Needs Improvement

Raising a teenager is a hell of a thing. The past few days are evidence of that. Not that I'm any kind of expert or anything. I'm in way over my head, frankly, and I'm just barely getting started at it.

We've had some parenting challenges over the years but until this weekend I've never been in a situation with one of the kids where I simply had no idea what to do. But then, I've never had a thirteen year-old daughter before.

It started with a progress report email Donna got from the school.

US History : F Language Arts : D French : C- Dance : C+ Science : C Algebra : F Fitness : A

This is what I would call a total disaster. This looks like one of MY report cards. The difference being that while I was a complete failure from the first day I started school, Megan has always been a good student. This kind of a thing comes as quite a shock considering how responsible she has shown she usually can be.

All the radio call-in shows point to sudden changes in grades as one of the signs parents should be on the lookout for as a symptom of possibly deeper problems. And if there's one thing I've learned it's that radio call-in shows are always right. So naturally this dramatic departure took us a bit off guard.

It had to be a mistake. What else would explain a C+ in dance? But then there was the matter of the report card from last semester that should have come in the mail a while ago. Is it possible this has been a problem longer than we thought?

When we asked about her grades, she teared up immediately. To her credit, she owned up to the bad grades as probably being accurate. Then we asked about the missing report card.

"I got it and tore it up and threw it away", she confessed.

This was hard for her and she was showing her solid character in spite of some really obviously bad recent choices. As mad as I was, I was quietly very proud of her.

"So you failed these classes last semester too?"

She was full-on crying now. She choked out, "Yes."

This is where I turned into a real asshole. I spent the better part of the afternoon with a short fuse, criticizing and blaming her for nearly everything I could think of. I guess I felt the need to make up for the last few weeks of treating civilly while she went about disposing of report cards and not getting her assignments done. This was an irrational and ineffective response on my part but I was stalling. I couldn't let her know that I had absolutely no clue how to deal with the problem.

As I saw it, the problem wasn't just that she was failing classes. It was a feeling that my trust had been violated. She had lied and sneaked and hid the truth from us. The situation also told me what I refused to believe to this point, that my little girl has a part of her life she doesn't want me to know about.

I eventually calmed down. We all cried and hugged and promised to be nicer and more honest with each other. But not before we grounded her from her cell phone for a week.

Keeping her from her phone may not just be punitive either. I took the chance, as long as she wouldn't be needing her phone, to update the firmware and clean up the memory card to fix a few of the bugs she's been experiencing. In nosing around the phone I figured she's sent or received nearly four-thousand text messages in the last ten days. That's an average of one message every three-and-a-half minutes.... including the minutes in the middle of the night. Including messages to and from "that boy", as my mother calls Tyson, some as late at 3:30 in the morning some days.

Keeping her phone from her might actually address the root of the problem. I may have, by chance accident, eventually done the right thing to address the problem. I only wish I hadn't been predictably horrible at first. A reaction like I had only compounds the problem because it's exactly the sort of thing Megan was hoping to avoid by ripping up her report card in the first place.

I give myself a C-. Totally unacceptable. I can do better.

Filed under - Family

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