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Friday, February 5, 2010

Am I Too Hard on Her?

Missy came home from school yesterday, and the first thing she did was throw a temper tantrum and try to pick a fight with me. Yeah, this is after I was crowing about how proud I was of her, how mature she is, blah blah blah...thanks for backing me up, kiddo. Sigh...

Anyway, the argument was over her guidance counselor, if you can believe it. I insisted that she make an appointment with her guidance counselor so we could discuss the virtual school, the requirements, and what classes she should take while at the high school. I told her if she made an appointment, I would use my lunch hour to go with her so we could make choices together. Sounds ideal, yes?

WRONG. She texted me from school (a bad habit at this point) to tell me that I needed to call the guidance counselor and make an appointment for her. Could I do it? Sure. But I WON'T. This is her future, her plan...I feel like she needs to step up and make her own appointment. She whined back, "But the juniors and seniors get priority right now!" Which I'm sure is very true. However, just because she's a freshman doesn't mean that she's not allowed to see the counselor. I told her to go to the counselor either before school, or on her lunch break, just to make the appointment. She told me that was "too hard." Too hard?!?! I'm afraid that's when I snapped. I get very, very annoyed at my children when they tell me something is hard, and they haven't even attempted it. I explained to her that if she wanted to graduate early, she was going to have to put in some work. I already work myself, and that I'm too busy to make appointments for her.

So now she's not speaking to me. Sure is quiet around here...

2 comments:

Kelly said...

Sarah, it is perfectly reasonable for you to expect her to take responsibility for her plan. I would do the same thing. You want it? You make the arrangements and we'll follow through together if need be.

Good job mom!!

They sure do know how to push us though, don't they?

Elspeth said...

No, you were not too hard on her. Your request was perfectly reasonable. There's no reason she couldn't make the appointment.

I make my children schedule appointments with their guidance counselors themselves.

Of course, recentlymy daughter's request went ignored by one guidance counselor for so long that nothing got done until I emailed her and copied the principal to it.

Which is to say that you may still end up doing it. But I wouldn't do it until she ahs made the first (and second if necessary) attempt.