Posted on: Friday, June 3, 2005
Mom's about to succumb to bratty daughter's wants
| • | Advice with sass |
Dear Advice Diva,
I love reading your column, and now I need your advice desperately.
I have an 18-year-old daughter whom I love very much. She graduates this month and is No. 3 in her class. She's very responsible in school and has worked hard to get there. She will be starting college in the fall.
Because of her academic accomplishments, we gave her a new $25,000 car for her 18th birthday. She has a cell phone and everything she needs. She is allowed to go out every weekend with a curfew of 2:30 a.m.
My dilemma: When my husband and I ask her to spend time with her two small sisters so we can do something together as a couple — maybe one to two Fridays a month — she refuses because she wants to go out. She also complains that her curfew is too early, that some of her friends do not have a curfew, that I am ridiculous and old-fashioned. She gets very upset when I tell her that I don't have money for everything she wants.
When she spends time with us, she always feels sick, tired or has no energy to even talk with us. There is just no end to the complaints and questions I get when she does not get her way. Sometimes I feel so drained that I just feel like crying, and feel that I'm going to give up and let her do whatever she wants.
On weekends she has a couple of chores, which she asks every weekend if she has to do it, why she has to do it, etc. She gets in a very bad mood and does not do anything that she is not asked to do.
I know there are a lot of issues here; please guide me. Am I being unfair, old-fashioned and inconsiderate? Should she have a curfew and what would be reasonable? By the way, she has never worked; we have always provided everything for her and plan to do that for as long as we see necessary.
—Desperate in Miami
Dear Desperate:
What you are describing is making us want to take your precious daughter and force-enroll her in the Advice Diva's Boot Camp for Atrociously Spoiled Young Women, at which she would soon stop complaining about putting away already-folded clothing (a nonchore) after volunteering three afternoons a week at a center for abused women.
Your daughter has it so good — but she's too indulged to see it. And only through strategic parental-administered discipline will the little she-beast be reeled in. But please do it now, while you have a remote chance in heaven of her becoming one-tenth of the loving, compassionate and selfless person her mother is. You and your husband are allowing your daughter to morph into a mean-spirited, selfish person who will lead a life of unhappiness. Forget pampering her; she'll only kick you in the gut.
Get tough, mama. Set the ground rules for your home and lay down the law at a family meeting. Once she knows you mean business, she'll have no choice but to comply. And make her stop that whining — it's annoying — by simply telling her to stop.
As for a 2:30 a.m. curfew, we think that's excessive enough, and don't you dare budge on easing up. Let's hope that with her new regime of real chores she'll be too pooped to move.
Good luck, dear reader, you're going to need it!
Dear Advice Diva:
Your letter about the insanity of wedding gifts for every individual celebration hit a nerve. I couldn't agree more! It's really so selfish.
Now I have my own gift-giving dilemma. I am throwing a birthday party for my boyfriend at a nightclub, and his friends keep asking me what they should bring. I am stumped about what to say. It was hard enough for me to think of something, let alone give ideas to the 25 people I invited. Any ideas on what I should suggest to them?
—Shari
Dear Shari:
How about some cold hard cash so that he can pick out what he wants? Just kidding — this is actually what a very protocol-challenged host told the Advice Diva recently when she asked what to get the birthday boy. Our second favorite gift suggestion came from another well-meaning but clueless party-thrower: "A Ralph Lauren Polo shirt — size large, no purple." Which we took to mean, "Now that you know what he wants you will look rude/cheap if you show up with anything but that." (In a show of independence, we instead selected a lovely bottle of pinot noir.)
But we digress. Now, being the thoughtful girlfriend you are, you will probably suggest affordably priced merchandise such as a CD, book or gym gear.
And who said that shopping for guys was difficult?
Editor's note: Tara Solomon writes for the Miami Herald. Her Advice Diva column will be published Fridays in The Advertiser. Send questions to: The Advice Diva, The Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, 5th floor, Miami, FL 33132; or advicediva@herald.com.
