A Dirty Dish Day

    

"You don't care about me!" my middle daughter yelled at me last night. This after six weeks of driving her to doctors appointments, contacting counselors and teachers at school about her current physical issues and school clothes shopping. Add to that list the regular stuff like grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, and giving out money for voice lessons and many other activities including homecoming, plus the constant cheerleading to keep my children motivated. Yeah, she is right I don't care about her that is obvious

This all started when I gave her, the fed up Momma smack down yesterday afternoon for her constant negative attitude lately. She started griping about a teacher that she has and she started making angry protests about the teacher's inability to teach and also the teacher's poor communication skills. This is not new territory, I have heard all of this before, and guess what nothing has changed. I get the teacher is annoying, I also get it that she does not like his teaching style either, but I am done with the angry war dance about this and I want it to stop, and that is exactly what I told her.

Mark and I have both sat and talked with her recently about the fact that life is filled with people you do not like or that you think do not do a good job. You will have bosses you don't like and coworkers that drive you mad, but you will still have to go to work. Somewhere along the line my daughter has gotten the idea that she is the only one that has this issue and that if she keeps ranting and raving about it that it somehow will fix the problem. The problem is that she has now lost her audience. Because of her inability to let it go and make the best of it, I now tune her out. I am done with the loud chest pounding about something that is not going to magically change anytime soon.

Here's the thing; Aly is going to have to make the change. She is the one that is going to have to "turn her frown upside down" and make the best of it. She may get a whole new teacher next semester, but for now, this is the teacher and she will have to learn to make the class or classes workable. Years ago I had someone tell me in a "suck it up" moment that "Every job has its dirty dishes". That has stuck with me, that one comment has been a constant reminder to me that nothing is perfect. Everything in life has potential; it is how you look at it that makes it work. How many times have you had a boss that you liked, but someone else did not or a job that you hated, but others that you worked with had been doing it half their lives? Right now, my daughter is stuck in the teenage all about me, "Everything sucks" mode and it is coloring her outlook on everything she does. It has even colored her opinion of her mother.

The truth is obviously I do care, but honestly I have no patience left. I really do not even want to be around negative Nellie right now because she is dragging me down. I have nothing encouraging left to say. If that means that she thinks I don't care, oh well! I just need a break from this daily rampage of negativity. It is absolutely mind numbing. This is just another example of the "dirty dish" portion of parenting that I must make my way through. Today, I will do more things that prove that I "don't care", things like going to the store, doing laundry and making dinner. I know, it is a shock how little I care isn't it!