Why are you doing this to me?

I had a tough time with Lin yesterday. It wasn't all bad, we had some good times, too. But for a lot of the time we were together, she was trying to pick a fight with me. Testing me. As I was thinking about it again this morning, I realized that she was bullying me. It hurts.

I won't go into the specifics of each little conflict. There were a fair number of small things that just kept building on each other. But by the end of the evening, when she was again pestering me even though I asked her to stop, she again taunted me with the question "Are you mad at me?" (I'd heard that question a lot throughout the day ) I finally looked at her and said "Do you want me to be mad at you? Are you trying to fight with me?" And she laughed. It was something about her posture, the look on her face, her whole body language -- she was being a bully. I was hurt and she laughed at me. I told her that trying to make me mad is not funny. She laughed again. Despite my telling her that it wasn't funny, she kept laughing.

Then she said "I win." That stopped me. I said, this isn't a game. This isn't a competition. There is no winner or loser between mother and daughter. She said "You're the loser and I'm the winner." Yup. It hurts. A lot.

The thing is, my instinct is to walk away from a fight. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not going to fight with you. I'm going to walk away. But is that the right response in this situation? Is it right to walk away from my newly adopted, 13-year-old daughter, who is trying to figure out what exactly a "mother" is? What exactly does it mean to be a "daughter?" Who is pushing my buttons repeatedly, intentionally, to see what happens?

I'd love you to chime in with some advice for me...

We had another exchange earlier in the day that will need some exploring, and maybe it's time for another appointment with our family counselor. Lin thinks it's funny to call me Lisa and to call her dad David. Most of the time it's harmless. But yesterday, after about 45 minutes of this "testing" me, she then started calling me Lisa. I told her that I really want her to call me "Mom" or "Mama." I tried to play it off with humor at first, but when she persisted (the bullying again) I got more serious with her. I'm your mom. I want you to call me Mom. I don't like it when you call me Lisa.

Lin said that in China she would sometimes call her teachers "Teacher" or call them by name. She would call her nannies "Aiyi" or call them by name. She said "It doesn't matter." I told her, I'm not your teacher. I'm not your Aiyi. I'm your mom. She continued with the "It doesn't matter" line. I told her that it does matter, to me. I told that I'm so happy to be her mom, and that when she calls me Lisa it makes me feel like she doesn't want me to be her mom. Again, "It doesn't matter."

Ouch, folks. Ouch.