Give Me a Break:One day you give birth to a little angel of a daughter, a mini-version of you with all your strengths and especially your faults. You nurture her, listen to her, share secrets and pastimes. Then one day, with such unexpected emotional violence that you're sent reeling, she turns on you. This tends to happen sometime between her 12th and 14th birthdays, writes Kate Holmquist
Overnight, you've become the worst mother in the world. You don't listen, you don't understand, you haven't a clue. She describes you in scurrilous vocabulary that quickly updates you with the latest in schoolyard obscenities. And she's nearly as tall as you are now, even taller sometimes, which means that no way can you do what you did when she had tantrums at the age of two - as in, either hold her until the tantrum subsides, or put her on the naughty step, depending on your parenting philosophy.
She uses her new size - how did she grow up so fast? - to block your way if you're feeling so stunned that all you want to do is take a deep breath and walk away. This once delicate fairy now pushes and shoves her siblings around when they get in her way and sometimes, with her newly manicured nails, she draws blood.
Yet in the outside world, this same child-woman is well-behaved, helpful and polite. She does well in school. She's sensitive to the feelings of others. No wonder teenagers are fascinated by tales of vampires, who seduce with their attractive personalities by day and drink blood by night.
From the e-mails and phone calls I've received from parents, and even grandparents, about this strange dual personality that pre-adolescent girls develop, I know this is a common problem. And I also know that parents and grandparents are often at loss as how to deal with it.
I'm neither a psychologist nor a parenting expert. I have no more wisdom than any other parent. So please don't think I'm being prescriptive when I give you my own humble analysis of the dreaded demon daughters living in our midst.
Hormones - don't ask me to explain them. Mood-swings, acne, plumpness on chest and hips - sometimes I think pre-adolescent girls are going through the worst case of pre-menstrual tension imaginable. Personally, I've blocked out being 13.
As a parent, I wonder whether the terrible 12s and 13s are a reprise of the terrible twos and threes. Do you remember how jubilantly your toddler first cried "no!" and then repeated it at every opportunity? Toddlers do this because they've finally figured out that they're not you, and they're out to prove it. A truce develops then, between three and four, and it's smooth sailing until your daughter grows in emotional complexity, thanks to your good parenting, and has to go through it all again, differentiating herself from you so that she can be an individual. She's basically saying: "I'm not you! I don't want to be you! I'm myself and nobody will ever understand how lonely that is!" It's a philosophical, spiritual stage.
Then there's the question of why your daughter is a demon with you and an angel with everyone else. My theory is this: if you've been a supportive, consistent parent (and forgive me if this sounds self-serving), your daughter feels safe with you, in your home. Elsewhere, she dares not express her rage at having to grow up and be responsible and look attractive and do well in the Leaving Cert. So she saves it all up for you in this safe place you've created for her, plus you've always encouraged her to articulate her emotions. If she were an emotionally-abused child, she probably wouldn't dare tell you just how bad she feels. She'd probably act it out in the outside world and, listen, if the guards aren't calling you to bring her home from the disco, be grateful.
This acting out at home, or outside it, brings us back to the rage that pre- adolescent girls seem to feel, a rage which I suspect is as much a result of social pressures as hormonal ones. Girls - and boys too - seem to get angry at the injustice of being forced, by their own bodies turning against them, to leave childhood and become responsible adults in a world that, let's face it, isn't ideal.
So how do you cope with the rage? Just as you did when she was a toddler, it's worth letting her know that you love her, but not her behaviour ("I love you and I want to hear you, but your behaviour is really hurting my feelings and I can't listen to you until you calm down"). Before saying these words, it's useful to count to 10, otherwise you might say things you'll regret later. And, believe me, if you do, she'll repeat them verbatim ad infinitum.
Gradually, with lots of attention paid to having good times together (such as shopping), this horrendous hormonal storm subsides, and the jewel seen by your daughter's teachers and friends becomes, once again, a jewel in your home.
Not that your pain is over, because she's going to leave home soon, and you'll miss her. She'll find other people to confide in, other people to love, and you will be the parent, from the past, at the end of the e-mail or phone. And, if you're lucky, you'll be the grandmother who sees her own daughter going through hormone hell with that sweet little angel of a granddaughter who, of course, you'll spoil to death whenever you get the chance.
The response to last week's column, "Eddie Hobbs is right - children ruin careers", was so lively that on this Fri,
Jan 18, the Features page will publish a selection of readers' comments on it
