13YO & Horoscopes

[OracleX]

This is being posted on the behalf of another member. Please take the time to read and respond if you feel lead.

Background: Recently my wife and I agreed to take care of a 13YO daughter of a friend of ours. It is a long term arrangement and we are basically raising her as our own daughter. It came as a surprise to us and has required a bit of adjustment, mainly because we don't have any daughters - only sons - so a girl is a new concept for us!

So far we haven't had any hiccups until this evening when she wanted to use the Internet. However, the reason she wanted to use the Internet was to look up her horoscope. My wife asked her if she thought that was an appropriate thing to do and she became very defensive and said "I don't care! I'm going to do it anyway!"

It was at this point that I became involved.

Now, we don't have strong views about the casual use of astrology - I have always regarded it as something of a fraud or merely a curiosity. I never actually imagined anyone paying serious attention to it. What I was mainly concerned with was her attitude to my wife's questioning.

I explained to her that it is not often that we will be making hard and fast rules for her. Most of the time we will expect her to be able to choose right from wrong and occasionally we will question her to see what thought she has put in to deciding whether something is appropriate or not and the fact that she was defiant and defensive indicates that there is probably a problem there. She replied that it was normal for her to be defensive as it was part of her nature. I asked her why she thought that and she said she had read it in a book. What book? An astrology book, of course.

By now the alarm bells were ringing in my head. A lot of the time she kept glancing at the web search page for astrology sites until I shut it down. I told her we were concerned she was obsessed with astrology, but she was free to prove us wrong. We have given her a 1 month moratorium on viewing any astrology sites or reading horoscopes in magazines or in newspapers. After that time we will sit down again and discuss whether she is permitted to view horoscopes again.

At first she became very agitated at the restriction, but later took it as a challenge and is looking forward to the month ending.

Both reactions worry me even further.

I'm starting to wonder if I should take a harder line on this issue or just let it go. I would welcome any comments on this issue. Is this a serious issue or just part of being a 13YO girl? Is this something to be dealt with or something that will sort itself out?

 

[BeanMak]

My 2 cents- if you don't actually have strong feelings about astrology, (and I agree- it is a fraud, and silliness- just the thing that a 13 yo might find interesting) then don't make a war about it. I agree that defiance should be dealt with, and not tolerated, but if you leave the discussion as to how stars are created and therefore have no power over us, that the Lord is in charge of the lives of those who love him... then leave it at that.
There are SO many battles to overcome in adolescence, why make one out of nothing?

 

[Why?]

I'd let it go. If she were in my care I would let her do it. (I occasionally glance at my horiscope to laugh about me getting a raise... as if housewives get raises. lol) I would probably find her horoscope and point thing out like that to her. I know that's probably not the right thing to do, and I know people will critisize that remark. But that's what I would do. I'd just say to her, "Oh, look my horoscope says that I'm getting a promotion this month. LOL" or "Hey, my horoscope says that I'll be renovating my house (mine actually says that this month) too bad we did that a couple months ago. Maybe I'm just ahead of the stars."

A teen will only rebel when given strict rules. When they can see that these things don't work, they will reguard them with less value.

 

[Why?]

As a PS here. This child is probably going through a tough time as it is, changing parental figures at 13 years of age. That's a hard time for a girl anyway, without all that excess bagage. She needs love, understanding, and acceptance more than rules about not reading her horoscope. Expect her to lash out about small things. That's normal for a child who's had major life changes.

 

[bliz]

Have you been able to get her to talk about what it is that she likes about astrology? She may not even know herself, but I'll bet you that somehow, it makes her feel good to read her horoscope. Perhaps it makes her feel secure, or remindes her of something from her original family or she finds romance (broad meaning of the word) in them... Frankly, I'd be more concerned that she was in-your-face defiant than that she wanted to view her horoscope.

Perhaps this could be something that you and she could do together. She looks up both of yours and you can talk about them. For starters, seek out a couple of sites on your own, expecially sites that will not show the same information for the same sign on any given day. I've read enough of them to know how open ended, vague and open to interpretation most of them are! Seeing how they conflict and how their pronouncments can mean almost anything may not stop her from wanting to look, but it may take a lot of the magic power out of them.