Last night's dialogue with difficult child... UGH!

[greenrene]

I swear, I love difficult child but I just can't STAND how she behaves sometimes.

Somehow the subject of dialogue last night turned into "making good choices." difficult child said that she's a teenager, and teenagers make bad choices, as if she was using the "teenage' thing as an excuse for her behavior. I told her that everyone makes bad choices SOMETIMES, but being a teenager doesn't automatically make someone make bad choices, that lots of teenagers make GOOD choices...

She kept on about it, as if bad choices are just inherent to teendom and it just sounded like she didn't even CARE about TRYING to make good choices. I knew she was just trying to be oppositional and bait me into an argument.

That's when I said that the conversation was over, I'd had enough, I wasn't going to argue with her or take her baiting. Done. Finito. Move on to something else.

The VERY NEXT THING out of her mouth? (Bear in mind that she's sitting at the table with easy child 1 during this whole thing)

"Let's talk about DEATH."

UGH. Really?

So I just sent her to bed then. Good lord, I just don't get why she has to do/say stuff like that ALL.THE.TIME. It's maddening!!!!

I don't know what else to do but just remove her from the situation and send her to her room when she gets like that.

 

[DaisyFace]

LOL! We need to introduce our daughters - my difficult child would LOVE to talk about death!

In fact, last night after everything settled down...difficult child wanted me to read the poems she is working on for entry into our local library's writing contest. They were ALL about death and dying. Every. Single. One. Really? This is what you think the librarians wil select to read as part of their monthly "Family Story Time" ? Really??

Regarding the 'teens make bad choices' thing - sometimes I think our kids get a notion into their heads that they are SUPPOSED to behave a certain way. (Teen = rebellious and crazy.) I wish I knew how to counter-act that kind of thinking...but so far, no luck.

 

[DDD]

What??? You all don't have to listen to dialogs on religion? Different faiths (none of which difficult child is familiar with more than by by name, sigh). My difficult child#2 would start out with wrongdoing, move to death and then world religions determining if you ended up with Satan...because TA DA!...you did something wrong. Second verse the same as the first. Sorry but after awhile I learned to tune it out. DDD

 

[keista]

Sorry, I don't know how long she's been wanting to talk about death, but you can send her here and I'll talk to her about it. Generally there are two reasons kids want to talk about death - 1. to freak out the grown ups in their lives and 2. because they can't stop thinking about it. Not necessarily that they are suicidal, but because they are obsessed with the topic and they don't even know why. Death is the reason that teens often make poor choices. They don't comprehend the permanence of FOREVER.

Kinda ironic that you posted this today since last night, my DD1 was creating a list of things she wanted to do and at the end there was a distinct "Oh, and I don't want to die." WOOT! First time I've heard something that positive out of her mouth in about 4 years! And yes, she has an extensive collection of morbid poetry as well.