Angry little girls

Another day with step-daughter, another day of mirror sunglasses.  That girl is not well.

She stayed up all night and slept for maybe one hour before I picked her up.  I guess it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.  It made for a difficult day.  She wasn’t miserable or anything, just not much time was spent chatting about anything because she was too tired.

One thing that has become quite clear over the past couple of weeks through all this contact is that step-daughter does not have a very clear perception of herself and lacks connection and self-awareness.

A lack of self-awareness is actually a trait of some serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and I think bi-polar disorder if I recall correctly.  It’s one of the main reasons why behaviour change is so difficult for those groups.  How do you change something that you’re not aware is a problem?

Step-daughter and I talked briefly about her problems with buddy-child.  Her feelings are still hurt by something buddy-child said and she’s not prepared to forgive her for that.  Yet, she has no clue what behaviour of hers motivated buddy-child to say this hurtful thing (legitimately doesn’t know).  She has no clue how her behaviour prior to the fight led up to it either.  To her, this hurtful thing that was said just came out of the blue!  That’s why she isn’t able to resolve this issue and move on.

When step-daughter is in a ‘bad’ place, she exudes this angry little girl demeanor and she has no clue that she does it.  To her, she is just the same that she’s always been.  She doesn’t see any connection between her behaviour, her demeanor, her attitude, her manner of dress or even her facial expressions and what is going on internally.  Teenagers in general don’t quite have that skill yet but they have elements of it.  Next time you’re ready to throttle your kid because it seems like all they do is think about themselves (they do), remind yourself that it’s not necessarily a bad thing and part of the process because they’re thinking of themselves in relation to their families, their friends, their schools, their communities, society, the world in general and so on.  That’s important.

I’m not sure when I’ll see step-daughter again.  I have classes I need to take this spring that I’m allowed to bring someone along with me for free.  She wants to go.  Her ability to follow through is so bad that I guess we’ll see what she decides to do next.  I know what she needs to do – she knows what she needs to do – but I guess we’re back in the waiting to see if she’ll actually do it phase once again.