Trials and Tribulations of a 13 year old girl

Friday, August 08, 2008
Trials and tribulations of a 13 year old girl
The trials and tribulations of a 13 year old girl are different now than they were 20 years ago. When I had a fight with someone we sent nasty notes, maybe a prank phone call, shoulder bump in the hallway. If you were really unlucky the girl and her friends would follow you around at the strip mall/ movies and threaten to kick your butt but luckily your mom or dad always picked you up in time. No matter what it seemed liked someone had your back though. Your group may have divided over something major like "she likes your boyfriend" but in the end your closest friends stayed with you. That was before A.I.M., texting, and myspace where a conversation you have whether it was in confidence or sarcastic can be copied and sent to your whole school in a matter or minutes. Girls no longer hate you for a couple of days and then forget about it. Now they hate you and make sure that everyone on your "friends" list knows what happened and hates you too. This results in an onslaught of "why did you,how could you" messages that really are noone's business. Then the ultimate happens and you start to get blocked from people's lists. During the school year this is bad but the next day you go to school and talk to people. In the summer it is torture because if you don't live by people you don't see/talk to them because god forbid you pick up an actual real life phone to call someone. I have suggested the call and invite the friend over to talk out the problem approach. Even as I type this it can hear my teen self sigh in annoyance. This of course was met with an eye roll and a "we don't do that". I'm realistic. I know that the only thing that ends this kind of torment is someone backing down or moving away. Being the type of mom I am I have raised my 13 year old to be a leader not a follower and moving away isn't really an option. Do you take away the computer so they don't see the constant nastiness just to give them a break, or do you let them deal with it themselves. We always had a friend who acted like a go-between to smooth things over. That doesn't seem to be real common anymore.I for one am trying the whole "let her deal with it on her own" thing right now. I bite my tongue, sit on my hands and tell myself to keep quiet and let her deal with it her own way. You would be amazed how well I can still talk while biting my tongue. Hopefully these episodes will fade away forgotten and unimportant within a week or so like they did way back when. Well, maybe not forgotten....... School starts in a little over a week and new dramas will unfold. More messaging, texting, commenting and it will start all over again.