Mood: irritated
Yesterday I bugged Mike about his daughter's mail. I said to him, "Are you trying to teach her a lesson? Do you want her to experience bills unpaid or perhaps go into debt?"
Mike said no, and he got the phone and called her that very minute. The phone call did not go well. Sometimes while she ranted and raved Mike held the phone away from his head, not wanting to hear what she had to say. After the phone call he said, "See, this is why I don't call her."
Apparently this semester in school there is a repeat of an incident that happened last semester. A teacher pulls Mike's daughter out of the classroom to have a private chat. The teacher tells the daughter that she is not doing the classwork the way that the teacher wants or that she is not participating enough in class. The daughter tells the teacher that the class is boring, she already knows everything, and that the teacher is wasting the money she paid to take the class. Recently she also told the teacher that the teacher is teaching the class the wrong way.
Teachers don't like to be insulted. The last time she did this the teacher gave her a "C" despite her perfect attendence and having done all the classwork. Mike suggested that his daughter do the classwork the way the teacher asks and take an easy "A". That advice made his daughter very angry. She said it was bad advice.
Mike said that it is a mistake to view a relationship with his daughter as anything more than the process of "cutting the apron strings". He said that his Dad gave him good advise that he didn't want to listen to either. Mike sees conversations like the one he had with his daughter as important to her becoming a separate, independent adult. "She isn't an adversary" he says.
Her behavior with the teacher is puzzling. I think something more than immaturity is at work here. I see an over inflated ego probably compensating for low self esteem. Is that what immaturity is? Or is this behavior genetic? Does Mike's daughter have no choice but to act this way given the personalities of her parents at her own age? Is the drive to disagree with authority built in? Ah. I know. Both these teachers that she is picking fights with are females and she had a very poor relationship with a former step mother when she was young. She is transfering her aggression toward the step mother onto an older female with authority. It is rebellion 10 years too late.
I'm curious what her grade in this class will be.