Parenting a teenage girl is hard

Disclaimer before we start: I’m tired and I feel the need to ramble so if this post seems to be all over the place, I apologise.

My eldest daughter has just turned 15. It seems that all her friends have the same attitude that she has – that they can do whatever they want and curfews mean nothing to them and being disrespectful to their parents and siblings is an ok thing to do.

She is currently “seeing” a boy who is 17 and has his driver’s licence. Last weekend, she went to the movies with him and her best friend, and her best friend’s boyfriend. We told her to be back by a certain time only for her to come home an hour later and she brought the kids inside with her so she wouldn’t get into trouble. When we told her about being late, she totally disregarded it and showed us attitude.

She has a lot of boys turning up in cars and she sits out the front with them, blaring music and carrying on. When we ask them to turn the music down because we don’t want the neighbours to get annoyed, she just rolls her eyes. We’ve had instances where people want to beat her up, there was a website on myspace called the “We hate (DD15’s name) club, and I’ve even had a boy’s mum scream at my daughter calling her a slut in front of our house.

She tells me that she doesn’t know why she seems to be getting such a bad reputation because she’s not doing anything. She gets all defensive when I start asking questions. I feel as though I don’t really know my daughter and it hurts me.

She’s caused a lot of problems between DH and I where I’m the more stricter one with her and DH was letting her do what she wants. We often argue about how much freedom he gives her. It’s only now that he’s realising that maybe he’s been a little too lenient with her. She’s rude to her siblings and rude to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, she’s a good kid and while she and I clash, I love her with all my heart! She just frustrates me so much! The sad thing is that I’ve started noticing DD12 picking up on this bad attitude and she is trying to see how far she can push the line. I sometimes believe that DD15 is setting a bad example for the 3 younger girls.

So anyway, I don’t know if this post is just a waste of time but I just needed to rant a little. I just feel frustrated sometimes because while I don’t want to have total control over my children, I feel as though we have NO control over her. I guess we should thank God that she’s not drinking alcohol (at least we think she isn’t) and she’s not doing drugs and she’s never run away or anything like that but it’s frustrating just the same.

Maybe it’s just what being a teenager is and I’ve forgotten? Maybe we’ve reached the stage where mum and daughter aren’t meant to be friends…..I just hope it hurrys up so we can get to the part where we are friends again and not biting at each other all the time….because I’m tired of it.