My 17 DD is now in year 12. She's doing well at school and knows exactly what she wants to do after A2s. She's a focussed, bright, polite, kind, thoughtful, well mannered, studious, hard working, clever, generous girl 99.5% of the time. But in the mornings when she has to get up she is a completely different person! I have always given her a lift to school as it's on my way to work & we live off the beaten track, and getting her up in the morning has always been hard. This school year however, it?s been even harder which has had a very negative impact on her punctuality and attendance in 6th form. This morning at 8:15am I was beginning to get irritated with her because she was still in bed. To cut long story short, I drew back her curtains and received a mouthful of abuse. She got up and drew them again. I took her duvet cover, she took it back. We ended up wrestling over her phone (which I wanted to confiscate). After being on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse, I was close to tears and very shaken. I went downstairs and finished getting myself ready for work. She wanted a lift to school (she was finally up by now and I was supposed to be pleased about that!!!) but I refused because I was now late for work myself and didn't want to be any later. She took my car keys into the bathroom while she had a shower. There's no lock on our bathroom door so I knew I could go in and get them, but I decided there was no point making things worse, so I just sat at the kitchen table waiting for her. I gave her a lift to school in silence, then in the car park, I told her I was disgusted with her behaviour, ashamed of her and ashamed of myself for giving in to her and giving her a lift. I went to work and have felt sick in my stomach ever since (that was 5 hours ago now). She's since sent me texts since saying how sorry she is and that she will look for an anger management class. I've replied saying I'm not interested and that I don't want to speak to her or see her at the moment.
The problem is 2 fold:
- On one hand, is her temper. I've seen this temper before on the odd occasion but it's getting regular in the mornings. She says its because she doesn't like me telling her to get up - but if she got up on time, I wouldn't have to keep giving her time checks - chicken/egg?? Is she pushing boundaries??
- On the second hand, she just seems to like her bed too much. We've had so many chats about her getting up in the morning. A couple of times I've gone to work and left her and she's missed classes because she's gone back to sleep. Every night she says she'll get up earlier in the morning. Then every morning I have to nag!! She went to bed last night saying she needed to get into school for 9am because she had an essay to finish. But this morning, that essay became the most unimportant thing in the world and she would rather have suffered the consequences of not finishing it, than get up!! (Incidentally, it doesn't matter if it's school or not school. She's late for almost everything if it's a morning thing, and even at weekends, very often I'm bailing her out with a lift because she's missed a bus into town, or I'm looking for her work uniform while she's in the shower!!!). Best case I get the usual "Alll riiggghhhttt. I'm getting up aren't I" screamed at me or she tells me to "f* off" or she'll "get up in a minute FFS", but that will be when she's almost late!!
Please help because I don't know what to do any more. I can't manage these morning tantrums and DD will fail her exams if she keeps missing the first lessons. As I stated at the beginning, 99.5% of the time she's an absolute delight to be with and we actually have a great relationship. I'm sorry this is so long. I just needed to make sure you got the full picture. Thank you.
