I am with spaghetti. dd is 14. It could have easily gone that way, but I put my foot down. I think the 3 years leading up to 14 were critical in how it comes out.
DD can give me some IDK but rarely. She knows she has to be an active decision maker to keep her helicopter mom at bay. And I said a year ago that she had to make decisions about her classes, her activities in order to create that package for college. What did she want to focus on? What extracurriculars work for her? I made her make those decisions in order to create a plan. And grades were a little roller coaster the last couple of years, and once she made a decision about her path, she got focused and is top of the class. Applying herself. I wasn't sure we would get here. She is now studying for her finals, 9th grade. But it required several sit downs and real conversations over the previous 2 years. And she says to me that other kids really don't talk to their parents. So I think the structure has to come from us.
