Your child needs a parent who is involved, who teaches him/her appropriate behaviour, who keeps them accountable for their actions, who insists that everyone do the best they can on everything... but more than anything, they need to feel connected to. Like someone really SEES them, really GETS them.
Some days, that's harder than others.
What you need is some kind of ritual; some kind of place or event where, whatever failures or disagreements or power struggles or paint-peeling-tantrums-audible-three-counties-away the day held, you can just be together in an uncomplicated way. Your child needs it very badly, but you need it too. You need to feel like a good parent, in the face of all the evidence that the job is not going well (and the deep-seated, ever-present fear that worse is yet to come). And you need regular doses of the wonderful kid that your child is, no matter what was on today's rap sheet.
In our house, it's story time. We cuddle on the bed and I read Pippi Longstocking or the Wizard of Oz or Owls in the Family or The Great Brain, or whatever classic from my childhood I have chosen to inflict on my offspring before they develop their own literary tastes. Both my kids can read independently, but that's not stopping story time, and I don't plan that it should, for many years yet. We have J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Pratchett and many, many others yet to come.
If story time is not your thing, well, see what is. My friend got through her three daughters' stormy but very individual trips through adolescence with chick flicks on the couch, side-by-side videogaming, and crafts at the kitchen table (she paints an AWESOME Ukrainian pysanka). Go biking together, make cookies together, paint their room whatever colour they choose together... just BE together. Talk is optional.
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