Need Help with My Mental Attitude Towards my DD
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Anonymous
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What do you do, as a parent, when you find yourself frustrated with your child's personality? I know this is my problem, not my DD's. She is who she is, but I am struggling with accepting her and at the same time, straddling the line between pushing her in certain ways and letting her be her. She is a sweet funny 10 year old girl, but she does not seem to be the least bit curious about the world around her, does not engage much in school (she tells me all the time that she hates school but wishes she liked it), is a little introverted around friends so she's not out there seeking to play with neighborhood kids, never wants to read or draw or create anything, just wants to play on a screen. I can understand the introversion (I was pretty introverted as a kid, and very sensitive to boot), but it drive me crazy to see her not want to engage in ANYTHING. We've taken all screens away from both her and her brother b/c things were getting out of hand. We were very lenient with screentime over the winter and had to go cold turkey but that's a different issue. But now when I tell her to go do something else, she just sits on the couch staring into space unless her younger brother begs her to come outside and play basketball. She has no empathy as far as I can tell (she begs me to let her watch CNN b/c it's "fun," needless to say we don't let her, and I gave her a long talk about how other people's misfortune is tragic and not fun in the least), has no interest in anything really.
I'm wracking my brain to think of ways that I can encourage her to be more curious, as well as to find activities that would suit her personality (i.e. taking her to the indoor rock climbing gym instead of pushing her to do girls on the run, which she refuses to do, although she does seem to like soccer), as well as find some volunteer activities for us as a family to build her empathy. But at the same time, I wonder, am I doing this for her or for me? Am I trying to turn her into someone she's not? Is this just normal kid stuff? It's hard, b/c my son is the opposite. He's curious about everything, loves school, loves playing with friends, total extrovert, out on his bike until it's too dark or cold, etc. I have trained myself (literally) not to compare them, but I worry also that DD is comparing herself to DS and I want her to have something, ANYTHING, to grab on to as her "thing" so that she can feel good and confident about herself. And yes, so that I can stop being so anxious about her. But I guess my main question is, is my anxiety warranted, and if not, how do I deal with it so that it doesn't affect her? I don't want to project my baggage on to her, but at the same time if there are ways I can push her a little, I want to try. Did any of this make sense? I feel like I'm rambling. |
Anonymous
| What kind of gendered messages did you give her as a child? |
Anonymous
OP here. She is not at all "girly" and has always preferred to dress like a boy, play basketball over read, etc. I fully support that. If I send her gendered messages it is subconscious which I may be guilty of but what I think I send more in terms of messages isn't along gender lines, but along the lines of "outgoing/extrovert = good, shy/introvert = bad" which I am trying my hardest not to do. |
Anonymous
| Stop pushing her. Stop comparing her to her brother. I agree with you on the screen time. She needs to relearn how to be creative again. She became too dependent on the screen. Give her a hug every day and tell her that you love her. Adolescence is tough. |
Anonymous
OP here. Ok, so here's my next question. Is there something I should do to help her relearn how to be creative. This is a serious question. I am realizing that I really don't have the skills to parent her (sort of joking here, but not really). I am the youngest of 3 sisters, and my parents were extremely hands-off when it came to me (mainly b/c my two older sisters had lots of issues and needed a lot of attention) but whether it was nature or nurture, I was very self-motivated. I sort of bitterly joke that I was raised by wolves so I don't have good parenting role models. Anyway....the point is, I feel very unsure of how much to let her relearn this by herself, versus how much I should do it with her. I want her to be more independent and not need me to entertain her when she doesn't have a screen to stare at, but I also want to be there for her. Argh. I feel like I sound like a lunatic. It's just that between all the blog posts that say let your kids roam free and have a 70's era childhood and all the blogs that say the more quality time you spend with your kids the better, I am suffering from a lot of mixed messages and it's coming through in my crappy parenting. |
Anonymous
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Ban all screen time and sign her up for various activities after school and for the summer. If you can afford it, hire a great tutor to help her with her homework and get her enthusiastic about excelling if the interest isn't there. This is what we did with a son who sounded a lot like your daughter.
The key, I think, is to ban all screen time. I know how hard it is but I sure as hell don't want some stoner-gamer for a teenager. We also found that with DS some of the more off-beat activities were more to his liking like cooking classes and fishing (and repairing antique reels). |
Anonymous
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I know this might be a long shot but is she at all interested in journalism and writing maybe? I was the weird kid who liked the news at that age. Its not even that I was so enthralled with the actual news but I loved the whole concept of the evening news and how everyone could find out about the rest of the world in their own home,etc. I vividly remember my parents letting me stay up the night of the Berlin Wall beginning to fall and I was only 9 years old but I begged to stay watching!
Could be a direction to see if she has interest. I know it doesn't help much with the rest of your post. But good luck in both accepting and encouraging your daughter to find her interests |
Anonymous
OP here, thanks for this, it's a great idea. I'm afraid her interest in CNN is more prurient than journalistic but maybe there is something there. I do encourage her constantly to write stories or do other stuff like this (now that screens aren't an option) and maybe one out of every ten attempts, she'll do it. But I can try to find some other ways to motivate her along these lines and see if anything catches. |
Anonymous
| If you don't want her watching screens and she's interested in current events (even if it's for the trainwreck value) why not give her the newspaper? At least she'd be learning something, and reading and be up on current events for her social studies/world affairs type classes. |
Anonymous
| Sort of random, but check out some of Keri Smith's books: How to Be an Explorer of the World, Wreck This Journal, Finish This Book, etc. They are hard to explain, but are like guided creativity lessons/journal entries. Some of them you can do with your daughter, but the activities can also be done alone. |
Anonymous
| My nine year old tells me he loves Fox News. No idea where that came from, but if we had Fox News, which we don't, I wouldn't forbid him from watching it. |
Anonymous
| Does she have friends, OP? |
Anonymous
OP here. Our kids do sound alike. The one thing that really got my DD excited earlier this year was when we attempted to do a kids baking challenge at home, like the one they were doing on the food network. I've never seen her so excited, honestly, and then I kind of dropped the ball and didn't pursue it after we did it. I actually don't find it hard to take away the screens, I find it very empowering. that's how bad it had gotten in my house. The final straw was when DD got so excited to show me what she'd "accomplished" on dragonville, which was basically to add more random people ot her island. It wasn't hard to take away all screens at that point. My DS was also abusing screentime, watching youtube videos of other people's minecraft stuff. I put all screens (and remote controls) in a closet on the top shelf and I'm feeling pretty happy about that. 
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Anonymous
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Try a knitting class. If you are in the bethesda area, Knitlove offers private lessons to kids her age. Something to keep her hands (and mind) busy but independent and good quiet time activity. Maybe get her some books on tape that are about historical events [she'll like that drama] and let her listen and knit.
If she likes CNN, she'd love the Newseum. My DD is 12 and has a similar interest in news. I now let her read the newspaper and don't shelter her from much anymore [but I would have a bit at 10]. She wants to soak it up and understand the world. There are tons of oppourtunities on that topic alone in this area. I think you do need to engage. What are you doing while she's been on the screens? You need to model engaging. Family bike ride; family outings to museums; mother/daughter jog to Starbucks. Yes, leave her to her ownd devices some. . . but you've go to give her some tools. Go to AC Moore and see what crafts catch her eye-- Duct tape crafts are fun for this age group. |
Anonymous
She does, but she's not very social. She talks about 4 or 5 girls who she plays with at recess, and two of them I know bc they live on our street. I ask her every so often if she wants to invite the others over to play and she always says no. Usually one of her friends on our street will come by and ask her to come out and play and DD usually says yes, although if there are a lot of neighborhood girls out, sometimes she says no. She likes this one friend a lot, but she doesn't like the other girls. My guess is the other girls -- who are all pretty outgoing-- don't really talk to her bc she's quiet. She also has her two best friends from our old neighborhood (we moved a few towns over in 2013) who we see on weekends when we can, but it's hard bc those girls are very active in sports. She seems content in that way, but she doesn't reallt talk to me about it so it's hard to know. |