Getting to know you, getting to know all about you...

This past weekend the hubby went out of town and my mom took my younger two giving me the rare opportunity to spend some quality time and talk with my teenager. It's not often that I can really talk to her. Whether it's my hubby chiming in finishing my sentences with what he thinks I'm trying to say, or her little sisters being nosey, it's hard to finish a thought, let alone a whole conversation.

We spent all day Sunday together. We had lunch, saw a movie, and went out to dinner. At lunch, we talked and I learned some amazing things. I started off by telling her that I was completely clueless about how to relate to her new teenager self. That I couldn't decide between punishing her for failing two classes or rewarding her for being so responsible around the house. I told her that I felt I was out of touch with what she liked and disliked, but that I realized that the punishments we were using such as taking her phone away, really didn't seem to bother her and therefore weren't motivation to do better. I asked her what kinds of privileges or possessions she wanted and would be upset if they were taken away as punishment. She shrugged and said I don't know.

We continued to talk and little by little the picture became clearer. What I figured out is she really doesn't like her sisters. I mean she loves them, they are her sisters after all, but they annoy the crap out of her. Even though my middle one is only 2 1/2 years younger than her, there is a huge gap between what she wants to do and what they want to do. Everything she said seemed to center on the same theme, "All they want to watch on TV is baby shows" "They're so annoying" "They always come in my room and get into my stuff". When I asked her if she would be motivated to do better in school if I offered her $100 for a straight A report card, she shrugged and said "Not really", but after a pause she followed it up with "If you gave me $100 for each report card with straight A's, I'd save it so I could go to Hawaii and visit grandma (hubby's mom) for a week without my sisters."

So now I'm able to formulate a plan.

First, I need to give her more opportunities to do stuff without her sisters, like offering to drop her and her friends off at the movie or at the mall for a few hours. This is going to be a struggle for me. Up until this point, if they haven't been in my sight, they were always in the care of some other adult I trusted or at school. Yeah I'm a little a lot overprotective. I just think I would DIE if something ever happened to my kids that I could have prevented if I was watching them. So just the thought of letting her go off on her own and not knowing her exact location for a couple of hours makes me literally nauseous. Do they make lojack for teenagers?

Second, we need to give her more control over her room and her ability to keep her sisters out of it. Now this one is going to be harder for my husband. I have no problem with her shutting her door or even locking it. He on the other hand hates it when the kids shut their doors, and comes unglued if one of them locks it. He sees no need for it, but then again, he grew up in a house with no doorknobs (I won't even begin to get into that). I told him he's going to have to let up on the door locking thing, because I think THAT would be a privilege she would work hard to keep.

Third, we are considering getting her a TV and DVR for her room so she can watch the shows that she wants to watch without her sisters interrupting her or bugging her to put on a "baby" show. Screw up at school and it's back to preschool TV with your sisters.

Finally... that trip to Hawaii... I think if she brings home straight A report cards, we can put $100 in a savings account each time towards her ticket. Maybe by next summer I'll be over my fear of letting her out of my sight enough to deal with the thought of letting her navigate the airport and get on a plane by herself.

How to parent a teenager

If you are looking for an answer you are not going to find it here. Look me up in 10 years and maybe I'll have a clue. Right now what I have is a girl who just turned 13 and not a freaking clue of what to do with her. I'm swimming in self doubt and totally scared that I'm screwing up royally.

She is still screwing up in school. Despite my best efforts, grounding, taking away all her cool stuff, lectures on why she doesn't want to end up a drop out, etc., she still managed to fail two of her classes last quarter.

I really don't get it. She's really smart so it's not a matter of the subject matter being too hard. Plus she's really super responsible about other stuff. She cleans her room, does her chores, helps with her sisters. Why can't she do her homework too? I have a really hard time punishing her because 98% of the time she is an angel. She's just doesn't give a crap about her grades. I don't get it.

I don't know what more to do to motivate her. Last summer I started paying her for babysitting her sisters. She gets paid per hour whatever her GPA is. I explained that if she got straight A's that would be worth a bonus dollar for a total of $5. Right now she's earning a whopping $2.33. I tried explaining to her that this is just like life, the better you do in school, the more money you can make. One quarter this year she had a 3.o, but now we are back down to 2 and change.

I asked her to write an essay on the importance of education citing at least 6 statistics. What I got back was an essay on why she "thinks" the high school she wants to go to is superior to the one she is going to attend. She totally didn't read the explanation of the rankings she was citing and got it completely ass backwards.

I get that this last quarter has been an emotional roller coaster for her. First we have to move, and end up in a different high school boundary than where we started, then we try to keep her in that high school by applying for two different programs that would allow her to stay (she doesn't get accepted to either), followed by not making the cheerleading squad at the one she is going to attend. I totally understand how craptastic that is for a 13 year old.

HOWEVER. We now live in a nicer neighborhood. The high school she is being "forced" to attend turns out more college bound kids than the other one. It's students consistently score higher on the state standardized tests. I'm totally not brokenhearted about her having to go there. She doesn't care at all about any of that though, she just cares that all her friends are going to the other school. And in true 13 year old drama queen form, she is POSITIVE she will NOT be able to make ANY new friends at the new school.

I am left confused with how to proceed. On one hand I want to spoil her with fun stuff this summer to cheer her up since I know in her 13 year old mind she thinks her world is ending, on the other hand I want to ground her for the whole summer for getting two F's, and bottom line, I have no idea if EITHER strategy will improve anything.