Curing little empress syndrome

[tsap seui]

My gal is with me on this, so that part is under-control.

 

Even though the empress is 18, she often behaves like a 12 year old. I'll take a closer read of the suggestions when I get home. I do not have experience with teenaged girls (my daughter spent her teen years with her mother in another city), so all help is appreciated.

 

 

Griz, it looks like the most important first step is covered.

 

"My gal is with me on this, so that part is under-control."

 

I was 36 when my daughter was born, she's 21 now, and I was pretty much a single parent to her for 10 years of her first 18 years as her mom, whom I was never married to or lived with, kept falling off the wagon, getting drunk, and trying to commit suicide. In her bouts with sobriety her mom at least helped our daughter to mature into the self reliant, hard working (both in her job and her 3.67 grade point aveage in university) young woman she is now.

 

I don't know how to help you with "turning around" a situation like this. I do know that it could become a wedge in a relationship if left to fester and escalate. That's why I'm very happy to see you and mom are on the same page.

 

With your daughter going to "Uni" soon she will be more on her own and surrounded with peers who, hopefully, will help her to grow out of her pampered stage. And if you're open to it, should the "problem" get to the crisis stage....there is counseling for parenthood.

 

It takes lots of gentle talking with a goal in mind, and a well thought out direction to that goal.

 

Good luck to you and your wife...and to your daughter. It'll work out. Heck, you've got the first steps out of the way with her mom being on the same page with you, and with you looking for help.

 

tsap seui

[ameriken]

My gal is with me on this, so that part is under-control.

 

Even though the empress is 18, she often behaves like a 12 year old. I'll take a closer read of the suggestions when I get home. I do not have experience with teenaged girls (my daughter spent her teen years with her mother in another city), so all help is appreciated.

Thats good news. I hope she will stand by you when the tough gets going. My ex-wife was unable to discipline or enforce rules with our children. She essentially would let them do whatever they wanted. When we would agree to enforce a rule or deal with a particular behavior in one of our children, she would reverse herself when the time came to actually doing so.

 

As for your new daughter, can you define what you mean by 'empress'? I mean, what behaviors does she exhibit and how does her mom respond and interact with her?

[Yuanyang]

I'd go with the Chainsaw.

[IllinoisDave]

I'd go with the Chainsaw.

[Dennis143]

My gal is with me on this, so that part is under-control.

 

Even though the empress is 18, she often behaves like a 12 year old. I'll take a closer read of the suggestions when I get home. I do not have experience with teenaged girls (my daughter spent her teen years with her mother in another city), so all help is appreciated.

The relationship between mother and daughter is now firmly established and through-out the years you will continue to see your new daughter revert back and display her little empress syndrome when around mama.

 

There ain't no changing it and the best you can do is bite your tongue and try best not to become the ogre in their relationship.

 

Most of us here have (or have had) our own unique relationship with our mothers that some would wag their fingers at and call us spoiled little babies.

[SmilingAsia]

Talk to her in a peaceful way: what behaviors are not acceptable or even list them on a piece of paper. It doesn't matter how you treat your mom. Mom can tolerate everything, Mom can swallow the shit, but you need good behavior, good EQ to get along with people, to build up a future, a successful career for yourself. I talked to My Little Ingrate when she was 11 to 18 (8年抗战!) and it seemed she didn't understand it at all. When she was 19, she understood it at last. When she is 20, she understands it very well, amazingly.

Edited July 10, 2008 by SmilingAsia (see edit history)

[SheLikesME?]

Jim,

I thought you had a very good post in another thread somewhere about this. Seems you nipped this in the bud in China after observing behavior between daughter and grandparents and you spelled it out that when in China OK, but you talked to wife and daughter how it will or must be different in the USA, I think. wish I could find the post I would link it.

 

 

 

For us, I find my wife is not well equipped as a mother. Her in-laws lived on and off with her even after the divorce to help with daughter. She was being spoiled while Mom worked and studied. Nice girl but after two trips back after in the USA it changed her to an adult acting 7 year old. A spoiled one. Her Mom just did not discipline well. Finally I had to take charge and wife was glad. My example showed her how to do it and she then picked up the pace and the daughter is ever so much better now. We still have a ways to go, but all things are tolerable now.

 

I find daughter adapting to America a bit better than wife. Daughter sees and imitates and changes and wants to be American in America. My wife on the other hand wants to argue with neighbors on issues she is right about. The result is she has to move from the apartment I had them in near her job. No big deal, just another learning experience. I guess I am saying my wife is kind of a spoiled princess or elitist. But she is also a lady who has a conscience of good by thinking something must be better and more moral or just than what she has known in her life, as she climbed her way up the ladder in China. I find her resisting learning that leads toward that conscience she has. It is tough to break 38-40 years of habit. And mostly it is embarrassing to her to be wrong in what she does here in the USA. She really feels so puzzled and lost sometimes about how she treats others ad the result she gets from that, yet she knows to keep going forward and trying.

 

So I hope you can negotiate this with your wife and daughter before arrival, then good luck and lots of patients, until you must take charge

 

 

PS: Daughter is still 7. Not sure how much this applies, but I certainly understand the spoiled princess that even surprised Mom, on this last and final arrival to US.

Edited July 11, 2008 by SheLikesME? (see edit history)

[Guest ShaQuaNew]

Remember that in China, families are restricted to having one child. Here, that Child is an Empress and a King. Maybe rather that trying to win her over or find ways to restrict her thinking, you should try being her friend and learning from her.

[griz326]

EMPRESS UPDATE:

 

The empress is smiling and laughing and giggling and even talks with me a little now.

 

Trying to catch the ducks and chickens loose in the yard really changed her attitude.

 

Next weekend we'll try a greased pig!

 

I think the kid's going to be okay!

[kangjie]

I have seen this happen before with step children and my sisters husband had to put up with tons of crap.

 

Here is just my thought.

You have to establish the fact you have limits and boundaries that can't be crossed. Even if this means the termination of your relationship.

Once they get crossed there is no going back. You have to let them know this behavior is not acceptable to you as is your right to do so.

[Guest lilac6451]

My gal's 18 year old daughter has a bad case of the little empress syndrome.

 

I'm a real easy going guy until I'm not. When we arrive in Montana, I want to nip this behavior in the bud without taking out my chainsaw and that mask.

 

How do you win over an 18 year old and discipline her at the same time when this behavior was tolerated in China? Any suggestions?

 

What is the syndrome? If you can tell us some, maybe we will find a way to deal with them.

 

But, love is always the best way of discipline.

[Smitty]

I think her in the US, the child would just be called 'spoiled.' I'm sure that answer doesn't help you though.

 

It is the result of the child being the sole heir to the family, and the focus on that one child during it's upbringing.