I thought this horrible teen-aged stuff was supposed to ease up at age 18? My 18 year old daughter seems to be getting worse. She isn't "bad" per se, she doesn't do anything illegal (that I know of) or dangerous, she is just soooo a victim or slave to some unknown force that propels her to constantly want to pull a Michael Jackson routine.
Its crazy. She doesn't like the color of her skin. We are IRISH okay? We have pale, freckled skin. She has really beautiful skin, not a blemish on her. No teenaged acne. Shes totally lovely the way she is.
However, she would rather slather this cheap fake tan stuff all over her body, in an uneven way...its sooo nasty!!! I can't even explain to you how bad it looks. She looks like either she has rolled in the dirt or has a terrible birth mark. ALL of her friends have told her how incredibly nasty this looks, but she doesn't care. Its crazy.
So, maybe she had self-esteem issues. Don't we all? I remember trying QT when I was a teenager. I turned totally orange and then it started washing off in someone's pool. That was enough for me. I was back burning myself at the beach.
This has been going on for YEARS with my daughter. Nothing anyone says can prevent her from slathering this stuff on. It looks especially horrible on her feet and hands where she has rough skin. She has a perfect manicure and pedicure (french) and then the skin around it is this grotesque dark blotchy mess.
I've calmly asked her several times what is her need to do this. She have several hispanic friends with lovely tanned skin and black hair. (ps: she is also dying her hair jet black) I say, embrace your irish-ness! You're a lovely lass! Her hair is long and full, she has incredible blue green eyes, straight white teeth. I don't get this need to change her skin color. Maybe she needs an intervention? Her Spanish girlfriends keep telling her to knock it off! What else can a person do?
Its freaking me right the heck out. Maybe she needs therapy. She also has this bizarre sense of entitlement. She seems to think that anything and everything in our home is fair game for her to take and use as she pleases. Her response is "You weren't using it" Uhhh...not at the MOMENT, but that doesnt mean you can just come in and confiscate anything you see! There is a gap in her synapse.
Oddly, none of the other children are remotely like her. Each one is healthy (including the girl in question...we've been blessed) No problems with their looks, happy, good humored. Good People. Pherrin is a good person too, don't get me wrong. She just has this piece missing. She likes to blame me. Well, I'm an easy target I suppose. I raised them alone and I'm sure I made mistakes along the way. We didn't have tons of money, so they didn't have all the "right stuff" all the time, but that shouldn't have such an adverse affect. I did the best I could with what I had to work with. I'm not a bastion of sanity either, but I kept them well in our pumpkin shell!
The worst part, I suppose, is that she truly missed her father when he left. She was the only one who could remember him in any way. He never supported them in any way shape or form. So, there is this huge empty hole.
I really feel sorry for her. I feel badly that I have to be tough on her (she doesn't like to pay her bills and tends to curse us off if she doesn't get her way... so she loses things like...cell phones...computer privilages, car keys...) And then she is really miserable.
Any time I try to talk to her, it ends up in a blame game arguement. I don't know what else to do. I guess she needs to see me as a person, not as an evil woman who can't buy her the latest N'SYNC album because we need to eat.
2 comments:
Ahh, I so understand how you feel Angela. When my daughter was that age I wasn't sure if I was going to kill her or she was going to kill me first!! I'm happy (and somewhat amazed)to report that a few years later we started to develop a close relationship that now couldn't be any better. So hang on, there's hope! Sounds like deep down she's a good kid, just kinda confused about her self image. I had a niece that got into that suntanning booth thing - and turned herself nearly chocolate, with platinum dyed hair. It looks just atrocious since he's fair-skinned by nature. But no matter what anyone tries to tell her, she thinks she looks great. Yeah, right. Uck! But I'm guessing that the more everyone tries to convince your daughter to go with the way that God made her, she will just keep it up longer as an act of defiance. Maybe if you all just ignored it, (though I know that is hard), in time it will go away and she'll return to the lovely Irish girl you gave birth to. If even her friends are telling her she looks bad and she ignores that, there isn't really much you can do, since she's now 18, and at that age you can't send her to her room until it wears off! :-) I feel the same about the black hair, but you know, by 30 I bet it won't be there, hopefully it will disappear long before. Try to remember the kid underneath all that gunk and remind her you love her.
Yes, my daughter also got into that "what's yours is mine" routine when she got her first apartment. Everytime I turned around she had come and "borrowed" something else she needed, and never quite remembered to return. We had a few cross words about it until she got the picture that my stuff was off limits unless she asked first. Would she like you taking things of hers?
Sounds like you are laying a lot of blame on your head for the life she had growing up. I'm sure it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy for my kids either... OR for their mother. We were doing the very best we could Angela, to just keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. My daughter knew if she wanted the trendy stuff she was gonna have to work to buy it, and that's what she did. I heartily encourage part-time jobs or at least summer jobs and parents who don't foot all the bills. When she needed a car, the insurance and gas were her responsibility. There is no way I could have afforded it. While it made her life harder than most kids (she also worked a 40-hour job while full time at college for her nursing degree), she now knows the value of money and learned very quickly to become a bargain shopper. Back in those days it seemed like we were always fighting about something, but now we both laugh about the "danger zones" and how much we are like each other.
Being the oldest, losing her dad in her everyday life was probably very hard on her, when I have time and the courage, I'll post a story about my daughter's father and step-father. She would have been far better without either. So you see, either way you can't win. We just do the best we can at the time with what we have and what we know. We can't live each day for the rest of our lives with regrets over what we didn't do perfect. There is no going back.
We also both know many wonderful people who survived difficult if not tragic childhoods and overcame. I really believe at some point people need to deal with it and get over it. Sometimes therapy helps some kids - if it is something THEY want to do, otherwise you are wasting your time and your money. But don't beat yourself up Angela, sounds like you've got some wonderful kids here, and you can be proud of what you HAVE accomplished... even that dark-skinned daughter! At least her hair isn't orange and her face full of piercings, right?! Talk her into saving up for a professional spray tan, at least it would look a whole lot better! And yes, I remember that orange QT stuff! Ewwwww How lovely we all must have looked - especially with our matching orange palms from applying it! :-)
:-)
Thanks, Josie!
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