Parents of teen girls - commiserate! What are some of the trials and tribulations you've had to endure suffer through experience with them?

That’s all normal, thank your lucky stars!

Having dated my fair share of teenage girls, I pity all of you parents…. lol.

And also, it’s not entirely as bad as you think it is. I never brought out drugs at least…. lol

Ok, I’m going to ask it…. would you be as concerned if your (hypothetical) teenaged son did the same things? If not, why?

Let’s see…
When the oldest was 12, she went through a near rape experience with 5 boys attacking her and 2 of her friends. That lead to her involvement in gangs and drugs, and her abandoning her family.
She later began manufacturing meth, as well as selling and using them.
She is now a single mom, but is clean.
The younger girl is now working as a body piercer in San Francisco.
Both girls drink and smoke too much, but they made it into their late 20’s and early 30’s.

My 14 yr old daughter (15 next month) is a pretty well behaved girl, and while I get concerned about her, I really haven’t had anything happen to cause more worry. But the day she turned 13 it was like flipping a switch. I haven’t gotten the last word in any discussion on any topic since then.

My daughter is 16. She had a nice trainer boyfriend for a month or so this fall, but he started indicating a desire to get physical, and she didn’t want to do that. Bye bye trainer boyfriend.

So, other than that, she spends all her time in her room studying or hanging out on facebook. She’s now doing volunteer work for the honor society—tutoring freshmen and sophomores in math, and volunteering a bit for some arts organizations. She’s taking dance classes. And doing homework, I guess. Soon we’ll find out what her class rank is, but she assures us she is in the top 10 percent.

Sometimes she has girlfriends over for sleepovers, but not that often. She doesn’t party. She doesn’t smoke or drink or do drugs and is quite vehement about not doing those things even though I tell her I don’t think they are bad (or perhaps because I don’t think they are bad). I am known as an unreliable story teller at home. Which is to say that sometimes I will make up the story if I don’t think the truth is interesting enough. In this way, my children have become quite strongly anti-drug and booze, to my chagrin (officially, but secret delight).

In general, though, I’m quite proud of her. Sometimes I even tell her that, since I don’t want her to have to experience the uncertainty I experienced growing up. Oh, and she got a part in the spring musical, too. She even gets to speak a few words this time. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Thanks for the opportunity to brag. I don’t usually do that, but somehow, in the case of my kids, I just don’t have the will to stop myself.

My daughter is older but I can tell you what happened WHEN she was a teen aged girl. She punched me in the face and was acting really crazy, kicked my husband in the head and kicked the window out of the car. She ended up in juvenile hall, dropped out of high school and left home 6 months before her 18th birthday.
Today, (At 30) she is in Guatemala with her husband and 2 beautiful kids training to be a Christian Missionary. I am only sad because she is my best friend and I know she will always live far from me.
Adolescence IS a pivotal time, but not always an indicator of where someone will end up as an adult.
Sometimes when kids get this out of their system young it gives them the freedom to work towards success in life. They can say, “been there, done that,” and move on with life.
She says with the luxury of hindsight. Not much comfort when you’re in the thick of it, I know.
@glacial, at 28 I am still worrying about my son. He caused me even MORE sleepless nights.
@wundayatta, You are really blessed.

Thank you, @Judi. I think you’re right. I feel very fortunate.

My “little girl” just entered her teens this past summer & hasn’t as of yet morphed into an angst ridden demon from the bowels of hell.
My son, now in his mid-teens has already afforded me the powers of hindsight however, so i’m ready for pretty much anything, just don’t talk to me about periods…...no, make it stop!!

@Judi That is such a story of hope. :)

My 18-year old granddaughter’s boyfriend recently broke up with her. OMG – all the tears and drama, good heavens. And the funny thing is, just before Thanksgiving she decided to break up with him herself and was asking a relative that lives in Aspen to find her a nice, eligible college boy. I pointed that out to her, and her answer was that she wanted to hang on to the old boyfriend until she at least found a replacement! Really?

@Judi Your answer literally made me tear up! But, the part about her being your best friend and knowing she will always be far away. A good mom is an irreplaceable friend, and I’m pretty sure I will always live far from my mother as well. She is the one thing that makes me consider moving back to where I’m from, though I know I’ll never do it. But it is kind of heartbreaking. MAMA!!

Welcome to my world. went through that with my step daughter. Not bad I was used to boys, but teaching her to drive a stick shift; her mom would not even try.

Knock on wood

My daughter is 17 she is great. I’m not just saying this. She just started dating and has her first bf & I must say I am impressed he is a pretty good guy. He has a J-O-B (uhhmaaZinG!!) and goals! Also even while having a bf she just achieved honors. I tell you, I was blessed. She has been easy to raise.

Also she loves Disney, cartoon movies, Harry Potter, I have figured she wants to be a cartoon character since all of her clothing seems to look like animals. Tiger hoodie, zebra hat and gloves, dinosaur onesie….and the list goes on. :/

Aside from the usual teenage moodiness on occasion, I’ve been incredibly lucky with my three teenage girls. They are all good kids, have good friends, are excellent students, and most importantly to me, are good people. They’re also pretty damn funny, and believe me…that helps.

The 18 year old went away for her first year of college this fall. (And she told me when she had her first drinking experience a little while after she got there!) The ‘craziest’ thing she’s done is get her ears pierced in multiple places. I think she has 6 or 8 holes, but only in her ears. She graduated high school with multiple academic honors, continues to do well with her studies, and has made a lot of new friends. She interned for a senator over the summer, and is studying International Relations in hopes of making the world a better place.

The 17 year old had a lot of struggles with anxiety when she was younger, but has come so far since then. She worked very hard to overcome her difficulties and manages her anxiety very well now. She says she’s about the only 17 year old she knows who hasn’t tasted alcohol yet, and I believe her. The ‘craziest’ thing she did was dye her hair a very bright red, in middle school. She changed her mind and dyed it back to her natural color after like 2 days. She loves being on the school newspaper and hopes to be a writer or editor.

The 15 year old is the only one who’s had a boyfriend. He gave her shit for participating in the day of silence (a silent protest against LGBT bullying), and she went to break up with him because of it. He beat her to the punch, and she was like “meh, good riddance”. Way better than the drama it could have been. She plays clarinet in the concert and marching bands at school, and wants to be a child psychologist. I don’t think she’s done anything crazy at all. Yet.

How I ended up with such good kids, after my teenage days, is a mystery!

watching this thread intently as my daughter is ten.

We have two daughters: one age 11 (nearly 12) and one high school sophomore who is 15 yrs old.
So far the 15 yr. old sounds a bit like Wundy’s daughter. Likes to hang out with her friends and occasionally has sleep overs..but mainly is busy with school work, volunteering and her blog/texting her friends.
She’s doing very well academically – all honors classes and one AP class in her Sophomore year. She was recently nominated for a Congress-Bundestag German year-abroad scholarship by both her Guidance Counselor and her German teacher. (They each got one student each, out of the whole school to nominate-and she was their choice.) She taught herself Russian for fun over one summer, her most-wished for present this year at Christmas is to take French language lessons. (She likes foreign languages.)

She reads non-fiction Science and History for fun (like applied physics and astronomy by Michio Kaku, Brian Greene and then light reading like: “Czars of the 18th Century” as a chaser). I have no idea where she gets this from..because I prefer books like Even Whitetrash Zombies Get the Blues (I’m not kidding. Really.)

She plays Tuba in the school band (which is funny, because she weighs nearly the same as her instrument..she’s all of 90lbs soaking wet) and has a Tumblr blog with nearly 2500 followers. (She hasn’t let us read it—but it’s primarily about a manga she likes called Hetalia.) She & her closest friends like to go to Comic-Con and do cos-play as Homestuck characters. If you know understood most of the last paragraph..then you, too, might be a geek.

I’ve always told her the secret to my High School years was that my grades were so good and I flew under the radar so much more successfully than my sister that my parents pretty much gave me free reign. I’ve told her so long as her grades stay as excellent as they are and we know her and her friends..she’ll be given a lot of leeway. She seems to have taken this advice to heart.

She’s not loving High School..she’s really very over the whole cliquish nature of it and not feeling very challenged. She is annoyed by her teachers using poor grammar or misspelling words..and came home pretty disgruntled when an English teacher last trimester was teaching them how to write letters to the Editor and passed out a piece from the Onion thinking it was an actual critical essay/real journalism without realizing it was satirical.

So..she’s emotionally not mature enough/not chronologically old enough to leave High School..but not loving it..which is not too surprising given that her interests are things like Cos-Play and attending the Air Waves music festival in Iceland.
I keep telling her to hang in there and that College is going to be an amazing time of finding kindred souls and/or having more freedom to study what she’s actually interested in learning.

So, basically I’m feeling really fortunate. She’s a neat kid..I love being around her, she has a wicked great sense of humor and she’s still relatively willing to spend time with us, her parents. (And, I’m her step-mom, but she’s pretty good about spending time with all 3 of her parental units.)

I’m waiting to see how it goes with the 11 year old. She’s in Middle School now which is pretty much universally the worst stage of life as far as I can tell. That said, she amazes me nearly daily with her insight, maturity and desire to soak up science, math and literature. She’s super bright, kind and funny…and far better at making friends than I ever was. So far so good (knock on wood).

p.s. Auggie, our 15 y.o. and her friends also all took part in the Day of Silence. Your daughter is a rockstar in my book. :)