Bad mom morning: Losing cool with my teen
It was a bad Monday morning. It started when my older daughter blatantly and repeatedly refused to do something I had ordered her to do: Wear her contact lenses to school.
Of course this went nowhere. Everyone knows that ordering a teen to do something she does not want to do is a very good way to ensure that it won’t be done.
It makes no sense to me why the girl will not wear her contact lenses, which she must have in order to play water polo. She has astigmatism, so the lenses take some getting used to. It’s not like your typical nearsightedness that can be corrected in an instant. No. When you have astigmatism, your eyes need time to adjust to the glasses or contacts. Then you see 20-20.
Besides, she looks great in her contacts. She has beautiful eyes, with think dark eyebrows like Brooke Shields. But my daughter is not a primper. It took six months to convince her to keep her hair brushed.
I’m her mama. I want my girl to look beautiful when she goes to school. So I nag. And sometimes I just lose it. What 16-year-old girl does not want to look pretty going to school, for heaven's sake?
Also, on a practical mothering note, I want her eyes to adjust to the lenses so that she can see while she’s treading water, fighting defenders and having a ball thrown toward her head. Call me crazy.
I certainly felt crazy this morning as I was lecturing at my daughter all the way to school over something as trivial as wearing contacts.
I really hate it when I’m like that. Usually our drive to school is much more fun. We listen to music together and talk about friends. Or we discuss something we read recently, or maybe the work she has to do for her classes. I like that 20 minutes most days.
Today I made her cry. When she said, “Mom, will you just let me finish my sentence?” I said, “NO!” And then, regretting, “yes.” She said she will wear the lenses three days a week. OK, I said, but it needs to be three days in a row.
It’s a start. Maybe if I can get her for three days, she’ll make it four. We'll see. We have to get one day first.
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