I remember well.. the, \ufffds/he's not exactly stimulating company.

At one point a friend was involved with Huckleberry House - a SF org dedicated to providing some sort of soft landing for the flocks of kiddies .. left all illegible and disillusioned, having arrived too late for Flower Power (and having stayed-on into the cynical exploitation of yout stage.)

They were full-up and there was this waif - What To Do with her, temporarily.

I ended up, for a week or so - providing bed & sustenance (and a few clothes) for a 16 yo female, sans parents anywhere. (Faded into dimness is ~~ maybe the mother was dead; the father, one of that large variety of feckless disconnected pikers which we mass-produce - but that's a vague guess, now.)

My 'goal' was (it eventually dawned.. and her name Was Dawn) - to somehow try to keep her from ~ fleeing to LA, still all illegible - and perhaps making her way on her back: apparently about the only hormone/skillz combo that her somewhat attenuated imagination might fixate upon.

Tried to offer her the non-BS version of, "all that good shit you could sorta prep for - one day at a time", poco \ufffd poco. (Some of that even appeared to link up with a few grey cells - but ya never Know..)

Having regular commitments to electron trajectories and other things, I had to leave her on her own more than I thought wise - but recurrent theme was: there's fucking-little about which we might converse. This, whereas the obverse: a kid with a scintilla of Curiosity (and some semblance of a working curiosity-processor) - can be a joy to be around; in that case, any 'play' is also teaching/learning; no agenda is needed. And they don't need to know who Proust might have been.

Sorry, no advice on your 12 yo. I don't know if it's a matter of impatience? sloth? - whereby I could not manufacture sustained Interest - it's easy/cliche - to blame that on the 'raw materials at hand'. Yet certain saintly folk manage to evoke something from every tyke. Well, almost every.

I conclude that, the fault lies within ourselves and not within our stars, to coin a .. (After Dawn had gotten into Huckleberry for a spell, I saw her one more time before she left; she was about to be 'enroute to LA' on nonspecific quest. Some distant 'family' - - maybe.)

And lifted my medium-grade Mont Blanc writing implement, 'as memento' (she later admitted, in a brief note) leaving in its place a ball-point. I thought - WTF; if she will fucking learn to Use It! - my work is complete.
Y'know?

It's a Puzzlement.