Why Don't I Listen To Myself? Why?

Sixth Grader would be horrified if she knew that I was about to write this about her. But too bad. Because the thing is, Sixth Grader has been torturing me these last few weeks, and it is only right that I pay her back by making it public.

Oh, I don't really think that way. Not always. But this time? If for no other reason than to maybe invite a little empathy and support, I am going to tell you about how Sixth Grader has essentially been possessed by some kind of mean, moody, temper tantrum-prone aliens lately, and I'm a little fed up with it.

It started with the new school year. It didn't escape my attention that, over the course of the summer, Sixth Grader did not see a whole lot of her school friends. Such is the curse of the child-with-single-working-mom-and-child-is-still-too-young-to-stay-home-unsupervised. She was subjected to a lot of camp - much more than I wished for her, but that's how it goes. Not that she didn't have friends at camp, because she did. But not school friends. So school started again, and almost immediately, Sixth Grader became a girl obsessed. Obsessed with playdates. Obsessed with sleepovers. Obsessed with any and all kinds and forms of girl get-togethers, quality time with family be damned.

That's fine. Except that along with school starting, so did gymnastics team practice three times a night. And so did flute lessons, and subsequent practice demands from Band Instructor. Oh, and also: Sixth Grade - unlike Fifth Grade - involves homework. So. On top of all of those things, Sixth Grader wished to smush in as much of her social life as she felt she had been deprived of over the summer months. But really, what she wanted was to have her social life take prominence, and then MAYBE smush in some of those other things around IT.

To be honest, I am just so-so at the whole rule-enforcement thing. Call it an inherent desire to compensate for the insane strictness under which I was raised, but I'm just a tad reluctant to go all militant on my kids. But you know? It's just me. And I needed to rein the kid in. For her own good. And also, for my own good, as it was developing into this situation where every spare minute that I wasn't carting her and her sister around to some practice or lesson or fetching food for them, I was instead carting her around to this or that friend's house. ENOUGH. So what did I have to do?

I had to go just the slightest bit militant.

I created a playdate and sleepover "sabbatical." The "sabbatical" was to last one month, beginning several weeks ago. I then let the "sabbatical" slide for what I deemed a special occasion. (The special occasion being that I had made plans to go away with Boyfriend on a Saturday night and Grandma was in charge. Go ask Grandma.) Then, last weekend, I had to reinforce the "sabbatical".

To make a long and painful story slightly shorter, last weekend consisted of 48 hours of complete and total pain - both Sixth Grader's and mine. Fighting, arguing, begging, yelling, grounding, crying, apologizing, more begging, more grounding. For five days I have been carrying her cell phone around in my purse, ticking off the two week penalty until I can give it back to her. Who knew that grounding your child could cause a mother so much anguish? But the sabbatical - that was not intended as punishment. It was intended as a method of putting the brakes on something that was getting out of control. It was meant to return a sense of balance to her life.

And you know, for these past few days she has been much calmer. More polite. More herself. Did she learn something? Or has the hormonal cloud just passed? I don't know. But this afternoon I returned a call to a fellow mother who invited both of my girls to come over after school tomorrow, and I said "Sure." I'm no hard head. I can recognize progress.

This fellow mother just called me back to inform me that she will bring the girls home for me tomorrow. At nine o'clock. At night.

I sense a serious backslide coming....