It was a relief to go shopping last month for Aoife's school uniform. There could be no arguments, no tantrums, no histrionics. We just had to work through the list of items, try them on and make the purchase. She knew there would be no point in the usual sulking and general bad behaviour that has become the pattern of our shopping expeditions. The school insists on full uniform and so all her vitriol was directed against the teachers and, for once, not against me.

I can't believe the transformation that has taken place in Aoife this summer. Anything that I say is contradicted and anything I do is ridiculed. My influence over her has been diminished to nilch and the opinions of Sandra, Suzanne, Aisling or whomever is flavour of the week taken on board - and that is not to mention Luke, Daniel, Peter or whoever.

I wail to my mother how impossible she is and she replies how alike we are. Giving parents grief is part of the maturing process, it seems.

The phone virtually belongs to Aoife. Every single day this summer there was a stand-up row when I tell her to get off it. "Because-I-say-so" I screech when she asks why. Then the door slams and crash, bang, wallop goes on in her bedroom. I refused to let her go to the over-14s disco but she out-manoeuvred me and got around her father. Five little girls arrived at the house to get ready. They left dressed so provocatively that I spent the entire evening terrified that they would be gang-raped.

And did I get a whiff of cigarettes and alcohol? Ah no, I couldn't have, my imagination was playing up . . . A couple of days later she arrived home with her nose pierced. And then, when I take her on and tell her that at 14 her behaviour is unacceptable, I have to endure another day of raging hormones, massive mood swings - and then, without any warning, she is her old self, good-natured and accommodating.

Having had two boys who grunted their way through adolescence I am at my wit's end when I think of the next couple of years. Should I try to become her friend and admire her taste in clothes?

Should I go off to the jewellers with her and have my nose pierced too?

My instinct says no: take her on and set the limits. But my energy level for confrontation drops even at the thought of it all.