Tonight 13 yr old dd got me up against a radiator, swearing and shouting and threatening me because I told her she couldn't go to a friend's house. In front of her friend. Pushed her face in my face saying 'You think you're hard, what are you going to do about this then? What? What?' And instead of getting myself away and shutting myself in the bathroom or something, I pushed her away, slapped at her and shouted 'don't you dare try to intimidate me in my own home'. Shoved her down the hallway towards her bedroom and pulled at her hair to get her to move backwards. She weighs 10 stone and is STRONG, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
I shouldn't have done it.
She then stormed out the house. I now know she went straight round to SIL's. DH has come back from work and is now round there to pick her up. I spent the first hour breathless and sobbing after she'd gone. Phoned parent line in between comforting my other two dc's (7 and 9). (they stuck their heads round the door and fired a nerf gun at me. I looked at the bullet and saw they'd stuck a note to it saying 'We are sorry for you' ).
I can't go on like this. We have tried to put some basic rules in place (hand over phone at 10pm on a school night, do homework, get to school on time) and she just flouts them day in and day out. Tonight's conflict started last night. I went into her room at 9.30 last night to remind her that she needed to be in bed at 10pm, and I would be taking her phone. However, I then got caught up and ended up not going in to take her phone until 10.15. At which point she was sitting fully clothed, straightening her hair. I said she had to go to bed, and to give me her phone, at which point she looked at me and said rudely 'You'll have to wait - I need to message some people' and carried on doing her hair. My response to this was to point out that I'd come in at 9.30 to remind her and that if the phone wasn't in my hand in 1 minute she'd lose it for the next day. I walked off and eventually she came in to the sitting room and threw her phone at me, arguing with me all the time about how unreasonable I was etc. Then she came and took it back off the table and went back up to her room.
DH took the phone when he came back and told her she'd lost it for the day, which resulted in her shouting in the hallway at 7am this morning. Anyway, she came back from school at 4pm and asked for her phone. As she was being polite and had apologised I let her have it. Big mistake. As soon as she had it she asked if she could go over to a friend's this evening, and when I said 'no' the above happened.
I can't take the verbal bullying and aggression and physical intimidation. She WON'T take 'no' for an answer from me. She's defiant with DH but not nearly so much as she is to me, where it's her 'rule' to challenge everything I say, and ignore pretty much all instructions. Tonight I really thought I was going to fall to pieces - I realised I'm frightened of her, and that she knows it and is being deliberately abusive to me.
I wanted to ask if anyone here would recommend family therapy for a situation like this. Really something has gone badly wrong and I'm struggling to parent her. SIL phoned me and said she thought that DD must be being bullied at school or something, for her to be so angry and so confrontational with me. I'm not so sure. I've not seen any evidence of it. I feel that we have a terrible dynamic going on - that dd is having a tough adolescence and its manifesting itself in a total reluctance to grow up. She is constantly pushing the boundaries Can't get her to see that growing up involves more freedom AND taking more responsibility for herself, and she can't have the first if she outright refuses the second. She's so profoundly uncooperative with us - I really do think it goes beyond normal teen laziness and rebelliousness. Things are really unhappy at home, and I'm wondering how long we can go on with this daily conflict - the shouting, refusal to follow even the most simple and basic rules, the attacks on me, the contempt.
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Thought I was going to have a heart attack. Can't go on like this
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Shagmundfreud · 08/02/2013 20:34
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