Hi, new here today! My daughter just turned 18 and my son is 21 ... my daughter makes me laugh just about every single day - my son made me laugh yesterday when he was getting his hair cut and for a minute resembled a character out of Peaky Blinders ;). I try to keep stress down by going to work (and laughing) - I came to this site today because since my daughter turned 18 (around 4 weeks ago) she's turned into a secretive, backchatting, attitude-packed kid when once she was an absolute joy to be around. She's wagging school, telling me she wants to leave school and being pretty self-centred and unpleasant in general. She doesn't do drugs, is social, works part time, goes to party's, drinks if it's that sort of party, she's been easy to parent until now. The school refusal thing and challenging me on everything this past four weeks is getting me down and I need some hints on how not to take her attitude personally. My big tip for parents is to be consistent. Make sure there are consequences for rubbish behaviour and follow through - I haven't been very good at that at all. I think because until now the kids have been easy to parent, and a firm no or a chat about things worked. The best thing about weekends is not having to get up early and go to work, spending time going out and doing something with the kids, all of us being at home and just pottering about.
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