Caroline Halladay, a single parent of a teenage girl, wrote this letter to a British magazine to explain how she feels when she and her daughter have a fight.
My daughter, Nancy, makes me cry sometimes. She is 14, I am a working single parent and I feel the pressure of trying to meet her needs. I usually take her to school in the morning on my way to work and we do not meet until late in the afternoon. When I come home, I find her there doing her homework. I am busy with the housework and sometimes get angry with her because she is untidy. We usually talk a lot at supper, but when I am too tired I find it difficult to listen to her problems because I too feel the need of support and cooperation. We occasionally have a fight and last week we had a particularly bad one, but there were obvious reasons for it. I had to work late most evenings and I was particularly tense so she did not have the chance to talk to me about school, friends and other problems in her life. I know that our quarrel was about quite irrelevant things, such as clothes or make-up and untidiness. I was so sorry about that unpleasant evening that now I am much more concerned with things that matter a lot, like her physical safety, her views on life and her important choices and decisions. My daughter, too, is now sharing the cooking and is kinder to me. I hope this letter may be useful to other mothers and teenagers.
Caroline Halladay