Always the Bad Guy

Parenting tweens is challenging. The biggest issue I seem to face lately is that I’m always “the bad guy”. If I had a dollar for every time my younger daughter said “You’re the only mom that makes their kids ________!” I’d be a bajillionaire.

You can fill in the blank with any of the following terrible atrocities I force on her:

• Making her take a bath or shower
• Making her sit down with the family at supper time
• Not letting her spend every waking hour on her devices
• Giving her a bed time
• Making her participate in sports/physical activity
• Not letting her have a belly-button ring (she’s 12)
• Giving me the passwords for her devices and email/instagram accounts
• Making her eat vegetables
• Not letting her eat as many treats and desserts as she wants
• Making her make her own lunches (I gave up when mine kept coming back home with her, uneaten)
• Making her learn her times tables (again, she’s 12!)

If I was a softer person, I’d let this hurt me. I want to have an amicable relationship with her. I don’t enjoy having to engage in mini-battles to get her to do simple things that she should see are good for her. But I also won’t be a pushover parent who caves on character-building and essential development, in favor of being their kid’s “friend”.

So for now, we battle.

Sigh.

Featured image credit: David Pereiras Villag/Thinkstock

Natalie Rea

Mom to two amazing daughters - a feisty teen in middle school, and an ambitious young adult in university. Originally from Montréal's West Island, I now explore the beautiful trails of Hamilton, Ontario. Proud Canadian, vegetarian, dog-adopter, & bleeding-heart liberal. I smile a lot because I have Resting Bitch Face.