In 11 days,  I will be a first time mom to a teen.

I feel like I have already hit this milestone, because our daughter often acts as if she’s a teen, graduate, professor, mother, and executive director all at the same time.

After watching the Facebook Parenting: For the Troubled Teen video, Andy and I realized that most days, our daughter is not far from the teen described by her father, although she’d have to much respect for everyone else in the family to post something like that so publicly.

Most kids have basic chores like make the bed, clean the bathroom, clear the table after dinner, load and unload the dishwasher…  Those are usually coupled with be respectful of your family, treat other how you’d like to be treated, etc.  In a perfect world, these things would just happen.  In our world, we have to give twice daily reminders – for everything.

We’ve found that taking away privileges just does not work anymore.  I even made the comment that taking away her Kindle (with texting capability) doesn’t phase her anymore, and she agreed.  The thing is, there is nothing that she has that is so important to her that she can’t live without it for a few days or even a few weeks.

My parents have always lived by the rule, that we’ve adopted, of not grounding from church.  Although we do not allow her to go to the fun activities, we don’t ground her from Sunday and Wednesday services, and those are the only things she really looks forward to.

So, this week, I think I finally hit a nerve.

She’s signed up for softball, and grounding her from that will only hurt the team, so what did I do?  I told her that I would not go watch her practice.  She was devastated.  She even told Andy that she knew that I really wanted to be there, so it hurt me too, but I think I finally found something that got through to her.

Whether you agree with this or not, that’s not the point.  The point is, as parents, there is no manual.  Although there are plenty of wrong ways to parent and deal out consequences, there are truly no specific right ways to do any of it.   You have to find your niche, even if it puts you out of your comfort zone.

We surely do love our almost-teen, but this parenting thing just keeps getting harder and harder! Sadly, since she’s our only girl, it will be a whole different ballgame when all three of the boys hit these years.

Love your kids.  Parent them to them best of your ability.  Pray for the best.