Hormones have hit my household hard over the past couple of years.  Just recently they’re so hard-core they have devil horns and a tight leather outfit for Saturday rock night.

I’ve always said I would be an understanding parent since I hated puberty and can honestly say it was one of the worst times of my life.  However, last night I was taken aback slightly (by slightly I mean it knocked me for six and I’m still really annoyed by it).  My daughter cried and then refused to hug me over jam.

Yes, jam…

 

Let me just leave that with you for a moment.

 

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So the girls made their own sandwiches and my eldest pretty much added a tiny bit of bread to her jam.  It was ridiculous. I didn’t get mad, I used the usual jokey approach:

 

‘Woah, did you want some bread with that jam?’

 

She got up, stormed off and started to cry.  I found myself fumbling and trying to explain myself.  I didn’t mean to upset her, it’s certainly not what I had intended.

 

So I tried the understanding approach.  I just took the jam to the kitchen, scraped off two extra sandwich worth’s of excess until I found the bread.  Then showed her what a reasonable amount of jam would be.

 

She glared at me.

 

Then refused to sit with us and kept her distance for the rest of the evening.  When I put her to bed she allowed me to kiss her and then mumbled ‘night’.

 

She’s nine!  Fair enough she’ll be ten soon, but still, I’m shocked.

 

When people ask if the girls get along well, it’s always a yes.  They are generally really well-behaved.  Those people always say ‘oh, you just wait till they’re teenagers’ and give me a knowing look.  I’ve always thought, ‘what the hell is that supposed to mean??’

 

Well, now I think I know what it means.

 

But surely this must be applicable to boys as well to a certain extent? I don’t have any siblings, and I don’t see the nephew I’ve inherited often enough to make a judgment.

 

Since this incident, there’s been nothing as extreme and I’m hoping it’s a one-off.

 

Maybe she had a bad day and couldn’t be doing with jam lectures. Or maybe this is just the beginning.