Day 224 - Parent of a Teenage Daughter

What happened to my baby girl? The one who used to snuggle up her chubby cheeks into my warm neck and whisper, "I wuv you, Mama." She would follow me around, mimicking everything I said and did. She looked up to me. She adored me.

And then she grew and grew...into a teenager.

Now she screams at me, tells me what to do, what not to do, doesn't think I have a brain, feels as if I am out to get her, and can't understand the boundaries and rules I set sometimes.

She pits her father against me with such cunning and skill, a smile on her face and a skip in her step.

If she doesn't get her way, it's full-blown tears and slamming of doors. She's a big girl acting like my toddler sometimes, although she feels like she's so grown up and mature.

And sometimes, she really is mature for her age. I trust her with the truck. She pretty much comes and goes as she pleases after school, so long as she lets us know where she is and what time she'll be home. She gets good grades in school. She is loving to her youngest sister -- can't say the same for her relationship with my middle daughter, however.

I struggle in parenting this volatile teenager. When she was young, and friends of mine had teenage daughters who behaved this way, I would say to myself, "My daughter will never behave that way," or "I wouldn't allow my daughter to do or say those things to me."

And yet here I am in the middle of a battleground nearly every week: she's on one side of the battlefield throwing her fiery and piercing darts, and I'm ducking behind my itty-bitty shield defending myself and feeling a lot like David from the story David and Goliath.

Lord, I ask that you guide me and lead me in my parenting of this volatile and yet loving teenage daughter. Help me survive the next two years that she is in my home. Help me to still place loving boundaries that she must obey, and help us to navigate through this emotional time as mother and daughter. Amen.