By Marguerite Kelly
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, May 25, 2007

Q. I am the mother of five, the grandmother of 12, and I have good relationships with all but a 19-year-old granddaughter.

She is a beautiful, verbal, confident, churchgoing young woman and quite sweet when everything goes her way. But she's not a go-getter like the other grandchildren. She is also non-responsive, lazy and slow in some things, has tantrums, disrespects her parents, often acts childishly, has no friends and loves to be the center of attention.

She and her twin sister -- the only children in that family -- were always treated equally. But her sister has two jobs, is working her way through college and buying her own car while this one stays home, sits at the computer for five to nine hours a day, expects others to cook for her and drive her places, and even reads their mail.

Sometimes she talks about going to a Christian school -- as if that could make everyone like her. But she applied to a technical school instead and now she insists that her parents buy her a car so she can get there.

Her father now ignores her, unless she has an obvious problem, but her mother feels sorry for her and caters to her insults and indecisiveness. If we go to a restaurant, she complains about some ache or pain and makes her mom take her home, which ruins the night for everyone else.

She did have health problems when she was young, which were soon corrected, but counseling never helped, although she went, on and off, for years.

Apparently she doesn't think my advice helps either. Last night she told me that she needs a break from me and doesn't know how long that break will be. I didn't respond, but it is difficult to keep quiet when I know that she is a capable person.

Do I keep giving her advice anyway?

A. Would you go to a party if you weren't invited?

Instinctively your granddaughter knows that she must learn to think and act for herself so she can become her own person. And to do that, she must pull away from the people she loves the most.

Unfortunately, she's doing it a little later than most teenagers and at a time when she needs more support than ever. As confident as your granddaughter seems to be, she is probably scared witless, like so many young people who are in their late teens and early 20s. Suddenly her life is stretching out before her, and everyone else seems more self-assured, more competent and more knowledgeable than she is.

Your granddaughter may not want your advice now, but she needs your encouragement and she needs you to applaud her plans and her dreams, whether they make sense to you or not.

You can probably help her even more if you find out which hospice, shelter or political campaign in your area needs volunteers the most and then promising to get her a ride to and from the place if she will work there a few hours a week. This may seem like a simplistic solution, but if your granddaughter helps people whose needs are greater than her own, she will begin to feel better about her abilities, her situation and her prospects, too.

If she doesn't improve though, she could have some chronic physical problem that is making her act lazy or slow. Encourage her parents to find a board-certified internist affiliated with a teaching hospital to give her a complete workup. If their daughter often has dark circles under her eyes and a runny nose, they should take her to an allergist too, since a food or an inhalant can also make a person tired and cranky. The parents might also take their daughter to a psychiatrist to see if her behavior and her hours at the computer might be signs of depression.

If none of this works however, you should lower your expectations. Not all children are go-getters, nor do they all have high IQs. And there is really no reason that they should.

Questions? Send them toadvice@margueritekelly.comor to Box 15310, Washington, D.C. 20003.