These are the parenting moments I live for.....

I have been struggling with how to handle A's changes and growth. Struggling with balancing being fair and honest with her with being consistant and strict. Sometimes I feel I am doing a rotten job and at others I feel like all of the struggle must surley be worth it. I have really been trying to balance freedom for A with trust in her judgement. A is not very mature for her age in many ways-she still sleeps with a night light, but in many ways she is extremely mature for her age-she can get herself up and out of the door for school and even cook her own breakfast. I expect alot of her, more than is sometimes fair for her age. I try to balance that with giving her as much as I can both materially and emotionally. She is a good kid, a great kid and I am truly blessed. Even when she makes mistakes and does things wrong, she is usually easy to discipline. She has become kind of a jerk these last two years and at times I am frustrated and worried. Then, she will do something truly sweet and I remember what I felt like at 12 and know everything is going to be just as it should. A has been hiding her grades and lying to me-about B's and C's. I recently found a progress report that she forged my name to for math, her grade is B- but she is missing 5 assignments. I found it in her coat pocket, so I put it on the dining room table to see if she would fess up. I worked late that night, but the next morning I noticed it was gone.So when she got home from school I had a good talk with her and explained that I need to know what is going on with her. She is still punished but I can not trust her to go to friends or shopping or the movies or whatever if she lying and hiding and forging my name on B and C grades. If I can not trust her with that, I can never trust her with the temptations of friends. I was very discouraged then I realized that she has not been taking her ADD meds for most of this summer and school year and I wonder if that is not affecting her. So, I talked to her this morning about taking her meds everyday and lets see if that helped. I also told her to write an essay for me about what she did, why she did it and how she feels about her actions and the consequences. It touched me deeply:)
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!

December 3, 2005


I thought about my behavior for awhile last night while I was upstairs in my room, and I was starting to think it was because of my medicine too, but I decided not to come down and tell you about it for a-couple of reasons:

• I thought you might have more than enough of me for one day.


• I didn’t think you would’ve let me come tell you anyways.


• You were on the phone.


• You were probably tiered from working all day.


• You probably would’ve said that I was just lying to get out of trouble and just making it up.


• And I didn’t tell you this morning because I thought I would make you mad, and you had already thought of it so it is kind of pointless.

For the record you probably still don’t believe me, but I don’t blame you, if I were you I wouldn’t believe me either. But that’s not my point I’m just trying to let you know that I was thinking the same thing, even if you don’t believe me.

But anyways I hid my report-card from you because I thought I would be in deep, deep trouble for getting two C’s on my report-card. But when I found out I was grounded for lying instead of for getting two C’s on my report-card, I should’ve told you about forging your name on my math paper. But to tell you the complete truth I’m not positively sure why I did that, I guess it’s just because I knew I lost and didn’t do four of my assignments. But the fifth one I do remember that I did forget about it over the weekend. I’ll do my best today to get in what I didn’t do, I will do them and try to finish them and turn them in on Monday, but I did turn in one or two of them.

That is the only way I can think of to possibly try to make my grade go up. I will also organize my binder and back-pack so that I know where everything is and I will also take some time to clean out my locker on Monday, before homeroom instead of walking around the school doing absolutely nothing with my friends.(We just walk around the school so that we don’t have to sit around in homeroom for twenty to twenty-five minutes)

I do think that you are being very fair to me though, even if I don’t like it very much. But I do think that since I can’t go anywhere, or with anyone to go Yule-shopping for you (although I do have one thing for you- a little help from B) you should take back almost all of my presents and leave me like one or two presents for me, and get yourself something nice for your birthday or for a special Yule for yourself. And I know you think, if I was so sorry I wouldn’t have done it, but I am sorry and if could I would go back and just do all of my homework because this is really not worth all of this, at all in anyway possible.

And even though we had to go through all of this, just for you to know, I do feel kind of better, even though I’m grounded for a really, really long time, it’s better that I don’t have to walk around everyday knowing that I forged your signature. And I can assure you that I’m really very sorry. You may not believe me still but I am sorry, and I’m pretty sure that I won’t do it again. But I know that doesn’t excuse what I did and so, I’ve decided that I’m going to have a good attitude about everything since I do deserve it.