Long story short we live about 15 minutes from my daughter's school. It's a 15 - 20 minute walk. She EXPECTS a ride daily and I've told her no that she can walk. She is 16, soon to be 17. It's winter and there is snow...she says she can't wear her boots to school because she doesn't have a locker (I told her in September to get a locker), now there are none left. I suggested she share with one of her many friends....she flat out refuses or says that no one will share with her. She does whatever she can to avoid actually walking to and from school. She'll take a cab, but now that she has no job, she can't really do that. She said she'd get another job but finds it "too stressful". My 19 yr old son has a job and while I will drive him to work, he does chores in return for the drives to work and if I tell him I can't take him to work, he doesn't go up one side of me and down the other. As soon as I tell my daughter no that I'm not coming to get her she pulls out all the stops and tells me she thinks I enjoy making her life miserable. That I'll driver her brother where ever he wants to go but I won't drive her. I won't drive her because she "expects" or "demands" it.....I will drive her brother because he does not "demand it". If I tell him I can't he simply finds an alternative way to get where he's going. My daughter lashes out and tells me how everyone else's parents drive them around and I'm the only one who won't.
Today she went to a friends after school to "work on homework"....it is not snowing, it is not cold out....she asked if I could pick her up on my way home (it is not on my way).....because she has too many books in her backpack and it's too heavy to carry all the way home. (yet she will walk to this friends house at 6:45 in the morning so she doesn't have to walk to school alone, but she doesn't want to walk home with her book bag containing 3 text books). I told her no. She says I'm hurting her feelings and making this all about me and not listening to her. She's sooooo frustrating. I love her but good grief does she try to manipulate.
How do I keep my sanity and not feel hurt by the "guilt trip" of how difficult I'm making her life an how she's such a "hassle" for me
... View more