Mornings for most people are full of basic routines, the three esses (SSS) of basic hygiene, dressing for the day and breakfast. These activities are common to most adults. I say most since part of these may be omitted when you are short for time or you are just a slob. Then we add children to the mix. Little kids need help. They are so cute when they try to do things themselves while creating a disaster area in their wake. They get better at their morning routines and the wreckage left in their wakes become smaller and smaller.
Fast forward to early teens, when my boys turned twelve they began to smell. This was not the smell of kids that had been playing outside where they had been rolling in the dirt or climbing trees. This smell was definitely a more grown up funky man kind of smell. It was the beginning of puberty. Along with the smell comes all kinds of other changes. Their bodies become awkward. They begin to grow hair in places where hair had never grown before. Their voices change. None of this is surprising or odd, it’s all normal and generally easy to deal with. Then there are the fits of raging emotion. Boys get angry, uncontrollably angry and they do not know why. There is no specific reason that they can point out. My solution was to throw them out of the house and order them to run five miles. This was very effective for the boys. I figured since there was no concrete basis for their rage that it must hormone induced. The most likely culprit was testosterone. Testosterone turns boys into men. This hormone is the trigger for all of the physiological changes they are experiencing. It also was very likely the reason for their bad behavior. I found that vigorous exercise calmed them down. This was a simple solution to a normal part of growing up.
Then we come to my daughter. Apparently, girls are different from boys. I know, physically, they are different, they have different plumbing, they are soft, and like pretty things. More importantly, my wife had to explain to me that I cannot speak to my daughter the way I speak to the boys. Speaking to teenage boys is not unlike talking to the family dog. They respond well to short instructions such as sit, stay, eat your dinner, take a run, and go to bed. More than three word commands and you have lost them. Girls are different. They are really different. Use a three-word command on a prepubescent girl and the tears start flowing. I might as well have called her the c word. I am evil. I am a DICK.
Lately a normal morning includes my saying good morning to my little girl and although I might expect a normal response of “Good morning Daddy” I can be quite surprised. Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get.” It’s pretty much the same thing with a hormonally deranged twelve-year-old. Her response can be a pleasant, ”Hello Daddy”, a glare that could burn your eyes out, a shrieking tirade with statements like, ”I can’t believe you just said that to me, you are such a @$$&)(#. “ There are also tears. Lots and lots of tears. Why are there tears? I don’t know. I have asked my wife these very questions. She just stares at me and laughs. She thinks this is funny. I don’t find any of this funny, I want to fix it. I am seriously thinking about camping out in the backyard for the next two to six years.
I asked some of my friends who have daughters the same age as mine and amazingly enough they have experienced the exact same behaviors. I have discovered a pattern. I have always been good at problem solving so I approached my daughter’s psychotic behavior as something that was broken and needed fixing. This was mistake.
First, I tried keeping quiet in the morning, behaving as though she had a really nasty hangover and couldn’t tolerate the noise. This only caused her to cry because Daddy wasn’t talking to her. Second, I tried speaking very softly and ever so gently asking her if there was anything I could do to make her mornings more pleasant. This time her response was to scream and yell at me, “You are mocking me! Stop doing that at once and just grow up, @$$&)(#!.” Attempt number three was a little more subtle. I did not speak, I made her breakfast and packed her lunch for her. This time the morning was calm. I thought I was on the right path. Since this worked once I tried it again which resulted in my daughter going into a screaming teary eyed fit over eggs and toast.
Basically, I have no idea what to do and neither do any of my friends. So I have decided that the best thing to do is stand back, take a deep breath, keep very quiet and stay very still and behave as though I am at the zoo and a tiger has escaped from its enclosure.
