I have a 14 month old girl and it’s so annoying how often I already get comments about how we’re going to clash when she’s a teenager.
As someone who had a controlling and emotionally unstable mother, I was a “good kid” and never really rebelled, which I believe was a contributing factor to my later anxiety and depression.
I want to allow my daughter to rebel and develop her own sense of self while providing reasonable boundaries and support. Am I delusional to think this isn’t that hard and that we can have a good relationship through it?
Comments
Please tell the people making comments to go fuck themselves. She’s 14 months. This is in no way a precursor to what your relationship will look like in 14 years.
If you love on her and are communicative, you’ll be fine.
It’s not delusional but I think it would be naive to think that your relationship with her won’t change as she gets older.
I’d look at r/parentingteenagers for some more perspective, but your kid barely turned one. Worry about things that are more relevant to you now, because there will be plenty of time to worry about this later lol.
My daughter is 13 and super sweet, just an all around good hearted kid, but even she isn’t immune to the throes of puberty. I’m also incredibly young to be her mom (I had her as a teenager) but she still says I act “embarrassing.”
It’s tough to transition from when they’re young and sweet and cling to you all the time to teenagers seeking independence and valuing acceptance from their peers above all else but it’s normal in their development. I find the parents that don’t get on with their kids well are the ones that struggle or refuse to accept this.
My daughter is 15 and is not rebellious in the slightest but she is definitely her own person in a way that I never got to be as a teenager myself because my mother was so controlling. I don’t know every aspect of her life but I trust her and I know if that if something was wrong, she would tell me.
She and I have a great relationship. I’ve been hearing “just wait” ever since she was an infant but I’ve really truly enjoyed every stage of her life, especially the teenage years. She goes with me on all of my errands and shopping trips, we talk a lot, we lay in bed together, go for drives together… it’s pretty awesome.
Those comments have some real BOOMER LEVEL energy.
I was a good baby, I was a beloved by every adult toddler and I “rebelled” as a teen because my mother was abusive/controlling. I also graduated with all As in honors/AP level classes and got a full ride to a top college.
My pediatrician gave me the best advice regarding my very strong willed child. She said that kids like her tend to be very successful when they grow up. She said that I just have to endure it until she is 18.
What kind of rebelling are you talking about? Like sneaking out, never listening, attitudes, talking crazy to you type rebelling?
My 25 year old woke up with an attitude everyday as a teen. I don’t know how she managed to be annoyed at 6:30am but she managed. She even squared up with me once. She almost saw a different side of me that day. Luckily she came to her senses real quick. Out of my three daughters she’s the most like me as a teen even down to the attitude and sass. Raising her had me going back to apologize to my own mother damn near on my hands and knees for how I acted as a teen. What really helped was to give her her space when she was upset or had an attitude. I also gave her the freedom to get a little sassy every now and then. She knew what the line was. We also discovered that she suffered with some really bad PMDD. We got her on some medication for that and that seemed to calm her down a bit. We have a pretty great relationship today. We talk several times a week. We still butt heads because we’re so similar but nothing like when she was a teen.
From my experience trying to control a rebel only makes things worse. You are better off trying to just love her the way she is and develop a relationship where she will trust you and she will come to you when you make mistakes.
These people are complaining about young women not being meek, submissive, or a fawn. I work with teenagers and I’ve noticed that most of my girls LOVE their moms. Like, most said that their moms are the people they look up to the most. From what I can tell their parents make it clear that they love and like them as a person. It’s really lovely.
How could anyone possibly know that this far out? After getting to know my step mom, she was my go to gal for everything. We got along so good when I was a teenager and we still do 20 years later.
They have no idea how your kids will be at that age. They can fuck all the way off
I wouldn’t say my daughters (22 and 16) were rebellious. They didn’t have to be because whoever they were, was just fine with me. Like, there was nothing to rebel against really. They just are who they are, and they’re different than I am in many ways, which is very much expected because they are their own people.
Everyone I know who thinks their daughters are really rebellious just had a rigid view of who they were expected to be, and are shocked and horrified that they’re their own people. Most of their daughters aren’t even disruptive or obnoxious. They’re just teens.
It’s definitely possible to have a good relationship with our kids at any age as long as we accept them for who they are now, not try to shove them in a box based on our expectations or how they used to be.
Don’t borrow problems from the future. You don’t know what your daughter will be like one year from now, let alone 10+ years from now. There are plenty of challenges coming for you sooner rather than later. I have two nieces that are aged 2.
Yesterday I was watching the one niece and one second she was stomping around and roaring and having a great time and I was like “are you a dinosaur?” And she happily said yes, she’s a dinosaur and then two seconds later she was having a meltdown about dinosaurs. Did she want to look at a dinosaur book? No. Dinosaur on the TV? No. Dinosaur toy? No. I also pretend to be a dinosaur? She looked at me like I had just committed murder in front of her. I was just like “child I see you are sad and I’m sorry your sad but also what is even happening right now.”
Not a parent but I feel like that’s probably something parents often feel with kids at any age.
As for as a teen I feel like when you get closer to that age you can read up on the dos and don’ts. But also it’s a lot of the same? Validate their feelings, don’t diminish their experiences, offer a safe and judgement free zone and remember they’re their own person.
i was a very rebellious teenager but a lot of it somehow went unnoticed by my parents. i was the younger daughter, my older sister a fantastic kid, great student, never caused any problems. i naturally became a partier. my parents have always been awesome but as a teenager me and my mom did butt heads A LOT! we just really knew how to push each others buttons and would fight like no other. we still had a great family dynamic, i just tended to do stupid things and we argued easily.
our relationship truly got so much better once i moved away for college. we would text daily and the distance made us a lot closer. now she’s definitely like a best friend and i’m happy to live nearby, on my days off i’ll text my mom to go to the beach or shopping or for wine because she’s like a friend! teenage years are just tough, but she’s been there for me through it all
Same here!! I’m about to welcome
My second daughter and I get those comments. My girls will be two years apart. I had a strict, passive aggressive, narcissistic mom who I really didn’t
Like until I moved out of the house. I plan on embracing their transition girlhood to
Women hood, always show them
Support and never criticize them. Like others have said I’m enjoying this stage where they are little and rely on me.
The ppl who try to tell parents about their own kid are generally very idiotic.
I was a rebellious* daughter with a goody two shoes mom and I grew up to be a responsible adult. We have a good relationship and I would not have ever described us as being rocky, even during my worst teenage years. She let me have independence and natural consequences and my “punishments” were usually being forced to sit through (respectful, informative, but uncomfortably honest) lectures.
*sneaking out, drinking, dating older boys, generally breaking rules, occasionally getting in trouble at school but still got good grades, no drugs
I’m so tired of those “just wait until” comments. Like just let me be happy in my current state.
I think the rebellious girls end up having the best relationships with their moms—the ones who get through their fights between ages 13 through 17 and then become best friends. But also I think people have become better and less authoritative in their parenting, so I’m seeing less rebellion generally.
I think it’s pretty normal to butt heads with your mom as a teenage girl, idk even though I’ve always been extremely close to my mom we had a rough year. Every woman in my family has gone through that and still have a good relationship with each other as adults.
I do think it’s important that my parents weren’t too strict. (Our rules were basically don’t do hard drugs and don’t get pregnant/get someone else pregnant. We didn’t really have a curfew so much as they wanted us to keep them updated on where we were if we wouldn’t be home when we said we would.) The other big thing is cultivate a relationship with them throughout their life! My parents knew a lot about us and our social lives bc they made an effort to get to know us and were involved in our lives. Finally, to the extent you’re able, another thing my parents did was if there was something my friends and I wanted to do that might seem “suspect”, one of my parents would just go with us. Like one time my mom brought my friends and I to a concert at a bar. The other parents felt safe bc they knew we wouldn’t sneak around and drink. We were happy bc we got to go to a concert we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to get into.