Article May 25, 2020 Issue

When a strained relationship was mended

Name Withheld

My teenage daughter is and always has been wonderful. I know that this was how she was created—as the good and pure image and likeness of God. But over a period of time, our relationship had become rocky. Our interactions sometimes felt like a game where her goal was just to aggravate me. Despite my attempts to work with her, nothing was getting better. I tried lots of different parenting strategies, all to no avail.

Even though I still heard great things about her from others, and knew them to be true, it became harder for me to see the good.

Then one day I received an email from a teacher telling me that my daughter had received demerits for playing a computer game in class. This woke me up to what I needed to do about this—pray. That evening I called a Christian Science practitioner. I talked with her about how I’d been caught in the trap of believing that a less-than-harmonious relationship with my daughter was inevitable.

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