Bad Parent, Bad Parent.

     

     I came home from work one day a while back to find that Sophie and Julia had been going at it quite badly. Julia was talking about military boarding schools again and Sophie was ranting incoherently while stomping and slamming doors.

    Sophie complained to me that her mother was too strict. I told her that I agreed with her mother, which only further upset her. She said, "It's not fair," a common theme in all of our arguments. She said that there is supposed to be one strict parent and one lax parent that she can turn too. She said it wasn't fair that she had two strict parents. She once again told me how no other parents were as strict as us and that we were "ruining" her life.

     Found this in my "Drafts." It's at least  6 years old. I decided to clean it up and post it. I don't recall what the fight was about. We probably wouldn't let her get a Miley Cyrus portrait tattoo or something similar that all her friends were allowed to do. I chose the above picture, because one of the many ways we ruined Sophie's life at that time was by not buying her an iPhone, because ALL her friends had iPhones and she could not live without one. Although I probably blocked out the nature of the above mentioned argument as a coping mechanism, I cannot rule out that it was about an iPhone.

     My question to Sophie now is: Is her life still "ruined," or was she able to recover from the damage inflicted by us during this time?

Sophie the Scholar

Student Grades Crs ID Course Title Pd Prg Rpt 1st Qtr Prg Rpt 1st Sem Prg Rpt 3rd Qtr Prg Rpt 2nd Sem Credit CI WH Abs Tdy Comments E0001P English 1 1 A A- A+ A+ 5.00 G G 3 1 Positive Class Participation Does Excellent Work Has a Positive Attitude V0921P Drama 1 2 A- A 5.00 3 0 V0907P Art 3D 1 3 A- A 5.00 3 0 H0140P WrldHist/Geog 4 A A A 5.00 3 0 M0460P Geometry 5 A- A- 5.00 4 0 L0341P Spanish 1 6 A A 5.00 5 0 Positive Class Participation Does Excellent Work P0600N PE 9 7 A A- 5.00 8 0

Total GPA Credit Non-Weighted Attempted Completed 4.00 35 35

          As much as Sophie makes us suffer in some aspects of parenting, I must say when it comes to school work there is little to complain about. Above are her first semester grades, her first semester in high school. She is self motivated and rarely has to be told to do her homework. I must say that the way she does homework sometimes drives me nuts: on the couch under the Elmo Pelt {red fuzzy blanket that looks just like someone hunted Elmos and made a blanket with the pelts}, watching Kardashian's {oh how I hate that show, but it is like a car crash, you can't help but to slow down and look}, Facebooking on the laptop, and texting on her cell phone, all while she is doing homework. However the above results speak for themselves; but it doesn’t mean I have to like her method.

       I have to admit I was shocked to see an A- in Drama, I would have expected her to take over that class and now be listed as the instructor.

     For her excellent efforts in school work, the oppressive parental regime that has oversight over Sophie has granted her the agreed upon laptop voucher. At the beginning of the school year Sophie had informed us that she was the only freshman girl in the free world that doesn't have her own laptop, and it wasn't fair that she should go through high school at such a disadvantage. Being benevolent dictators, we had agreed to get her her very own laptop if she got all As. Sophie is already looking forward to the next semester, asking if she can get a second ear piercing if she keeps her grades up. The ruling party has taken it under consideration and will make a ruling at a later date.

Locked in Battle

    In every great story the protagonist must have a rival. Sophie has Zach. They are always locked in battle. Like the great rivalries of history, Hatfields vs. McCoys, Paper vs. Plastic, Crips vs. Bloods, Cal v Stanford, Nortenos vs. Surenos, Boxers vs. Briefs... etc {you get the picture} there are periods of relative peace followed by periods of great strife. They seem to fight over anything and everything. They even once had a fight about fighting. As parents we sometimes feel like hapless UN Peacekeepers thrust into the middle of some thousand year old conflict with no end in sight. As I mentioned in my Introduction post, I am always worried that such things are unique to our children and we as parents somehow failed. I also mentioned that in talking to family, friends and co-workers I have found that all parents have these issues and Julia and I are not alone in our suffering.

     This past weekend at a family event I was reminded by my nieces and nephews that this is an age old problem of all siblings. Sophie's cousins who I will not name since they are not the subject of this blog (hint: rhymes with Ben and Anna), were also in attendance. At breakfast on the last day, Rhymes with Ben was pleading his case to his dad, my brother in law, that he was not at fault for fight the night before. He accused Rhymes with Anna of getting mad at him for not saying goodnight, a transgression he admitted to with the mitigating circumstance that he was asleep when he failed to respond to her salutation of good night, and therefore could not be deemed the primary aggressor.

      I did later ask Rhymes with Anna about the fight in order to have a balanced perspective. She said that she said good night to Rhymes with Ben and he failed to respond to her polite social offering with the expected return response of, "Good night." Rhymes with Anna said he could not possibly have been asleep because they had just turned off the lights. She took great offense at the snubbing and expressed her severe displeasure accordingly, resulting in a 20 minute fight, hence causing the deployment of the UN Peacekeepers, mom and dad.

     Rhymes with Ben's dad clearly did not want to revisit the matter, having adjudicated it the night before. In his facial expression, I saw me. It conveyed how I feel when Sophie and Zach insist on rehashing old conflicts, frequently in the middle of new fight! Although I could empathize with him, I still found the fight humorous. As my sister in law, one of the recently deployed peacekeepers, pointed out when commenting on this blog; it’s only funny when you are not the one dealing with it. So true. There was nothing humorous about the fight about fighting when we were living it. It not being your kids and/or time allows you to find humor in these sibling fights. Although there are some epic battles that are going to need a lot of time before they are funny to me, I mean a really long time.

     On a side note, Rhymes with Ben, having read my few blog entries threatened to start a blog about Rhymes with Anna, claiming to have lots of material. Rhymes with Anna in return threatened to blog about Rhymes with Ben, also stating that she has ample material. As of right now they have reached a détente of sorts, that I will call M.A.B. {Mutual Assured Blogging}.*
*For those who did not find the last line the least bit funny, look up the Cold War and M.A.D. or just click on this link: M.A.D.

Sophie's Future Home

Sophie by the Manhattan Beach Pier

We spent the last weekend in Manhattan Beach. We were there for The Tri-Mitzvah (Congratulations Mikey, Emma and Rachel, you are awesome!).  Sophie proclaimed she wants to move there.  I think it is the fact that in one block you can go from the sunny warm beach to shopping downtown!

Newton's Fourth Law

     Sir Isaac Newton clearly did not have a daughter, because if he had had a daughter he would have written a fourth law of motion. I imagine it would have read something like this:

A teenage daughter will expend the minimal amount of energy required in completing a task that a parent nagged them into completing.

     Sophie recently demonstrated proof of this law left undiscovered by a daughterless Isaac Newton when making herself some food. Notice I did not say cooking, that will have to be addressed in another entry. While preparing a gourmet dinner for herself of chips and bean dip, consisting of canned refried beans mixed with cheese and microwaved, she left out the half used can of refried beans on the counter. She was told repeatedly to put the beans into the fridge. The task was eventually completed, I am sure only after Julia raised her voice. Upon opening the fridge this is what we found (see photo).

     Yes, that is the can of remaining refried beans inside a Tupperware container in the fridge. I guess opening the drawer, taking out the plastic wrap, gauging the appropriate length of plastic, tearing it off, putting it on the can, opening the fridge, pushing the can onto the first shelf you see, and of course leaving the plastic wrap out on the counter until nagged into putting it away obviously required too great of an expenditure of energy.

     

     Like any universal law, the discovery and recognition of Newton's Fourth Law of Motion would surely have led to at least two corollary laws: 

1. A teenage daughter will not complete any task that a parent wants them to complete until they have been nagged into motion.
2. If a teenage daughter completes a task that a parent would want them to complete without having been nagged by a parent, she wants something.

The Reaction

     I finally made good on my threat and started the Sophie Chronicles blog. I was typing my first post and added two recently taken photos of Sophie. Photos that I might add, I thought were very nice. Photos that Tesha viewed and said were nice. I am certain that Tesha would have told me if I was posting an overly embarrassing photo of Sophie. And for the record I do have some!
     Sophie happened to walk by and see what I was doing. I told her I was starting the previously threatened Sophie Chronicles. She had a complete spaz, demanding I remove the pictures because she said they were "weird" and she did want them "all over the internet." I am not sure if I should be flattered that she thinks my blog would garner such attention, or if I should I be shocked that she is so self-centered that she thinks everyone is surfing the internet looking for "weird" pictures of her.
     With a promised trip to Powell's (to shop for candy) and to McCaulou's (to shop for jeans, so that she can give Lydia, bff, her jeans back), and some comforting words from Tesha; Sophie got over it and survived yet another tragedy inflicted upon her by her parents.

Introduction to the Sophie Chronicles

Sophie smiling and not looking annoyed with me!

Sophie's "model face"

     Sophie, her name has not been changed to protect her true identity, is my 14 year old daughter. She is the middle child, she has a 12 year old brother, Zach, and a 23 year old sister, Tesha. Her mother, Julia, and I are constantly amazed at how dramatic she makes everyday life.
     I have told Tesha that she did not properly prepare us for Sophie. Tesha was so much easier to deal with in her teen years, not that it was a walk in the park, but this is the Sophie Chronicles, not the Tesha Chronicles so we won't get into that. Let's just say that things were easier than they are with Sophie. At first we thought it was us and that we were slipping in our parental skills. But in speaking with Sophie's friends parents, friends with teenager daughters and co-workers with teenage girls, I came to the conclusion that it is not us; it is simply that Sophie is a teenage girl. This made us feel better, but it does not make raising Sophie any easier.
     It seems at times over reaction, is her normal reaction. Don't get me wrong, we love her. But according to her we have "ruined" and/or "are ruining" her life on several occasions. So, I have been threatening Sophie that I would chronicle the destruction of and the tragedy that is her life in a blog, the Sophie Chronicles, so here I go.
   

Sophie's Dad