Favorite Child

I come from a large family, three brother and six sisters. Try finding a bathroom in that house, I’ve joked for years that’s why the tree in the back yard grew so big - think of all the fertilizer. Despite the competition I was by far my mothers favorite child. My family isn’t as large, but on a national average basis it’s still quit big. We have four daughters and one son. The other day our son heard his little sister telling her friends that she as the least favorite child in the family. I guess if someone's the favorite there has to be a least. This isn’t true, but she is a teenager and tries pushing the envelope as much as possible. She has a curfew earlier than all of her friends, and taste in clothes that is more expensive than she or I can afford. I guess it because she is always hearing no that she thinks we don't like her as much as the other children. She is quit talented; in her first year in high school she got a 3.9 grade point average. According to her, she didn't have a 4.0 because her science teacher hates her, and she defiantly didn’t like him. There’s probably a good reason, as sometimes she doesn’t show the respect she should. But the couple of time I’ve met with this teacher at parent teacher conferences I can honestly say I don’t like him either. How can you get mad at your child when you think they’re right? It give me a teaching moment to talk about life and how it’s not always fair. The sad part is that she really wanted to finish high school with a 4.0. She’s very motivated when it is her idea. I had to bribe her to try harder during the track season. She went out for track to get a tan and meet boys, how can anyone argue with that logic? She had never come out of the blocks or participated in an organized race. I told her if she qualified for state I would give her a hundred dollars – she qualified in two events. Now I never said I would give her a hundred dollars per event, but that’s how she took it. Her 4 x 100 relay team took second in state losing only by a tenth of a second. Another problem – at least for me, is that in the last year and a half she has gone from a little girl to a beautiful woman. She is very cute and the older boys know it. That’s part of her curfew problem, she’s hanging out with kids older than she is. We don’t allow the kids to date until their sixteen, but that’s alright since no one dates anymore anyway, they just hangout. As far as we know she is making good choices and the kids she hangs out with are good kids as well. I think the teenage years are hard on anyone, but harder for the girls in general, and of course their dads. I don’t understand how much hormones have to do with this whole thing. Despite what our kids think on occasions, we don’t have a favorite child (unlike my parents). We sometimes don’t like what they are doing or thinking, and some ages are funnier than others – but each child goes through the same stages just at different times. So we hope they each knows we love them to death and would do anything for them, but sometimes what is best for them isn’t what they want to hear.