Tantrum

No for once I am not talking about my little ones. This time it was by my 10 1/2 yr old. Yes you heard me. It started at about 7 am. She spilt her milk so she slowly takes her time getting a towel to clean the table with. Then she looks at her plate and their are little drops of milk on her pancakes. "I can't eat them with milk on them." I'm frustrated with her over taking her time with the cleanup so I let out a sigh and said fine; have my plate. She starts crying. I have no idea why. She thinks we are mad at her. I calmly tell we are not mad. She just starts throwing a fit. She doesn't want to eat her food and is just sitting there saying how unfair her life is. So I tell her that if she doesn't stop crying then she won't be able to go out to eat with her dad (he is supposed to pick her up at 10.30 for brunch and now that she is throwing this fit he will have to come over and just play with her in her room). She starts screaming at me. I tell her to go to bed. So she goes to her room and I call her father and leave a message with him. Mind you, he and I do not get along nor does he care for the way I am raising Katherine. After 30 min. I go in and talk to her. She throws the book at me..how I don't love her, life is unfair...etc. I am very proud of myself for not crying in front of her and for being calm, of course after I leave her room I am in tears. I know she is just trying to get to me; she knows that in the past she could guilt me into giving in to what she wanted. Now its different. I'm trying to teach her consequences to her actions..something she should have learned a while ago. Once she figured out I wasn't going to cave..she started calming down. I told her she is grounded for the day; she helped to clean her room and the kitchen. She did her reading and her math assignments I give her to do on the weekends. She did this without complaining so we said she could still go to her soccer game (she loves soccer). We had to cancel her spending the night at her b/f house; her dad wouldn't come over and see her. That's another story. (BTW her team won..4-3). She handled her grounding very well. She would ask to do something and we told her she couldn't and she would get sad but she didn't pout and she didn't whine. At the end of the day I told her how proud I was of her for being so good about being grounded. She told me she loves me..and I said i love you too. She said I know mama. Well worth it. I hope that she learns I am trying to be a better parent. Like my husband says..kids need to know they have boundaries. I guess so.