A thread for those of us feeling fed up with our kids

[Bookridden]

Please come and commiserate/advise. DD is 12 and is dull of hormones. We're dealing with daily attitude problems, complete inability to do anything for herself, moods and general pain-in - the - assness. We love her dearly, but the thought of years more of this behaviour is tedious and depressing.

How best to get through it? Tell us we're not alone...

You and DD will survive this. I don't know how long it will go on or what state any of you will be in at any stage but you will survive.

Oh I remember that age but it will pass although every day seems like a slog and your living with miss unpredictable I expect. All you can do is make the most of when she wants to talk and respect when she doesn’t. Do you do stuff together ?

Oh my god, fuck to the yes. My DC are driving me crackers. Eldest three have reached that point of the holidays where they're over the holidays, no longer care about the season of goodwill, and are sick of the sight of one another so they're spending every waking hour aggravating the shit out of each other. He's looking at me, she touched my stuff, they're being too noisy, that was my chair, I wanted the green one, I don't want anyone else to come play in the garden, his slice is bigger, she rolled a six and I wanted a six.

Then tonight, to put the icing on the cake, the baby has started with a D&V bug.

I've been assured that they have these difficult years so that, when they leave home, you don't miss them too much and that they pull away but they do eventually come back around to being semi-decent company

Thanks for the encouragement. It's helpful.
Pumpkin - yes, we do a lot of stuff together as DD doesn't seem to want to go off with friends that much. We have days out, play games, chat etc. Sometimes it's fun, but often it descends into arguments about her attitude/manners or she is in a bad mood and that brings us down.

Ewitsahooman - massive sympathies. Stomach bugs make everything a million times worse.

I really love DD, but I'm kind of bored of the endless slog of worrying about her and dealing with her moods and attitude. I know it's all normal and I know other parents have more difficult kids, but fuck it's hard. Is it wrong to find myself wishing we could just skip the next few years? Will we ever get that closeness back?

I have one of them too, she is a Jekyll and Hyde.

Then I have the 10 year old with autism, Christmas and autism do not make for a good mix.

And then I have the almost 7 year old, who is probably more full of hormones than the 12 year old.

Love them to bits.

At least she is doing things with you and not being a total stroppy teenager. I think sometimes they like to cause an argument so if she starts being antagonistic just ignore her or agree. My DD17 is a delight 95% of the time the stroppy years do pass. It’s good that she is talking to you thou a lot this age just grunt at their parents. Sounds like you r doing a fab job.

Pumpkin - thank you, that's kind of you to say. Glad your DD got through it. Just been looking through the pre-teen threads for reassurance, and that does help.

It seems never ending at this age a bit like when newborns aren’t sleeping and you can’t see any end in sight ! But it does get better, hang on in there . Do baking/shopping/ cinema trips together and keep the lines of communication always open .