When My Kid Grows Up, She's Gonna Write For Hallmark

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  Well, if they ever have a "Verbal Bitch Slap" line of greetings, that is...

  I never knew she had such a gift for the written word, until Monday night... Cina(14) was cleaning her room ( faint!) and the rest of us were having a nice time watching a movie together. From the kitchen, Cina calls to me in a "whisper yell", "Mom, come here!"

  I was like, "No, you come here!".  

 " No Mom, really you come here!" Noticing the seriousness to her tone, I looked around the corner and saw her motioning for me to come in the kitchen. I gave up on getting to watch the movie and went.

  She looked pale. "Read this." She placed a small book in my hand. I recognized it as a Christmas gift that I had slipped into Selly's stocking, year before last. A little notebook with a pretty picture on front, and Selly's birthstone embedded into the cover. I must have looked confused...

  " I found it in my room" She and Selly switched rooms a few months back and Selly must have left this behind.

  Mind you, had this little book been a diary or had any hint of being a diary, I would never have opened it, unless I had a very good reason. But, the look on Cina's face, let me know that I needed to see what was inside. So I opened it up and started to read...

  IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED, READ NO FURTHER!

  The very first sentence was, " I AM SO PISSED OFF!! No big deal really, lots of kids might write that. I continued to read and fell into a pit verbal sewage that left me shell shocked. She had actually underlined every curse word. I realized that this was about me! I won't post the entire contents of what was there, but here are the worst parts...

"... my mom, which I hate!"

"I'm not going to clean a goddamn thing because of her"

"Yes, I think  she is the world's biggest shit head and faggot, fag, and fat ass!"

"I hope she dies!"

"I deserve to cuss her out on paper..."

"I really need to calm down,  before I kill that bitch!"

  My reaction? I walked into the living room with the book in hand, stopped the movie, handed the book to Selly and had her read, TO MY FACE, what she had written. The wrong way to handle it? Maybe. But I don't have Dr. Phil's home phone number and that was the best I could come up with on such short notice. I wanted her to make the connection that she had written such things about an actual person.To look into the eyes of the woman who has raised her as her own, since she was 4 years old, who has went to bat for her many, many times, when her father just didn't understand, who has spent her own money to buy her special things to wear to school because "all the others kids have them" and her father thought they were a waste of money, etc... , and call me those names to my face. That is all, I didn't do or say anything else to her.

  When her father came home and I started to read it to him, he jumped a little when I read, "I AM SO PISSED OFF!". He couldn't believe she had written that. I had to laugh, " Honey, if you can't believe she said 'pissed',  you're gonna need to be medicated, after you hear the rest of this."

The Rest of the Story... ( Sorry, I had to drive the girls to meet their bus and do 50 other things, before I could finish.)

  Anyway, her dad was going to approach her about it that night but she pretended to be asleep. So, yesterday afternoon, we sat her down and he asked her to explain just why on earth she would ever write such a thing about me or anyone else. She said she didn't remember writing it or what she was mad about. ( I have trouble believing that at this point). He told her that she  is almost 12 years old and with that comes responsibilities. That she expects to get to do things and have things and that in turn, we expect that she follows our rules and do the things we have asked of her. And that when she chooses to break the the rules or not do her chores, it is her fault that she gets punished for it. Especially since she already knows the consequences of misbehaving. That my making sure she learns to be responsible does not make me { insert names here} and that he had better not ever, EVER, see or hear her mentioning killing me or using that sort of language again. Than he made her apologize to me and ask me to forgive her...

  Here's the thing, she doesn't get spankings. Never has. Pretty much, we try to make the punishment fit the crime. Like, when we discovered she had created a profile on a popular social networking site, under the name whatdafuxup? and had posted a pic of herself in her PJ's with the caption "I'm too sexy for these pajamas", we deleted the profile and she lost computer for a month. When we discovered she was wearing thick, black eyeliner at school and wiping it off before she came home each day, she missed the school dance that Friday. ( she's 11 for Pete's sake! No need for make-up.)

  It seems that she has the frame of mind that she will do whatever she wants, even if she knows it is against the rules, just to see how many times she can do it before getting caught. For example, I had explained to her the dangers of chat rooms. I only allowed her to go to one specific chat because it is monitored for pervs and nobody is allowed to ask for age/sex/location etc. It is set up just for kids her age. She has explicit instructions to NEVER go to another chat. In less than 2 weeks, we caught her sneaking to other chat rooms that older kids at the middle and high school use. She will look us in the eye and tell us she has completed this or that chore and when we check, we discover it is a lie. She disobeys even when she knows ahead of time what the punishment will be. Then wants me to die for sticking to what we have told her...

  

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