Reply to DD was in tears saying her dad (dh) favors our DS.

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "DD was in tears saying her dad (dh) favors our DS."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sounds like he doesn't love her less, but he does like her less, and he's letting it show.  Honestly, the words you use to describe your DD (lazy, defiant) make it seem like you're not so thrilled with her either.  Preteens can be a pain, as can teens, but my approach to my own preteen and teen is to show as little annoyance as I possibly can, and try to make them feel loved and listened to, because home and family should feel safe and unconditional when peers can be harsh. This requires enormous efforts of patience sometimes. Sometimes I'm better at it; sometimes my DH is. But we try really, really hard.

On the other hand, you can take a different road on this one - you can tell your daughter that you love her unconditionally but when she acts in particular ways it makes her less appealing to people, including you.  This is kind of a realpolitik approach to parenting that might get her to connect her "laziness" and "defiance" with negative outcomes personally, and convince her to change.  I don't think that's my cup of tea, but maybe it would work for your family?[/quote]

Thanks, this is helpful.  It’s hard when you have kids who are in different developmental zones - I am certain DS will be different when he hits teen years compared to how he is now.  DH is really hung up on kids showing respect, and any show of defiance is like throwing oil on a fire. I think my chat with him helped but he was also annoyed with my “meddling.”  Sigh. I told him he needs to let a lot of it go even though I can understand why he finds it irritating. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics