Spending less time with daughter

[Tigger44]

Hi everyone. This is my first post. My daughter will be 13 next week although she has been behaving like a teenager for a few years. We've always done everything together since she was a baby as her dad was never bothered about doing family stuff and I've been encouraging her for the last year or so to get out and see her friends more so she's not just with me all the time. She has a phone (don't they all) so it should be easy to arrange things. Well she's been doing this since about October and she is out more often now with friends and I'm glad but I suppose I'm also missing her a lot. Even when she's home she just wants to talk to her friends on the phone and stay in herror room. I know all of this is normal and I'm the one encouraging her to go out and keep in touch with her friends but I really noticed it this Xmas when it was the first one that we didn't spend most of our time together. I do have things going on in my own life BTW. It's not as sad as it sounds LOL. I suppose I'm just looking for a way to cope with it a bit better. That probably sounds soppy and daft but thanks for listening (reading)

Sympathy here as I feel exactly the same. I have dd 15 and two younger mates and me and dd did loads together. I too wanted to get out more with her friends and now she is I miss her dreadfully! I've just accepted that it is a kind of grief and letting go and allowed myself to feel it but also tried to find new ways to reconnect with her. I think we are getting back into our old close relationship but it has taken a good few months. I think it is a readjustment on both sides.
Empathy though - it's really tough and has had me in tears at times (in private, don't let dd see)

Typo- two younger siblings (boys)

I've had the odd cry about it too in private so I can understand that. I don't want to guilt her into spending time with me. I'm hoping that if I try to accept it more as just part of growing up then we'll come back together again more later. It's the times when she comes home from being at her dads or grandparents in the evenings as she goes there every day after school and then just goes up to her room all evening that are the worst. Even 6 months ago we would have done something together. I just thought this would be at least another year or so away yet when I started to feel like she didn't need me as much.

Can you have a shared hobby? Something fixed that means you touch base properly a couple of times a week

Hi Gooseberry. We do go out every Friday evening to play badminton which is with other people too and that is great. I get annoyed though that on the way there in the car she just wants to be on her phone the entire time of the journey which is about 20 mins. She said the other week that listening to the radio and talking was boring. Then a song came on that she liked and turned it up so I turned it down again saying that I thought she didn't want to listen to the boring radio. That was petty I know and I'm trying not to do stuff like that but it is difficult.

I have 2 DDs 12 and 13. DD1 has always been very social and meets up with her friends (or invites them round) as often as she can get away with. Her hobby also takes up a chunk of time at weekends. DD2 has a nice group of friends at school who she meets up with outside school sometimes, but nowhere near as often as DD1 does (or did at DD2's age). DD2 is happy mainly just to spend time with me at weekends as I work full time (and DH is generally pemitted to tag along!).

I spend half my time worrying that DD2 does not see her friends enough and the other half of my time worrying that I dont see DD1 enough!
Generally, DD2 and i just make plans and make sure DD1 knows what we are up to, and she will sometimes decide to join us.

I do though make sure that we have at least one morning or afternoon all together at the weekend (plus usally Sunday evenings), even if we are just chilling in the house. DD1 is ok with this. We are also still quite strict about screen time in the house (less so on DD2 as she is in more).

I've tried being stricter on screen time with her phone but I'm not very good at it. I'm better at it when we go out somewhere. We were out at a family meal at the weekend for her grandads birthday and I made her switch her phone off and put it in her bag. It was actually her dad that kept getting looks from his mum for being on his phone at the table.
I did spend a lot of time worrying when she was younger that she didn't see her friends enough which is why I'm trying to be happier now that she is seeing them more. It sounds as though you have a good system going on at home though WhyOhWine and everyone knows what is happening. Maybe I just need to relax about it all a bit more and just let things run their course. That's what I would say to someone else I suppose.
I'm glad I found this site. It's really great to be able to talk to other people who understand.

It does not always work perfectly - far from it. Particularly on screen time they will always try to push it!

We also used to have only one TV in the house and relented and got a second one so that they could watch DVDs with their friends and they go to the TV room more often than we would like even when they dont have friends here!

DOes your DD have friends over to yours? We do try to have a bit of an open door policy for friends (even the dreaded sleepovers) because although they will often take themselves off to the bedroom or TV room, there is some interaction, which makes me feel like I see a bit more of DD1!

She has friends over now more than in the past including sleepovers. I bought a single blow up bed that can lie alongside her bed in her room which is easy to set up quickly. They will go out and meet other friends and then spend the evening in her room after that talking on the phones to those friends and watching a movie or something. There's a lot of snapchat and instagram that goes on, I know that. I think she knows I don't mind if someone wants to stay over as long as we don't have plans the next day to go anywhere in the morning. One of her friends spent NYE with us; all day and overnight. I was ok with that as I was dog sitting anyway and made them come out with me for a long walk with the dog.