What?!? Or How Kids Can Drive You Crazy!

I have a beautiful daughter. In fact, I have a wonderful son as well, but sometimes they make me stark raving mad!

When I was a teenager and into my early twenties I made a pledge that I wouldn't be like my mom. Always telling my kids what to do, how to act, how to feel. But the curse works. I have become my mother.

My early twentyish daughter is bright, beautiful, talented, and absolutely maddening! Never in my life have I known someone who is so hard on their friends. She is constantly complaining about them. I have come to believe that no one will ever live up to her "friend standards". They don't talk to her enough, they talk to her too much, they don't understand her, she is tired of their childishness. You name it she has bitched about it.

One of her personality traits is that she is serious. Life is heavy for her. Knowing this makes me sad, and this is where I turn into my mother. I want her to snap out of it. Be lighthearted and excited about her life, but she just isn't. When someone asks her about college or some other great thing in her life she says, "It's all right." With all the excitement and emotion of a tortoise. Lighthearted she is not. Now if something remotely sad happens, then the emotion comes out. Drama about unhappiness is plentiful.

Some of the issue I have is that I am the opposite. I am probably too lighthearted. I enjoy many things. I hate being sad! Watching a tear-jerker movie is like a root canal, and I avoid it at all costs. My issues with my mother came from the flip side of my daughter and I. My mother wanted me to be more serious, less excitable, more practical.

Couldn't there be a happpy middle here? I don't want to tell her how she should feel about life, but I want her to experience everything to the fullest and appreciate the pure joy of living. OK, maybe that's not a happy middle, but life just can't be that heavy.

My husband has a similar personality to my daughter, so I suppose that's where she got it from. However, he is a man, so there is less drama. But there are times when I just want both of them to show some enthusiasum for something besides the negative.

Alright, I will get off my Pollyanna pulpit.