How do I break down the contradictions in Lily's idea of who she is versus what she does and how she shows herself to be?
Yesterday she told us at dinner that she is having a competition with her best friend to see who can be the most tanned this Summer.
Husband and I bit our tongues and merely nodded with interest. We wanted to say:
"You do know that to get a tan you have to be up when the sun is up?"
or
"You do know that to get a tan you have to go outside?"
But it was suddenly clear to me that in her head she was a completely different person - one who jumps around beaches with lithe brown limbs and lies back on picnic rugs with sand between her toes. I remembered my own Baywatch-based alter-ego. My dream had always been to lose weight and magically change my coarse curly hair for one of those glossy bouncing pony-tails. Those kinds of daydreams are precious at any time in our lives but especially for a teenager.
So it was good that Husband and I didn't burst her bubble this time. Perhaps there's a concern that she 's missing a reality check with some of her aspirations but we assume that will come with time and better to believe anything is possible at 15, very nearly 16, than not.
In truth, though, she will pick and choose on this outlook and I'm just not sure she is going to grow out of it. She is just as likely to tell me,
"That's not me, I can't do that, just because other people can doesn't mean I can," etc
And I've often found it painful how defeatist she can be.
However, with this new found self belief the variable that will always get in the way is Time.
In Lily's mind she will always have more time. If it is sunny today but she wants to sleep, or the everyday barriers she experiences to getting out are there, then she is certain there will be enough sunny days left in the Summer for her to get that tan. This is the frustration for the rest of us. Life experience, knowledge of British weather, personality traits and probabilities go out the window. It is something akin to the magic thinking of a 5 year old. It's unnerving.
It's the same basis that she approaches her attendance at 6th form. She does not see the degree of change that is needed and appears to have utter faith that it will just happen. I'm assuming that the first day she doesn't make it, she will tell me that it doesn't matter because it's just once and she has many more days.
We've just finished the half term week in the middle of her exams. She slept or was in bed every day until mid afternoon. I don't believe she did any revision. This morning, Monday, she was at the kitchen table at 6am with a maths video on her phone and papers in front of her. She was grumpy and tired, told us how she hadn't slept and how annoying maths was because you had to just practice it and not revise. The blaringly obvious fact that she has just had a whole week when she could have practiced just does not seem to enter her mind.
The consequences of missed time go unacknowledged. There are always other reasons why something didn't go to plan. Is this teenage brain? Is it traumatised child who can't risk being wrong? Is it ASD?
How does one parent this? because everything in me tells me I need to point it out to her yet doing so is a red rag to a bull. In fact, it's the only time she gets close to hitting me.
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