trip. She has other scheduled activities every night this week, and most afternoons, a couple of make up tests and just regular homework to manage before she leaves. Plus there is shopping she and I need to do to get her ready. Her room looks like pictures I've seen of the London blitz.
Saturday night she couldn't attend a planned party because the weather was too awful. Instead of doing homework or laundry or making a list of what she needs to do to get ready, she spent the evening watching a movie and instant messaging her friends. I suggested that maybe she should start figuring out what she was going to take and make sure she did some laundry, and she agreed that this was a good idea, but of course nothing came of it. Yesterday she went to an out-of-town hockey game. Last night she was complaining about having a concert on Thursday night because it means she'll miss a school dance. She wants to skip the concert and go to the dance. She leaves on Friday morning. I don't think she has time to attend either one, although the concert isn't optional. When does she think she's going to pack? How could she even be thinking about a dance?
Not unpredictably, she called me from school this morning to tell me to cancel a tutoring session she has tomorrow afternoon because she's SO stressed out by all the work she has to do this week. And she now can't figure out how she and I can get shopping at all before she leaves. She sounded on the phone like she's ready to totally fall apart. It's as if it only just dawned on her that she had all this stuff going on this week.
A few months ago, she broke her hand playing basketball when she slipped on the court. I think she slipped on the court because the soles of her shoes were too worn. My husband had offered on at least 4 or 5 occasions over the winter to take her to get new basketball sneakers. Each time she cancelled out because there was something she wanted to do with her friends.
I've decided that she's totally incapable of denying herself a single social opportunity unless she has a conflict at exactly the same time. She's incapable of thinking more than one day ahead, unless of course she's trying to decide what she's going to do with her friends over the weekend. She's incapable of deciding that maybe she shouldn't go to the hockey game, for instance, since it will eat up the only otherwise unscheduled afternoon she has before she leaves.
What's most aggravating is that she stubbornly refuses to listen to any attempts to reason with her. She just blows me off and tells me I'm in a "bad mood."
It's easy enough to say it's her life and she has to learn this stuff for herself, but at some stage she'll have the inevitable meltdown because she's not ready for a test, or didn't get a paper done, or forgot to do her laundry, and if I don't jump in to help her, I'm unsupportive. In the meantime, she's turning our house into a dump and is always too busy to pitch in and help with anything.
She has an older brother who can talk my ear off explaining how he's planning to fit in everything he has to do over the next 2 weeks. He's constantly thinking about how to manage his time and he evaluates and then reevaluates what plans he makes. When he was in high school it wasn't at all unusual for me to find him working on a paper that wasn't due for several days.
My daughter thinks he got better grades than she does because he's brighter. I tell her it has much more to do with focus and priorities and organizational efforts and goal-setting.
It doesn't bother me at all that they're so different - she has wonderful qualities that he lacks and vice versa. What bothers me is that I end up having to pick up the pieces, and that it never occurs to her that doing simple things which are of little inconvenience might make both of our lives so much easier. It bothers me that she wants her brother's results without acknowledging his efforts. However, what bothers me most of all, is that she never ever does today what she somehow thinks she might have time to do tomorrow (but really doesn't).
Thanks for allowing me to rant.
Mair
PS: I'm no neat freak but it never ceases to amaze me how she could walk on top of (not, even step over) the clothing she's thrown on the floor without ever stooping to pick it up.
poster:mair
thread:470880
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/child/20050226/msgs/470880.html