How to discipline a depressed child who has high anxiety?

[Anonymous]

How do you give them consequences? I find we let go a-lot of stuff and my husband indulges DD with almost everything she wants materially.

Her brother when he gets bad grades i try giving him consequences but when he sees his sister not getting them, he feels we are bullying him so I stooped. My husband thinks he knows it all, he works from home now. So I am just letting him deal with grades and drama situation and I walk away- never mind that I work at the kids school, talk to teachers, read parenting books, go to seminars and listened to them daily. I’m drained. I have 3 more years of high school, I want to run away- from marriage too.

[Anonymous]

I left. Have children half time. Clear boundaries and limits and love w me. Indulgence and infantalizing w dad.

[Anonymous]

I would talk to her treatment team about the best approach, OP. Perhaps they can recommend a counselor to help you and your DH get on the same page re: the kids?

Does DH have undiagnosed issues? My ex had untreated ADD (a child was diagnosed but he refused to be tested) and he found anxiety or withdrawal / depression in the kids overwhelming. Repeating a childhood dynamic with a mentally ill untreated parent.

Sorry things are so hard.

[Anonymous]

Why is your child anxious and depressed? It is not the problem that is with the kid. It is a parenting problem.

[Anonymous]

Stop bullying both your kids. Two different kids are getting bad grades. The common factor is you.

Redirect your kids to focus on making an effort with your support. Grades are an assessment of ability and performance, not an assessment of their behavior or human worth.

[Anonymous]

Pretty gross that you are taking your frustration with your husband's behavior out on your innocent children.

[Anonymous]

Don't punish for bad grades unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure it is due to laziness. Not your son or your daughter

There may be some underlying reasons that need to be addressed. We don't beat a child with a broken leg to walk faster.

[Anonymous]

I was a huge fan of consequences, but honestly they don't work with my DD, she can't snap out of her anxiety. I think you need to work out what, at bottom, is bothering you, and work on your own feelings.

[Anonymous]

I feel like consequences for bad grades is a strange way to go. When my kids struggled, we looked for services and support.

[Anonymous]

A lot going on in this post.

I wouldn't give consequences for bad grades I'd problem solve together with your child for bad grades. If your kid doesn't care about grades, I'd try to figure out why and have clear conversations about how that will impact his future and then that's his future. Don't save him from it. And then you have boundaries and the kid does what he's going to do. Examples of how this played out for my teen. We all can agree access to the phone on school days is a huge distraction and causing an issue, what can we do? Son agrees to some limits. Son admits he doesn't have great study skills or has been lazy in math and just copies answers to hard questions from a friend's homework and doesn't really understand the material. We give him some tools and strategies to help with this. At the end of the day though, we can set him up for success and their either going to do it or not. This is all based on having a semi-cooperative child, which means the kid has to have some positive thread of a relationship with you and trust you in some capacity. If you don't have that, you need to rebuild.

Anxiety and depression can't just be wished away. I hope your daughter has a therapist or some kind of treatment plan.

Sounds like you have contempt for your husband. Not even going to tackle that go to relationship forum, I think.

[Anonymous]

I have a very sensitive teen with anxiety and depression. He’s a generally easy, well-behaved kid but sometimes there are areas that I need to address. I ask myself how important that particular issue is and whether there is a gentle way to address it before I consider consequences. For example, his room is a mess. I don’t punish ever. I offer to help. He declines and says he will clean up but it doesn’t get done. I let him know the next time he asks for something (ride to a friends for example) I will do it once his room is clean. That’s usually the ticket. I never ever punish for grades. I ask him how he feels about his grades and let him reflect. I just remind him that I am always there to offer help studying or proofreading and that we can always get a tutor if needed. He had terrible grades freshman year but he has an IEP so I didn’t blame him in the least. As a sophomore he just earned his best report card ever. The key was adjusting courseload this year and encouraging self-advocacy. If I had punished him or shamed him, I am positive he would not have improved.