How to deal with teenage a-holery?

[Anonymous]

Your middle child and you have never really liked her as much as the others, right?

Take a beat and start paying some more attention to her. Then work with a therapist if you must.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I opened this thread and at first thought I was going to be able to commiserate. I have one kid who can be very tricky and spirals if given negative consequences. It makes her double, triple down. However she is very successful socially etc. And can be reasonable.

With her this whole authoritarian approach many on this site recommend just really does not work. She has to feel connected to us in order to de-escalate. My best approach is to walk away and then re-engage in a concerned way. What is going on. Why are you talking to us like this. Etc. People on DCUM would mock this approach and also what many suggest doesn’t work with some kids. I have another kid who responds very standard. Give the consequence, he stops. The end. Point is trust your own instincts and don’t let yourself be judged.

What you are describing seems way beyond this but I do want to strongly offer that I think a kid like this needs help not punishment. Good luck OP.

You are actually 100% describing the approach that parent therapists would recommend as one crucial set of skills. There are other skills as well, including the use do consequences, but what you describe and intuited is what you would be taught. Most people who post here about parenting have no understanding of how to parent anything but the most compliant (or scared) children.

[Anonymous]

Our DD really struggled in middle school, and it got pretty bad, though maybe not quite as bad as your situation. The thing that ultimately worked was time.

IMHO, you need a boundary beyond which there are meds and psychiatric treatment, but it's also okay (and I know many on here will disagree) to allow that teenagers are very moody and what can be a diagnosis for an adult can be within normal for a teenager. (That said, I think you're already at/close to that boundary.)

How we coped: gave up on consequences, which were impossible to enforce and backfired every time (meanwhile, they work great with DS, so it's not us failing at consequences). Left VERY FEW hills to die on, and let a lot of other things go. Allowed her to be who she was, didn't butt in or micromanage. She did stick with her sport, though skipped a lot of practices (luckily she was good at it and the coach was understanding, but she almost did get kicked off the team). I even let her skip school and just told them she was sick (there were no consequences from the school). She mostly didn't antagonize her sibling, so that helped. She was mean to us but we just ignored her. She was struggling with eating, so we let her eat whatever she wanted (though I was secretly tracking). She slowly regained the weight she'd lost and as her brain matured, she started doing much better, occasionally she is still moody, but it's not as dire and she's become nicer to everyone around her.

OP, I'm so sorry you are dealing with it, it's scary, and hard to wade through all the misinformation/misguided advice. I'm honestly not sure what we would have done if things got worse.

One thing I'll say is, don't bring up school or praise her for good grades, let it be her thing, not something she is doing for you, so that she doesn't decide to stop studying.

For us, bribing worked a little bit, but honestly best thing was giving her agency and not butting in, which was very important to her.

[Anonymous]

Try to reword "refusing" as "stopping" in your mind.
Refusing makes it a battle.
Stopping, it's her. You are not in a battle. You observe and love.

[Anonymous]

This sounds like mental illness in some way.

[Anonymous]

OP, I saw some aspects of my daughter in your post. She didn't go as far as saying some of the awful things your daughter is saying, but she was extremely difficult. Consequences just set her off more and our whole family felt hostage to her behavior. She's in her 20s now and I will say it's gotten much better. Part of it is space. Her not living at home anymore is a big relief. She won't talk about it but I also discovered she is on a medication that is used to treat bipolar disorder. I often wondered if she had bipolar because she would be enraged one minute and then apologizing and in tears the next. I never knew what would set her off. She was/is in therapy for years.

[Anonymous]

PP above, I meant to add that some of the people saying you're just not disciplining her have no idea what it's like to live with someone like things. You have to think of it as a mental health issue and not a behavioral issue.

[Anonymous]

This is op.

I can’t tell you how helpful some of your posts have been. As another PP said, there is some BS advice to be waded through, but I know at this point as to who has been down this road and know what it’s like. And just also wanted to acknowledge the patience and wisdom you have to navigate this.

I did want to give a quick update. We’ve had some healthcare follow ups in the past week. Some unrelated, and others related to her lack of growth. It’s been incredibly trying, but also really revealing.

Her anxiety levels were through the roof. It was helpful for them to actually physically measure her blood pressure and heart rate at the visits because it was clear evidence she was under stress and in complete fight or flight mode.

I won’t go into specifics but I’ll just say she did try to escalate to threats of violence against us. And when I said when she says things like that, it tells me how much she’s hurting inside and how it’s clearly a cry for help. I know she didn’t like that, because she is unable to acknowledge any feelings other than anger, or vulnerability.

Then she started saying she was going to kill herself for the first time. We did not escalate, we stayed calm. We talked about how we knew this was hard for her, but her dealing with it in this way was leading her down a path that she was terrified of- losing freedom autonomy, and getting herself sick.

The threats to kill herself came from the result of a health diagnosis, unrelated to every thing else, and also wouldn’t have much impact on her life other than needing to follow up every year or so with a specialist. She has been telling us her whole life that “there is nothing wrong with her” and in her mind, we were basically torturing her by subjecting her to doctor visits. So receiving this diagnosis was in a way, a huge reckoning for her, and a loss of the idea that she was perfect and invincible. It revealed to us how severe her anxiety was around doctors and authority figures.

The anxiety was so intense she was feeling the urge to avoid and take flight in the extreme. It was a few days of exposure therapy basically, facing her deepest fears.

It led to a lot of good discussions about what she was feeling and how it was necessary for her to learn how to face these feelings in a healthy way.


So I think she’s in the grieving process of losing this very rigid idea of how she viewed herself, and also this idea she had in her mind ( a fantasy) that she could eventually (at age 18) escape to a reality where she would never have to see a doctor, authority figures, or any rules or demands placed upon her. Which is kind of a huge step.

I also think she’s been trying to adopt this identity of herself as this angry, violent, hateful person. And I think it’s better to just not give aspects of that too much attention. It’s her armor as she feels like the world is assaulting her.

And until she learns the tools to cope with the stresses she feels from the everyday demands the world and her life puts upon her, it’s the only thing she feels like is protecting her.

We’ve also been reaching out to our other kids to make sure they’re ok and acknowledging that hearing all that stuff come out of her mouth can be very distressing and upsetting as a sibling.

Anyway, it’s Christmas and this is a lot but I did want to share in hopes it helps anyone else.

[Anonymous]

OP, thank you for the update. I’m wishing you and your whole family a bit of peace today. Merry Christmas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is op.

I can’t tell you how helpful some of your posts have been. As another PP said, there is some BS advice to be waded through, but I know at this point as to who has been down this road and know what it’s like. And just also wanted to acknowledge the patience and wisdom you have to navigate this.

I did want to give a quick update. We’ve had some healthcare follow ups in the past week. Some unrelated, and others related to her lack of growth. It’s been incredibly trying, but also really revealing.

Her anxiety levels were through the roof. It was helpful for them to actually physically measure her blood pressure and heart rate at the visits because it was clear evidence she was under stress and in complete fight or flight mode.

I won’t go into specifics but I’ll just say she did try to escalate to threats of violence against us. And when I said when she says things like that, it tells me how much she’s hurting inside and how it’s clearly a cry for help. I know she didn’t like that, because she is unable to acknowledge any feelings other than anger, or vulnerability.

Then she started saying she was going to kill herself for the first time. We did not escalate, we stayed calm. We talked about how we knew this was hard for her, but her dealing with it in this way was leading her down a path that she was terrified of- losing freedom autonomy, and getting herself sick.

The threats to kill herself came from the result of a health diagnosis, unrelated to every thing else, and also wouldn’t have much impact on her life other than needing to follow up every year or so with a specialist. She has been telling us her whole life that “there is nothing wrong with her” and in her mind, we were basically torturing her by subjecting her to doctor visits. So receiving this diagnosis was in a way, a huge reckoning for her, and a loss of the idea that she was perfect and invincible. It revealed to us how severe her anxiety was around doctors and authority figures.

The anxiety was so intense she was feeling the urge to avoid and take flight in the extreme. It was a few days of exposure therapy basically, facing her deepest fears.

It led to a lot of good discussions about what she was feeling and how it was necessary for her to learn how to face these feelings in a healthy way.


So I think she’s in the grieving process of losing this very rigid idea of how she viewed herself, and also this idea she had in her mind ( a fantasy) that she could eventually (at age 18) escape to a reality where she would never have to see a doctor, authority figures, or any rules or demands placed upon her. Which is kind of a huge step.

I also think she’s been trying to adopt this identity of herself as this angry, violent, hateful person. And I think it’s better to just not give aspects of that too much attention. It’s her armor as she feels like the world is assaulting her.

And until she learns the tools to cope with the stresses she feels from the everyday demands the world and her life puts upon her, it’s the only thing she feels like is protecting her.

We’ve also been reaching out to our other kids to make sure they’re ok and acknowledging that hearing all that stuff come out of her mouth can be very distressing and upsetting as a sibling.

Anyway, it’s Christmas and this is a lot but I did want to share in hopes it helps anyone else.

Who did you take her to for a therapist?

[Anonymous]

Psych evaluation about three years ago