MOM NEVER LETS HER DO ANYTHING

Dear Jellybean,

My mom never lets me do anything I want to do. I don't do things that are way too out of control. I just wanna hang out with friends and have fun. But she's always saying "Study, clean your room, study, go take a shower and study!" But, I do have a problem with cleanliness and keeping my grades up. Cleaning is so heard for me becuz when I clean up, it gets messy again in about 5 minutes. And keeping my grades up is extremly hard. I despise my teacher! I have F's in her class and B's in the others, so it's obvious that she's pretty hard on me. She gives us so many assignments and I can't keep up. Overnight homework is easy for me, but the long term homework is hard. Like, if there's an assignment do on Friday, and it's Monday, I just become lazy. I feel like it's not important to turn in, which it is! Another issue is, I don't like the clothes my mom makes me wear. She buys me "preppy" clothes like GAP, OLD NAVY, and even stuff from "The Childrens Place"!! She keeps saying "I'm still a baby", but I'm 13 and I'm a teenager. I don't want her to dress me up! I wear black clothes, and ALOT of things from Hot Topic. She says she's never buying me clothes from there again. The clothes I buy from Hot Topic aren't revealing, and they dont draw too much attention, so I don't know what the big deal is. She cares so much about what other people think of me! It messes up the relationship with me and her. I just want to wear what I want. How can I prove to her that I am mature enough to pick out what I want to wear?
Love,
Trishette

Dear Trishette,

You say your mom never lets you do anything you want to do, but why should she? After all, you're not doing anything SHE wants you to do. I know you don't want to hear this, but parenthood is a bit of a dictatorship. Your mom's in charge as long as you live in her house. So to have any hope of getting what you want, you have to give her what she wants and make her happy first. For your mom, that means keeping clean and studying so you improve your grades.

Try to see it from your mom's point of view, just to see why she's being so "mean". If you can't pull off simple stuff like keeping yourself clean, why would she think you could handle something harder, like not getting into trouble if you wear cute clothes? It seems stupid to you, but your mom is constantly measuring how trustworthy and responsible you are, and so far al you're proving is that you can't meet expectations.

You can turn around your mom's attitude, but you'll have to put some serious work into it. (Clue: This is true for almost anything worth getting in life - it takes WORK!) Plus, if you're not clean, people are going to get grossed out, and cute clothes aren't going to help you much.

Start living up to your mom's expectations, and I think you'll be very surprised by how "nice" she can be in return. Trust me, I've seen this work a hundred times!