Teenage Prison Hell

Today is the day I get my Mom of The Year Award.  I am the proud mother of the teenager who got her second referral in homeschool before Christmas. Wow. To quote the immortal words of my dear RM2 “How lame do you have to be to get a referral in homechool?” yet the question now begs “How lame to do you have to be to get TWO referrals in homeschool?” Furthermore, how lame of a parent do you have to be to have the teenager who gets the SECOND referral in one semester of homeschool?

You are probably all wondering the same question: What the heck do you do to get a referral in homeschool? Pretty easy actually; don’t do your work. Again. Then again. Then one more time for fun. Then again for good measure. Then one more time for rebellious emphasis.  Here is the kicker to this scenario: Princess worked SUPER hard to make it LOOK like she did the work she didn’t do.  In fact, the time and effort that it took for her to pretend to do the work far outweighed the time and effort it would have actually taken to do the fa realz work. Nice huh? This completely makes sense if you are well…a teenager.

So today I got to have the phenomenal experience of not only sitting in a meeting with her teacher but with the area coordinator to discuss Princess’ accomplishment.  I did everything that Super Nanny would tell me not to do.  I got pissed.  I yelled. When I signed the damn referral…AGAIN…I threw the pen and the referral at Princess and told her that it was proudest moment of my life.  I used sarcasm, humiliation and threats.  Yes, I was the mom you are not supposed to be.  I was THAT mom who has THAT kid.  I would now like to go bury my head into a pile of leftover birthday cake and wait for her to grow up and move out.  The pitiful part is if I do that then she will grow up to be a total loser and NEVER MOVE OUT! Thus I am left at this crossroads where the only option is for me to turn my house into a medieval prison and commit myself to daily self torture.  I have to schedule her day to the minute.  I have to make more checklists.  I have to follow her around and stalk her every move.  I have to do whatever it take to make sure that she graduates from high school even if it literally kills me (or makes me certifiably insane).  

The cell phone is gone… again …this time it isn’t going in my drawer it is actually going AWAY forever. I may even run over it with my car just to make myself feel better. Social life….gone.  TV, DVD and non-school internet….gone.  There is the final part to this punishment that actually hurts me.  It is the part that left me sitting in my car today in the parking lot of her school office crying.  No ballet; no Nutcracker.  She has to quit ballet and Nutcracker.  That was the agreement in the first referral contract and it must be honored.  This year she was cast as Spanish Chocolate, a role she has wanted to dance since she first saw the Nutcracker at age four.  This part hurts, it really does.  Princess is a phenomenal dancer.  When I watch her dance on that stage I cry because she is so amazing.  I wish she could apply the work ethic and dedication to school that she has for dance.  The only way she will ever learn this lesson is to take the privilege of dance and applause away and honor the contract that we all signed.  Remember that annoying saying that your parents tossed at you before you got your ass tossed into a sling: “This hurts me more than it hurts you.” Well, this is possibly one of those moments.

**************SF Ballet*******************

The situation kills me and she is devastated but it is the life lesson she has to learn.  I am sad that I won’t see her dance the role she has dreamed of her whole life.  Today I am sitting here and I am staring at all these pictures of her of when she was small in her little tutu  and making a checklist of every place where I screwed up as a parent and then it dawned on me that this is on her.  This is the part in the journey of raising my kids where I have to step back and let Princess own her mistakes and learn from them.  I have spent 15 years being a good mom.  Not a perfect mom, not a mom without mistakes but a good mom who tries and loves her.  I wrote before about how I let her fall on her face and now here I am a few months later in the same position and once again I have to let her fall and this time a lot harder.  She is going to be an adult soon and she needs to learn how to be a functional one.  That comes with failure.  So while I am sad I won’t see her on that stage and I am so sad she is not achieving academically at work she is intellectually more than capable of completing, I have to step back and let her own her failure and watch her scrape herself up off the sidewalk and try again.  I will be the prison warden and do my due diligence in following through on her school work but I can’t do it for her.  I also can’t make any excuses for her or myself. I promised on this blog that I would always be real and be honest.  I will share with you not just my successes but my parental failures.  Today is a day where I failed. 

It is what it is today.  I am the parent of the kid who has two referrals in home school.  On that note I’m going to go eat cake before I unlock the cell door for her time out in the yard.

~RM1