In some families, generosity of spirit is encouraged and rewarded.

In our family, self-centeredness is cause for celebration.

"I'm sorry you just found out your boyfriend is seeing someone else and you got an F in science and your mother is on YouTube wearing a thong and dancing to Lynard Skynard, but I'm too tired to come over," my daughter tells a friend on the phone, as I erupt in celebration and applause.

"Yes! Good job! Woo hoo! Emily, you rock!"

Ours is a house full of busy, involved people. The phone rings constantly with demands, requests and invitations, especially for my adolescent daughter, who, during the Christmas break, fielded calls from Kate, Caitlin, Katie, Sara, Maddie, Madison, Audrey, Audra, Kelsey, Rachel, Abby, Rebecca, Rebecca's twin, Liz, and 27 other friends who wanted her to walk to Taco Bell/go sledding/spend the night/help throw a surprise birthday party/bake cookies/wrap presents for the impoverished.

Such social swirl is the definition of a 15-year-old's life. According to psychologists, adolescents spend eight hours a day communicating — almost all that time with their peers, as they attempt to maneuver their way through high school, Old Navy tank top sales, and why Laura was really mean to everybody at the last soccer game.

The female adolescents I know also seem to spend much of their time negotiating a minefield of learned female behavior, including saying "I'm sorry" when it's not their fault, taking care of others when they should be taking care of themselves and saying "Yes" when they should say "No."

All this while the female parents of adolescents — who modeled this behavior for their daughters when they were younger but who are churlish middle-agers now — stand on the sidelines, cheering, directing and pleading.

The night before Christmas break, my daughter stayed up until 2 a.m., handwriting and hand-coloring personalized letters to all 25 underclassmen in her multi-age classroom so each would know what makes him or her special.

"Couldn't you have just written one defining characteristic on a piece of paper and attached it to a candy cane?" said I, the mother who no longer hand-paints and hand-signs 115 Christmas cards for everybody in her address book, but who did in full view of her daughter until two Christmases ago.

"It's OK, Mom. I like doing it. Besides, I'm not as bad as Hannah. She made 100 letters in tiny print."

Yeah, so Hannah has an even bigger female overextension problem, which she probably learned from her mother. Both can relate to my daughter, for whom a simple act like organizing a sledding event becomes a singularly big deal. As time for the event nears, and the phone calls start coming in rapid fire, I hear my daughter tell her brother, "Don't answer the phone. They already know what time and where to go."

"You go, girl!" I say, openly promoting avoidance and even passive aggressive behavior — anything but meeting limitless friends' limitless needs all of the time.

I joke to my daughter that she needs a secretary, a life coach and a personal assistant, so that as each call comes in, as each demand and assumed responsibility emerges, she will have someone to check her calendar, a second person to lead her in the right direction and a third to catch her when she falls.

At the very least, she needs a mother who might not have been the best role 10 years ago when her daughter saw her making cupcakes at 9 p.m. for the next day's kindergarten party even though she had the flu, a sprained ankle and signs of shingles.

But, by God, she can be a good role model now.

"I'm sorry, Natalie, but Emily's not here," I said to the fourth girl who called one day while Emily was out. "She won't be here until 4, and then she has to get ready for a tournament soccer game at 6, and then she has to go to a haircut appointment at 8, and then she has to go to bed because she has a big day tomorrow."

"Gee, I just wanted to tell her good luck with her soccer game."

Recovering co-dependent moms: You gotta love us.

(Journalist Debra-Lynn B. Hook lives in Kent, Ohio, with her husband and three children and has been writing about family life since 1988.)