Teenage Parenting Episode: Where’s the Beef?

Published by Laurie on Tagged Parenting, Family, Midlife

My sweet little daughter of yesteryear has become quite the independent and opinionated young lady. She’s 14 years old and she definitely has a mind of her own.  I’m a little fuzzy on when this happened.  It seems like only a short time ago that she was my “easy” child.  Ever since she was a little girl, she was so agreeable, so easy-going.  I rarely needed to discipline her.  She never gave anyone a hard time about anything.  She was definitely a pleaser, and quite passive.  She was so different from my tantrum throwing little boy.  It was very stereotypical. He was the handful, the aggressive little boy, she was the sweet, passive little girl.

Fast Forward
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’m happy she’s no longer the passive little girl of the past.  I’m glad that she has begun to assert herself, and form her own views and opinions about life.  I’m just taken aback at how fast it came to pass and how different her opinions are from mine.
 
She is still a sweetheart, but at times, when she shares her views with me, I feel like I’m meeting someone new.  It’s not like I was expecting her to grow up to be a mini-me,  (really, I wasn’t) but in the back of my mind, I think I was imagining someone more similar to me.  She surprises me with ideas and opinions that have been formed seemingly without any of my influence whatsoever.

One in particular threw me for a loop.  About 5 months ago, she came to me and announced that she wanted to become a vegetarian.  My first response was:  “What?  Where did that come from?   Sweetie, you don’t even like vegetables”.  To which she replied the standard teenage reply I’ve come to know and love.  “You just don’t get it”! 

Now I had a little issue with this one.  She’s only 14 years old and I had serious concerns about her suddenly changing her entire diet.  My first thought was that she was on some kick to lose weight.  If that had been the case, I would have immediately taken her to see a counselor.  She’s very slim. I didn’t want her caught up in that poor body image crap.  My second thought was that one of her friends, or someone in school, who she thought was cool, was a vegetarian, therefore it was the cool thing to do. (do they still say cool?)
 
Because I’m the Mother
In any case, neither of these reasons were acceptable to me so I did what any good mother would do.  I jumped to the conclusion that my assumptions were correct and said, “No way!  you are eating what I say your eating, and you WILL eat meat.”  Can you believe I said that?   I’m surprised I didn’t say something even more stupid like, “because I’m the Mother and what I say goes”.  I have used that statement many times in the past, with modest success…. when they were toddlers!  With teenagers, those dictatorial comments go over like a ton of bricks.

Luckily, as the words were flying out of my mouth, I came to my senses and ASKED her, what the deal was?  Why did she want to do this all of the sudden?  She explained to me that she had serious issues with the way animals are slaughtered, and that she didn’t want to contribute in any way to that, she also told me that she had already researched the lifestyle and that she was pretty confident she knew how to do this in a healthy way.  Then she proceeded to show me print outs of diets and recipes with the nutritional information attached.  She also had some literature on the treatment of animals, and so on and so forth.  She really did do her homework before she even brought it up to me. 
Oh, great.  She deflated every argument I was going to throw at her before I even had a chance to.
 
I had to think fast, switch strategies.  I know, I’ll try the apathy strategy.  Better yet, the apathy-bargaining combination.  That one-two punch has panned out in my favor more than a few times.

So I said “Fine, I don’t care, BUT if your health starts to suffer in any way, you WILL start eating meat again”, and just to exert my dominance as Mother, I threw in, “and only if you include some fish in your diet” She groaned, but agreed.  We both felt like we had won.  She proved her points and was heard as an adult, and I gave in, secretly confident that this was a phase that would pass as so many other teenage phases do.  I was pretty sure she would cave after a few times cooking out on the grill. After seeing and smelling some nice juicy cheeseburgers, she would forget this nonsense.

That was 5 months ago. (apparently this is one of the longer phases)  Not only is my daughter still a practicing vegetarian, three months ago she proclaimed that she was not going to eat fish anymore either.  Actually she said, “I’m not going to eat anything with a face”, Nice … I started grasping at straws, I made a half-hearted attempt with the bargaining strategy,  “What about crab or shrimp?”, I asked hopefully, “They really don’t have a face, just eyes”.  Her response: “Mom, you just don’t get it”!

I don’t know why I’m so against this vegetarian thing.  She has maintained her weight and she is healthy.  She’s been very conscientious about eating a variety of foods (soy, tofu) and taking vitamins every day.  

It’s her choice, and I’m proud of her.  She is sticking to it and she’s being very responsible about it.  She obviously feels strongly about this, and I respect her views, even if they are vastly different from my own.  Maybe it’s the fact that she is still so young, and this really is a mature decision for someone to be making at such a young age, or maybe I equate eating meat with being healthy and can’t imagine myself giving it up, or maybe, it’s possible that she’s right … I just don’t get it. 

Round two?
The last few weeks she’s been telling me about how many girls in school have their nose pierced, and how she thinks it’s looks so nice and… I told her to stop right there. That’s where I draw the line.  “NO WAY, not until you’re 18″.  She asked why?  I said “Because I’m the mother and what I say goes!”   What can I say, old habits, they die hard.

Stumble it!

September 13th, 2007