My Morning Workout: My Preteen Daughter!!

Mornings around my house start out relatively calm:   guzzle coffee, scan the horoscopes in the newspaper, pack lunches (which takes me way too long but at least it’s quiet).   And then, she wakes up.  Morning time is about to get very  interesting.

For some reason, my almost 13-year-old daughter thinks that the kitchen counter is
a good place to straighten her hair.  Practical, I guess.  She can look in the mirror, straighten her locks and then straighten them some more, and toast a bagel at the same time.  The
thought of hair and turkey sandwiches  is enough to drive me bonkers but the fact that she does it every single morning throws me over the edge.  I’ve tried moving the straightener.  I’ve tried hiding the straightener.  I’ve tried breaking the dumb hair-ironer, but it’s a no-go. 
The straightener ends up on my counter no matter what. 

From the straightener, she moves to her lunch bag.  The one that takes me at least 10 minutes to pack.  I can use some help in this arena, I am fully aware of that, but let’s focus.  Back to the real problem…the hair-straightening-lunch-wrecker!  She looks in the bag, takes OUT each item that I have put in, and puts in her own version of a lunch.  Last week, her bag went from turkey sandwich, water, apple, Tasty-Kake (that’s right, everyone deserves a Tasty-Kake) to a baggie with six almonds in it.  Six almonds!  I was so frightful that someone
would see her lunch and actually take that child from me.  Lunch moms talk, you know?  You can be judged on what type of mother you actually are purely by what you have in your child’s lunch bag. 

From the almost empty bag, she moves to the backpack.  Five minutes before we need to leave for school, a pile of tests comes flying across the counter for me to sign.  Seriously!  I can feel my heart racing and I think back to last night when this child said she had nothing for me to sign and no  homework.   As I sign her tests, she is writing answers in her vocab book like a mad woman.  I could scream.   Actually, the screaming in my head is making
my eyeballs hurt.

But, if you have a 13-year-old daughter, or a daughter of any age, you can
relate.  Sometimes, you just have to pick your battles.  It used to be if she
wanted to wear a tutu to the playground, then so be it.  And, now, if she wants to put hairballs on the counter, air in her lunchbag, and rush through her spelling words, I will
let it go just for today.  Because for me, one perk is sending my daughter off to school happy.  Because I never know what the day will throw at her.     

But I promise you this,  that girl will come home to a lecture.  Maybe one day, it will stick!