Comment on So you grew up with a dad who didn’t know how to express love? Here’s how it could be affecting you today by Tim.
Hi Sarah,
I am a father of 2 girls one aged 13 and the other aged 5. I am extremely worried about my relationship with my 13 year old and the effect it is having on our family, I constantly seem to be giving out to her !!! This is not the relationship I want with her at all. It is probably more intense lately as I use to work away for 3 weeks at a time and now have changed jobs and I am home every night. She is a great girl and I love her with all my heart but we seem to be pulling in different directions which is frustrating for me and I am worried it is tearing us apart. To add I am stubborn and always have been which is not something i am proud of so i do admit this is not all her fault.
Since I have been home we work on her school projects and homework together and maybe I push her to put in more effort as I feel she is a little lazy and tends to take the short cut which she thinks will do or its good enough just so she can go sit on the couch and watch TV. Frustrating !!!! Our relationship when we are together is pretty good but add someone else and her attitude changes and she becomes another person with back chatting and disrespect for her mother and I. Is this normal?
My wife reckons I am too hard on her and reckons to let her be herself. No problem but i believe every young person needs guidance on most things in life I presume and how to treat people including their parents is an essential part of that learning curve. I always seem to be giving her the old respect your elders speech,I just don’t know, nothing seems to stick. It’s like its the same things we are arguing about all the time.
Latest was she was hiding poor test results from me which I had been asking about for weeks. When I confronted her she say she lied because she was scared to tell me because I would be disappointed and mad. I lost the plot grounded her for a month….not because she got a poor result but because she lied about it. I know she needs help with her homework and I am dedicating my time to help her, whatever it takes i am there. I want her to be the best she can be and achieve what ever she wants in life. She is a year younger than the rest in her class but is very smart when she wants to be. Over the last couple of months i have guided her with a few projects and she has excelled with them. so much so that the results have been fantastic and she has ended up in the top 5% in her class. to see her glow and i mean glow when she gets the results is magical. she is so proud of her self and that is all I want for her.
Anyway after lots of tears and frustration I told her i loved her so much but that i was really disappointed that she thought she couldn’t tell me the results. I told her unless i know what the problem is I cant help her fix it. I said it is something we can work on and we will together. Then this morning she lied to me again about something stupid and of course I gave out to her and now I feel so bad about it. I mean really bad. Thing is we have moved to Australia almost 3 years ago and maybe this has something to do with it or maybe it’s me being too hard on her. I don’t know.
I was afraid of pushing her away before but after reading your article and comments above I am terrified that is exactly what is happening with us. Any advice would be much appreciated.
Tim
