Miss Eleven is changing in front of our eyes. Somebody seems to have taken the happy go lucky young girl, and replaced her with a demanding, lazy, resistive, obtuse mixture of argumentative hormonal horror movie creature.
While sat amid the self-imposed squalor of her bedroom early this afternoon, she complained about the injustice of us not “giving” her the remainder of the money she would need to buy a particular “thing” from a shop, or transporting her on command to the shop.
I have no doubt much of her attitude change has come from living in an affluent area, and many of her peer group at school having pretty much everything they ever ask for - mobile phones, ipods, the latest fashions, haircuts, skiing holidays… you name it. Against all of that we have no cleaner, we both work, and we are trying to instill the work ethic in the children too - making them earn treats through doing simple things to help us (preparing the table for dinner, tidying their own room, and so on).
In some ways her behaviour is her own version of attention seeking too. After festering in her pit all morning I offered to fill her computer (an aged netbook) with music if she helped tidy her room up. Just my presence in the room helping her made her do twice as much work as me. It wasn’t rocket science.
It’s too easy with the younger children making demands on our time to ignore Miss Eleven. She is often left out because she doesn’t push herself forwards, and then resorts to fighting against us to get attention.
We need to try harder…