16 yo daughter who doesn’t have sex, drug or drink, makes good grades, works part time, wants me to not have curfew, to let her stay over with boyfriend, go on out of town, overnight trips. I say no. She can’t understand why. Curfew midnight, weekends, 9pm school nights. I give her a late model car to drive, a cell phone, room of her own, foods of choice,college future, other extras. She still isn’t happy. Am I not understanding something, or her, or both?
Basically she is behaving like a teenager, just like a 2 yr old has their idiosyncrasies, teenagers have theirs. They want the adult stuff but in reality, understand NONE of it.
Unfortunately, the hormones are way dominant at that age and all you can do is try to cope & hope you survive the roller coaster ride.
FYI – stick by those curfew and no overniters rules ! At least if she ignores them and get into ugly circumstance, she will not be able to blame you with the "well, you said I could do it". You are totally right and need to stand by the basic safety rules, just like you would not let a 2 yr old stick objects in an electrical outlet ‘because they want to’ nor did you need to make the 2 yr old understand electricity.
THEY ONLY NEED TO KNOW THE RULES, you can explain it once but do not waste your time defending it after that.
good luck, and all our prayers