It can be a bit of a roller coaster parenting teen girls!
Top tips:
Don’t take any back chat or grumpiness personally; they are going through a normal, but epic life transition. Equally you don’t have to put up with disrespectful behaviour either! Choose where you draw the line. They need you to be confident as a mother in your own decisions.
Listen to the emotion behind the words, rather than the words themselves.
Never engage in heated discussions. Keep calm and walk away and discuss again when everything has calmed down. I learnt this the hard way! I got too wordy and reactive!
Use humour to dial down conflict.
Tell them you love them a lot because they need to hear it, especially when they are being spiky.
Be prepared that you may experience conflict in very different ways. You may still be really upset a few days later by something they’ve done or said, when they’ve already forgotten it two minutes later and behave as if nothing has happened! 😆
Choose your battles generally (I let bedrooms slip, within reason, they usually tidied them up before friends came around).
Keep lines of communication open. Start each day afresh.
Have a private code word she can use to get you to rescue her when necessary.
Don’t link behaviour with birthdays or Christmas.
Don’t always jump in with solutions but let them vent and encourage them to find their own.
Keep little positive moments going (a hot chocolate together) even when times are difficult.
Be calm and consistent and a person they can come to in a crisis.
Encourage them to feel the fear and do it anyway.
Insist on them doing their own washing (mine started at 14 years) and contributing to food shopping, budgeting and cooking, cleaning chores and pet care but then cosset them a bit during exams or periods of high stress.
Keep your own spirits up and start going out yourself and living life a bit more. Develop your own hobbies so you can step back a bit from top down parenting. So you don’t become “mum at home always available to do their bidding” as this doesn’t help them in the long term. They do test your strength of character sometimes, so it’s important to keep your spirits up!
Earning more trust means earning more freedom.
Model by example the sort of person you want your teen girl to be and make sure there are fun aspects to it as they need to know that growing up is something to look forward to! But that freedom goes along with responsibilities too.
Be prepared for a marathon not a sprint; they do mature eventually and you will be out the other side again and they will return to a new mature version of themselves and you will enjoy each other again! And even during dark days; there will be lots of enjoyable moments! In fact you can look back on the worst bits and have a laugh about them,
Good luck!