Not cool enough to parent a teenager

[AllyOhly]

I am not a cool mum. I was not a cool teen and I have not been a cool adult. On the plus side for a longer time I was a fun mum and this worked well when dd (who is now 16) wanted to do exciting things. And it works well with my you get sons, who like mountain biking and theme parks and swimming.

The problem is my teen dd15 cannot stand to be around me. She quickly decided in her teens that she wouldn’t have any more friends round to my house (there was an incident where I told some of her friends off for literally tipping a box of cocoa powder all over the kitchen and then smashing a pot of jam on the floor whilst allegedly trying to clean up. Me telling them off was “not cool” . Subsequently when a different friend and dd accidentally set fire to a bowl of flour in the microwave I was very calm and didn’t tell them off but this did not redeem me).

I can’t think of a single other reason dd won’t have friends round other than this general uncool was of mine.

Last week she slept over at her best friend’s house and afterwards told me at length how her friend’s mum had dressed up with them to watch an ABBA movie and then played Just Dance with them for three hours. She told me this mum was great, and took her dd to concerts (have suggested n past; dd doesn’t want to go) and was “really nice” and that friend’s dad is also “great” and took friend on an adventure holiday in North America which was “so amazing” and he has “such a cool job” and on and on.

My dd point blank refuses t do anything with me. Barely talks to me most of the time unless she wants something. When she’s overtly rude and entitled I don’t shrink from telling her i dislike it when she takes me for granted. She has absolutely no remorse and just rolls her eyes or walks away. I know that underneath the surface she has total contempt for my boring existence and judges me very harshly.

She is a good kid otherwise - fine at school, not rebellious, kind and gentle with siblings and friends. It is just me on the receiving end of her endless disdain.

How can I get over my feelings of sadness about all this? Is the solution simply to ignore it until she’s older?

There is no such thing as a cool parent to a teenager! There just isn't. Never in the history of the human race.

If I had caught my children's friends (teenagers or otherwise), throwing cocoa powder around my kitchen and smashing jam jars on the floor then by god I would have gone nuclear at them and made them (and my own child) clear it up! Those friends wouldn't have been invited round to my house again for a very, very long time. If that made me an uncool parent and them not to want to come back then so be it. It would be a win as far as I was concerned. My rule is that they all respect my home and that behaviour is not respect. In fact, it is disrespect. I'd probably have asked them to leave.

Keep being yourself and enforce your reasonable boundaries. Give her the odd lift here or there when needed, as long as her behaviour towards you is good. Talk to her and invite her to join things you are planning. She might join some but don't be put out if it isn't all. Just be cool (!) with that.

The teenage years are tricky, and nobody can strop or sulk quite like a teenage girl can. I know, I had three of them. 🙄

Bide your time and pick your battles carefully. They do come out the other end eventually. Mine really began to become almost human again after about the ages of 16/17. My youngest is 24 now and we are all pretty close but the teenage years are a hard slog and it can feel like your relationship with them will never survive. It usually does though.

Absolutely teen biology is designed to make them want to pull away. Teens who actively seek their parents company are missing some development stage, which isn’t good, or they have very little security, also not good.

So see your uncoolness as testament to safe sensible parenting.

I don’t mean this unkindly but your OP made me laugh @AllyOhly

My DD found me INCREDIBLY EMBARRASSING although I am/was very average looking, dress conventionally, am to all outward appearances “normal”.

DD had a best friend whose mum was SO COOL! She and her DD were on first name terms, not mum. They were best friends rather than mother and daughter. The DD was allowed to drink, have early tattoos (on her neck), spoke to her mum like shit, and all kinds of stuff I can’t even remember.

I managed to keep my cool and kept saying “oh really” “that’s nice for them” “well if it works for them”. My DD was forever making unfavourable comparisons between me and her friends mum.

But you know what, over time she started to see how actually it wasn’t working and was very codependent. The mother couldn’t cope without her DD around and the DD was a weird combination of tear away and naive soul. It ended badly.

So don’t despair. Your DD will come around to recognising that you aren’t the living embodiment of cringe, and actually her friends mum might be a bit naff in some ways.

Keep going, but do pull her up on her rudeness. When she’s unkind, you tell her so. Without anger, just like you are supernanny telling a toddler their behaviour is unacceptable. It does get better but it may take a few years, sorry!

My DD and I are thick as thieves since she moved out for uni. She’s nearly thirty and loves coming on holidays and days out with me. It will change. 💐

Even if you were actually cool, your own teenager wouldn’t think so! My mum was cool & my friends loved her. But me? I wanted her to be like the normal mums who baked, were on the PTA & dressed from BHS.

Kids always think the grass is greener at friend’s houses! So-inso’s mum lets us do this, they can do that, etc.
my eldest was never embarrassed of me and embraced me joining in with her when she had friends over. My middle daughter is far more reserved and doesn’t like my input, and does chat about how her friends are allowed to this and that. I’m a strict but fair parent, and the girls do respect me for that. My son is only 5 so we will see how he takes it 😂
but honestly don’t take it personally, kids always compare, but they will appreciate it all in later life

Ah what you are doing here op is thinking your teens evolutionary natural disgust at you is personal

This has nothing..NOTHING..to do with you personally. However it sounds like it is triggering some deep feelings of your own

I actually was a cool teen..I was out raving all over the country at 16... and as an adult I have a cool job ! Other teens think im cool!

My 14 year old thinks I am the saddest lamest human to walk the planet

He literally refuses to be seen with me anywhere in our city.

He would die if I suggested dressing up an d watching TV with him ! Your daughter is winding you up. Nobody thinks that is what mums should do

Did you miss the memo @AllyOhly ?

Other people’s mums are cool, your own mum is completely cringe (or whatever it is they say now).

Her dd doesn’t think her mum is cool, but will be flattered, and mildly baffled, that your dd thinks so

The hack is to make friends if you can with your whichever of the mums your dd decides is cool, so that she feeds back to you the info that your dd confides.

I imagine if you had dressed up and played just dance she would have died of embarrassment. It's not you op. I found my mum highly irritating when I was in my teens. I don't know why. I got over it in my early twenties then she died when I was in my early thirties, which was absolutely gutting and I still find it hard to believe

Nothing to add here but sympathy. I hope you and your daughter find a way to reconnect, I’m sure you will once she’s through this stage as per pp.

I grew up with a "cool" Dad. He surfed, he skateboarded, he drove a flash car, he could play the guitar and sing really well. He could chat at length to anyone about anything, and they'd come away thinking "What a guy!".

My friends all loved him. Male friends wanted to be him, and would love it when he turned up at the skateboard park. Female friends would tell me he was "hot", and god did that make me want to throw up.

Me and my brother thought he was the cringiest man in existence. Every time he went sailing past us at the school bus stop on his skateboard, we died inside a little more. He's the cool grandad these days, and my daughter feels exactly the same way about him as we did. I can see my nephew starting to go that way as well.

I still think the man is a bellend now. I can see the "coolness" now for what it is, a desperate need to be liked by absolutely everyone, at the cost of his relationships with the people who loved him. It's a need that caused him to have affairs and devastated my mother. It caused him to alienate his kids in order to curry favour with their friends. It caused him to abandon his suicidal friend because he was busy courting other new shiny friends.

Nobody wants a cool parent. They want a parent who loves them, will put them first, and be a parent rather than trying to be a friend.

Don’t despair she will come round . But don’t allow rudeness about you and talk to her about how that makes you feel and about treating people the way you’d like to be treated . You’re not her friend you’re her mum and that’s fine .

Her friend will probably be embarrassed about her own mum in some way. It’s a totally normal transition. Just keep being you and she will come round

Not thinking you’re cool is quite normal for a teen, being openly rude and disdainful is not something I’d tolerate though.

You're her mum not her mate. She grow up eventually. Everyone else always has cooler, nicer, richer, more fun parents.
Its just the law of teens.
Don't let her be rude or dismissive, tell her how hurt you are and you expect her to be civil at least.

from experience, they are all the same.

let it go over your head and use the time you never had to focus on doing something for yourself x

Teenagers need someone to unload their mood swings on.

She will learn, in time, just how uncool she was to spurn your love.

This, I’m going to just lean i to my natural grumpy old woman persona.

Well i certainly wasn't a cool mum.

Wore the wrong clothes , said the wrong things.

It'll almost certainly be a phase - she'll probably be happy to bring her friends round one she's late teens/ early 20s. My eldest does bring people round now. I tend to stay out of the way if its a large group but will obviously chat a bit to the ones I know (and the more talkative ones).

You need some come backs 'Emma's mum dressed up in Abba gear...'

'Really, is that not a bit try hard?'

I was fed up to the back teeth of DDs jibes and once tore her off a strip, including telling her that I found one of her phrases severely irritating.

Sounds like your daughter needs new friends, seem very disrespectful when being in someone else's house

It's the lure of the other.

Some of the kids i teach think I'm cool/ young for my age etc etc.

Puffed with a mild sense of 'not dead yet', i recounted this to my teen dc.

They laughed in my face.

⬆️ this