Happy New Year everyone! Time is marching on, and H and I are feeling this most acutely with D14. She is a reserved, brainy, sweet girl with a detached/artistic flair and entered HS this year. Superficially she has what I'd describe as soft features and good girl looks, and has always worn her hair long. Anyway( there's a point to this)...she wanted a haircut, so I brought her in, sat back as I always do, and the next thing I know she basically had all her hair cut off...must have been 12 inches! I knew she wanted a change but wasn't prepared for anything that radical. The end result is that she looks much older, like a 20 yr old...I guess you could say it's chic...but it's like the same length as my son's! I really wasn't prepared for this...it was a complete transformation. She didn't look like my daughter anymore, and I felt sad. ( BTW, she loved it). Now here's where the marital stuff comes in...H takes one look at her and starts ripping into me for letting her do this and not overlooking/supervising things better ( we have had this kind of disagreement before, where he feels I'm too lax). I'm feeling down anyway about the change in her, so I'm internalizing his message, that I am a bad mother. Meanwhile there is a part of me that is excited for her to grow, figure herself out as an individual, but it's hard to know how much to directly intervene, and H and I have different thresholds. Every time we look at her it's a reminder that times are a-changing...she's becoming her own person, she's growing up, she does have this inner rebel within, which superficially has been kept under wraps. What she's really dying for now is some pink streaks in her hair as well...I'm inclined to let her put a few in, my H says absolutely not.
I know this is a SSM board, but I'm having a lot of weird-o feelings about my daughter's changes and not sure of what I'm doing, and all this is impacting upon H as well and our marriage. Happy New Year. Right.
