I need help with my 10 year old daughter!!!!

Djailanher - posted on 05/23/2012 ( 3 moms have responded )

I am a mother of 2 daugters 11 and 7. They both have very different characters.
I stayed at home for my kids for 12 years, then I went to work at the kids school when the younger one went to school. My younger one is much easier to handle than my elder one.
My kids hardly do any chores at home. We have a daily househelp who cleans and organizes the house daily. We wake up at 5am and the kids go to sleep at 8pm. They come back from school at home, have lunch and start studies at 3.30pm-7.00pm. then they shower, then go to sleep. They don’t clear their room, neither do the beds, when they leave in the morning the cothes are thrown everywhere.
I have to say the same thing 5-7 times, then scream till something is done if at all.
My younger daughter copies a lot of the older sisters negatives.
My 10 year old daughter is the one that drives me crazy, probably because we are so alike.
Since she started school life she has had major difficulty making friends. It has been 6 years now iin the same class with the same kids and looking closely at the situation and talking with my daughter first then talking with her teachers continuously, neither me nor the teachers could put their hands on where the problem is. The kids do not hate her at all, on the contrary they know that she helps them when in need, in studies, in fights, in a project and if they need help. It is when they have fun that’s when they do not miss her absence and they always forget to tell her or to invite her, even in birthdays she is not among the kids who get invited. But she has learnt to cope with that and I taught her a little how to answer back right away and not let people walk all over her and not to accept shit from the kids.
She is an A1 student and everyone knows that. The whole house helps her with her studies. My mother lives with us since my father passed away, so she helps her with Arabic, social studies and religion. I help her out in all the German subjects as German, biology and Maths. And my husband gives her all the support and time she needs whenever there is something she needs help with. She does study very much with me and although she doesn’t like it but she does it and ends up with great grades which is the only thing that she has that the other kids don’t have. So she likes it. She has also been in the theater group for 4 years and I help her perfect her role and create beautiful costumes for the role that people go to see the plays because she is there as she always manages to make the play nicer and funnier.
She is very liked among the teaches as she is very responsible and helpful and mature. She is very kindhearted and sympathetic but also very self centered and greedy. Lately she is eating too much and hiding snacks under her pillow. She is so lazy that it is a battle to put her on the treadmill for a light workout. My husband even made each of them a separate playlist of their favorite songs with lyrics so they can enjoy their workout more.
On a different issue we get the girls anything and everything they would like and we can afford. This is from clothes which they do not value or appreciate to toys which they only die for and treasure for maximum 3 days to school pens to ……….etc.
Everything that my eye falls on and we see they would like it or it would look nice on them we get.
So in my opinion they have loads of stuff but my elder daughter doesn’t think so at all or appreciate any of her stuff, neither does she treasure it or take care of any clothes, pens, toys, schoolthings…etc. In fact she loses most of the stuff and as long as we only just scream and lecture her, it passes until the next time it happens.
She would always comment about things others have that she thinks are very nice or that she wishes she had and that really hurts us.
Lately they were going on a class trip and she said to us if we could buy her a new suitcase that is a nice colour cause she doesn’t want to take those boring delcyes or samsonites that we have. I felt bad and as she had brought good grades, my mother wanted to get both girls a fancy cheap suitcase but my husband totally refused and freaked out and said that we are encouraging them to always look at others. But she did take a whole bunch of clothes and accessories with a list and managed to bring back everything without losing a thing.
She earned the Nintendo DS last summer, which she was dying for but now is lying gathering dust in the drawer. As far as mobile is concerned we bought her a very simple one 3 years ago when she went to camp in Austria while we were in germany but when the camp finished she gave it back and only takes it occasionally when she is goes out without us. So it is not really something she is dying for or maybe because the phone it is not a blackberry or an iphone like most of her friends she cant show off with she doesn’t want it.
When u punish them by depriving them of something, they don’t seem to mind at all. They just find something else to do or have fun with.
Lately my elder daughter has been studying very well at home for exams and then going there and losing marks simply because o f carelessness. She would solve all the difficult problems and lose marks on copying a number from one step to the next wrong, or they ask u to make a graph fro a table about the cold months of the year and she would make a perfect colourful graph about the hot months of the year, all her mistakes are carelessness and I have asked her time and time again to revise before handing in the exam and she confirms she does but then the endresult comes outlike that.
This and her general careless attitude in the house and towards us as a family is making me very angry, I need to implement a system and do punishments that work or take consequential actions but I get very angry and then the next morning I am okay and I feel sorry for her cause she doesn’t have friends and never goes out anyway that I decide to forget it.
perry