3 year history of shite behaviour from dd. have posted on this board many times. Am posting this time to ask for words of wisdom in dealing with my anger - I feel consumed by it at the moment. I know I should detach. I know a bit about teenage brains. I've read 'Get Out Of My Life'. I just CAN'T not be furious at the moment, and it's making me feel exhausted and affecting my ability to be calm and loving to my two younger dc's.
It's not that her behaviour is massively worse than before. If anything it's been calmer of late because we've stopped making demands on her to do homework, help around the house or be in bed at a sensible time. (Most school nights she's still up at 11.30pm and then struggles to get up in the morning. It's easier to deal with this than her screeching and slamming around the house at 10.30pm when we try and make her go to bed).
But she's still taking days off school when she feels like it, and regularly making herself very late on the days she does go in, to the extent that we will be facing fines and possibly court action next academic year if she continues to do it. The school have told us this.
Anyway, what's put me in a steaming rage is this: the last week I've been beside myself with worry about ds1 (9) who has been referred to paediatrics for a couple of suspicious lumps which appeared in his chest over the weekend of July 6th. Ds himself has been miserable with worry - he's a hypochondriac and an emetophobe with an unhealthy interest in the contents of net doctor, and despite me trying to be breezy and minimise the issue, turned around to me last week and said 'If I've got cancer, please just let me die - I don't want to have chemotherapy". At the same time this is going on with Ds, MIL has gone into hospital and is very poorly, and convinced she's not coming home. Incontinent and senile FIL is at home needing lots of help, which DH and his sisters have been taking it in turn to provide. and as usual DH is very, very busy at work, so feels very much under pressure.
DD's response? Business as usual. She really, truly doesn't seem to give a flying fuck. I have cried in front of her twice this last week with frustration over her behaviour and from pent up anxiety over DS. Which of course she's then used as ammunition - I am a 'crap parent' and ''have mental problems' for crying and breaking down in front of her. As far as she's concerned her behaviour is 'really not that bad' and I'm making a fuss over nothing. My line in the sand is - she goes to school, she gets there on time, she tells us where she is after school and comes home when she says she's going to. It's not unreasonable to request this of a 13 year old is it? But she CAN'T seem to comply.
Where do you go when the line that you've drawn in the sand is crossed - again and again? Casually, light heartedly, by a child who doesn't appear to have any serious problems other than the ones she has created for herself by flouting basic rules of conduct most other children seem willing to comply with?
I CAN'T live like this for another three years. I'll have a heart attack or a breakdown. I can't be a good parent to my other children when I'm having to deal with this level of daily stress.
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Dealing with my own rage
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Minifingers · 19/07/2013 18:26
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