Well I think you have two problems with her. The first is the way you communicate with each other. I wrote a message about it a few years back. maybe it will be insightfull. You both are now Against-Above while Above-together might achieve more.
Yes teens need authority but if you bring it in an adult way chances are they will actually listen instead of snooping behind your back. And yes if a teen really does something wrong you should indeed ground them or whatever. But if you speak to many times on a authority tone the effect will become smaller since they know that it will happen anyway.
And according to the psycology a teen wants to break free from their parents and if a parent is above against (offesive) (rose of Leary) which is the normal parenting style when the child is younger (they need it at that age) a child will need to break free to become an indevidual and go opposite from their parents style and become above together in the hope that their parents wil get more balanced towards the centre of the rose. so offense leads to offense. If you approach them in an adult manner which is somewhere near the centre of the rose they will be more open to arguments since they don't feel the need to have to break free from the parents and so they don't have to put all their energy into having to break free. (below I will explain the rose of leary a bit better.)
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Rose of Leary
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The rose of Leary consists of 2 axis --> above below and against together
against | together
|
above |
---------------------------+-----------------------
below |
|
|
therfore there ar for combinations possible:
above-against or offense (e.g. why did you do that?)
below-against or defense (e.g. but I just wanted to ...)
above-together or leading (e.g. would you do that please?)
below-together or following (e.g. yes)
a natural reaction wil always be above leads to below and vice versa.
a natural reaction to against wil be against and together leads to together
so offense wil lead to deffense and vice versa and leading will lead to following and vice versa.
But if someone is very offensive or defensive or leading or following you might want to change that. You effectively want to change it towards the totally oppesite so that they become more towards the centre of the rosefrom offensive more towards following for example.
If you want to achieve that you will need to become the same above or below cathegory but the other against together cathegory. so to change offense you will need to assume leading role. If that is in a parent teen situation it will probably clash.
I hope my explenation of the rose of Leary is clear and that it explains why you should talk to teens as if they where adults
On the internet more info about the rose of leary can be found. this is a translation of a dutch text book so the actual names may differ. search for Leary and it will probebly produce some results.
The second problem is that you are setting her up to rebel in my opinion, you may differ on my views and I would like to exchange our points of view. Even if you don't do anything with the following the above is probably true no matter the difference in our idiological views. You are forbidding all the things that teens her age find interresting. I mean clothes, make-up, go downtown, hang out wih older kids & date.
Now I'm not saying you should radically change overnight but you can take smaller steps if you want. Try to see her as an adult and not as a child. approaching her in that way will help you to give her more responsibility. And make it clear to her that if she can't handle it you can take it away again.
I suggest you rethink which battles are the battles you really want to fight. Now for the clothes I suggest you'll try to find a middle ground. I mean you both are intellegent people I guess. So I don't think you can expect her to wear a turtle neck sweater all day and she can't expect that you'll allow her to go out in a tank top not large enough to cover her bra. See what is reasonable and what you can agree on. Try to find nice clothes she can wear without being embarresed about in front of her friends while you can still live with the fact she is wearing them.
Make-up, well all girls want to look pretty. Make up dates back to prehistoric times where women accentuated there lips with berries to look pretty in front of men and each other. It is not a new craze, teens have been putting it on for ever (at times even men did.) Maybe you can also find a middle ground here. Like maybe when she goes out she can put on make up and for the rest she can't or maybe a fine line under the eyes.
Walking downtown. Well I don't know how safe your town is, but if she can't walk maybe she can go by bike or one of you can bring her. Don't deny her social life, she needs to learn skills in interacting with others and can only learn that if she can interact with peers.
Hanging out with older kids is also normal for her age. she looks up to them because they are her peergroup and probably the leaders in that group. THey are more or less the role models that you have been in the previous stage of her life. It is good to watch out for older kids that are way older though, but don't be too strict and judge every older kid seperately. Some 13 year old kids are worse to have your daughter hang out with then some of the 17 year olds for instance.
Last dating. I think that you need to know that there is a difference between dating and dating. When you think about dating you are thinking about the adult version, the courting you and your husband did before you got married. She however is 13 dating consists of a movie holding each other and kissing a bit. In this she gets experience and learns lessons so that when she is older she can enter in an adult relationship.
The later she enters the dating scene the harder it will get to catch up with her peers who can date at this age. Also it sends out the wrong signal about dating. It becomes the forbidden fruit. And we all know what happens if somehing is forbidden.
If you are afraid that things might happen she is not ready for (sex). then you can help her to say no. Not by teaching abstinence, abstinence only doesn't work. sex-ed consist of more. You must also talk about the nice things of sex and when you do it. And just in case teach her about contraception so that you don't have a pregnant daughter or worse.
No matter what sex-ed is more abot empowering her then anything else. She needs to be able to listen to herself and see if she is ready or not. And needs enough self confidence to be able to say no. And believe me if they are thought teens can, evn with raging hormones, be sensible and say no because it doesn't feel right.
Last thing I wat to say is that your sickness also affects her. It is constantly in her mind. Her acting up can also, in part, be explained by her mother being sick. Not that either one of you can do anything about it, and you defenetly shouldn't feel guilty about it. But she might just need to blow off steam every once and a while.
Ow and I agree she needs to finish her homework and chores before she can do anything else.
