When 11 year olds go mad

There are days when I feel like the 'terrible twos' will never end. The problem is it's not my 2 year old going through them, it's my almost 12 year old. We have been going through this terrible phase of temper tantrums and crying over nothing and everything for, oh, about 10 1/2 years. When will it end?

It's not every day, I'd say that for the last year or so it has been on average once or twice a week. Maybe 3 times. Which is a great improvement over the 6-7 times per week it was before that.

Today's fit was over a voice recognition program we have on our computer. My grandad bought it for Liam last year, it was installed but Liam never has done the inital set up. The fact that he has to read some 50 sentences has him put off. Taylor asked if she could set herself up on it. I said no, it is meant for Liam, he needs to do it.

Well, you'd think I had just told her that I was buying Liam a brand new computer that she was never allowed to use. "Why does Liam get everything and I get nothing!" This from the girl who has so much stuff in her room, I can hardly move in it. I said that the program is meant for Liam so he can use the computer without having to type. Let's face it, it's hard to type something when you can hardly read a word. "It's not my fault I can read!" she says "I hate typing!" Surely, I say, she wouldn't prefer to have dyslexia just so she can get away without typing. Oh, she would. This pissed me off immensely. I freaked. I called her selfish and said I couldn't believe such comments came out of her mouth. She was screaming and crying about how unfair it is that she can read and has to type. And how Liam is treated as though he is special so he gets EVERYTHING and she gets NOTHING.

I ended up saying that if she thinks she really gets nothing then that's how it will be- she can forget about going skiing with her class, about all field trips, birthday parties and Girl Guides. She can do nothing and get nothing as far as I am concerned.

I really don't know what to do about her. For awhile when she was 4 I kept a journal about her tantrums and why she had them as she was supposed to be assessed. I may have to start this again, and it'll be into the blog it goes, since I am not a very good journal keeper. Here's a smaple tantrum from the age of 4 years, 11 months: for playschool, each child is required to bring some sort of fruit for a friendship fruit salad. I have cantaloupe in the fridge so I say she can use that. She freaks out, she wants oranges. She screams and cries and I literally dragged her to school, where she proceeds to be very pleasant but refuses to touch the cantaloupe so the parent helper gives her oranges to peel. And in those days, they were everyday. When she was very little, from 14 months or so, when she had a tantrum she would just fall asleep where she lying screaming. Yesterday Saoirse was going through an album and the first 5 pages contained 6 pictures of Taylor just lying on the floor sleeping with a tear stained face.

Saoirse, thank God, is actually pretty good, just the odd cry when she doesn't get her own way but it ends quickly and then she is fine. Hopefully Sophie will be the same way, I seriously could not handle another Taylor.