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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is OP. Had a really bizarre experience today with DD. After speaking with her school counselor, we decided to stick to a hard homework time limit for DD. I communicated this to DD, and as expected, she reacted in anger.  Threatened to kill me, stab me with a knife, pulled out her pocket knife, told me I was useless, told me I was telling everyone lies about her, said I was treating her as if she had a disability, etc, basically a tantrum.  She doesn't mean any of it - it's the equivalent to a toddler screaming.  [b]In moments of anger, she just tries to think of the most shocking and most inappropriate thing she could do. [/b]But I did make it crystal clear that I'd be taking away her laptop at a specific time and would cut her off from homework after the allotted time.  And then whatever she didn't finish, we'd just write to the teacher and let them know.  The counselor said they'd talk to the teachers and make sure it didn't count against her when she didn't finish.

Miraculously...she finished her homework within that time limit. This was after consistently spending 3-5hrs every day on homework, - she finished in 1.5hrs. The crazy part?  Afterwards, over dinner, she literally became a different person.  I mean, who she was before at times. She was talking, about her interests, lively engaging, and having an actual conversation with us.  This was after being a brooding, mumbling, depressed and sick looking kid for at least 2 months. And literally just 30 minutes after telling me, "Mom, does it bother you that I will never want to talk to you again?  That I'd rather talk to my journal than ever talk to you?"  and I just responded, "I'm glad you have an outlet"

I know it's just one night.  And I know about adolescent mood swings. But I literally hadn't seen this girl in forever.  I don't want to jinx it or count my chickens before they hatch.  But it was so nice, and so surprising.   It felt like we had finally freed her from this terrible nightmare loop she was stuck in and she just needed us to pull her out of it.

This was a really tough month.  She had spent days refusing to even to talk to us.  But that was nice. [/quote]
My dd does this too, so I understand, but your dd pulled an actual knife on you. I hope you confiscated the pocket knife. Making empty threats is one thing, but brandishing a weapon is a bridge too far. She doesn’t carry it to school, does she?[/quote]

It really wasn’t like that. It was like a Swiss Army knife. The fact that it was a bridge too far was exactly why she did it. She was trying to get a reaction out of me. [/quote]

NP. You are living this situation, and are therefore too close to it to see how dysfunctional and not normal it is. The knife, and ALL knives in your home (yes the kitchen ones too) need to be locked up. Now. I have a friend who has a combination lock on her knife cabinet (they can't go in the drawers because they have to be able to be locked). When they need a knife they open the combination lock, get the knife and close the lock, use the knife, wash the knife, then re-open the combination lock to put the knife away and then lock it again. Yes its inconvenient and frustrating, and it is necessary for them to keep their home safe. You need to do that too until your daughter is stable.

You also need to find a therapist for yourself, and a family therapist that will work with all of you. Individual therapy did not work for my son who went through a violent period - because there was no accountability for trying the coping strategies they talked about. In family therapy there was an accountability mechanism, which was absolutely critical to seeing an improvement in his behavior, and also our relationships. She also probably needs medication - the next time she flies off the handle like that you may need to hospitalize her to get appropriate treatment. We had to, and it was hard and heartbreaking and by far the worst parenting decision I've ever had to make. And...it was the only way to be taken seriously in a broken system that thinks if you're managing at home that everything must be fine or close to it.[/quote]

+1000000 
Scissors, razor blades, all sorts of weapons. Appeasement is not your solution. 
 [/quote]

Pulling a knife on a parent?  How can this be explained away?    [/quote]
A pp said that, living this every day, OP is too close to the situation to see how dysfunctional it is. That pp was spot on.[/quote]

As you all are outside of the situation, I get your reaction. It's also why I would never share some of my daughter's struggles with friends or family, because I know they will judge and not understand. I have zero concern that she will actually hurt anyone, I know that she would not.  To hide all knives, scissors, or sharp objects in the house is really overkill.

And I might feel the same and wanting to judge if I never had a child who has struggled with expressing very strong negative feelings and having violent and aggressive thoughts since she was 3, seemingly out of nowhere.

But I do feel compelled to ask you all to broaden your understanding a bit. There's nothing close to these behaviors outside of the home because she is very much aware that it's not ok.  I feel like she is often continually testing me, to expose me to her deepest and darkest thoughts.  Because she herself feels some level of shame about having these thoughts (since she was 3) and sometimes I feel like she wants to know if she's still ok, whether she's worthy of being loved when she has these thoughts.  In fact, in moments of calm, she has asked us many times.

All that said, I'd be open to working with a professional to address those behavioral issues that she only exhibits at home.

[/quote]
I’m the first poster who mentioned the knife and that it needs to be confiscated. I said my dd also lashes out and thinks of the worst, most shocking things to say when she’s upset, even though she doesn’t really mean them. I get that your dd wasn’t going to actually stab you the other night. I am not judging you; we’re all struggling and trying to do our best, while falling short of perfection.

My own dd is not violent at all and has no weapons. Every teacher has said she’s very well behaved and a rule follower. However, she has anxiety, ADHD, and HFA. When she was in 8th grade, one day her teacher stepped out of the room. Two boys who had noticed my dd was high strung started talking to her. They said extremely sexually explicit things and she became very uncomfortable. They liked getting a rise out of her, so they escalated the situation. They started telling other kids in the classroom which sex acts my dd was into. She panicked, thinking other kids would believe these lies and her reputation would be destroyed, so she decided to talk tough. She told the boys, “If you don’t knock it off, I’m going to turn this into a crime scene.” Shortly after that, the teacher walked back in and the boys told her dd had threatened them. Per the school district’s protocol, the Threat Assessment Team had to meet and review the case. The only reason my dd didn’t get in trouble was because another girl in the class came forward to explain the whole story, my dd had no weapons and no plan so her threat wasn’t deemed credible, and dd was extremely remorseful and apologetic.

I’m sharing this story because you simply cannot let your dd continue to carry a weapon after she’s threatened someone with it. Period. It doesn’t matter that she wasn’t actually going to stab you. Losing your pocket knife because you threatened someone with it is a natural consequence. Your dd needs limits, just like all children. You have to draw the line somewhere, and THIS IS IT. Think about it from your dd’s perspective: I can even threaten my mom with a knife and she STILL acts like everything is normal! What do I have to do to get her to understand how miserable I am???

Under the right circumstances, she could show that knife to someone else if she’s distraught enough and face very harsh consequences.[/quote]
Thanks for sharing your story and I’ll give it some thought. And I will have at minimum have another follow up conversation with her about it, and I will think about taking it away.

I kind of think your daughter’s response was completely appropriate given the situation. But we also have many of these conversations about what the consequences of our dd’s words and behaviors would be, because we don’t make up the school rules.

We talk about the kindergartener who received a suspension and permanent record and eventually had to move out of the school district because she made a reference to her toy bubble guns and invited a girl over for a playdate to “shoot each other” with the bubble guns.

We talk about how any insinuation of violence in school will result in very serious consequences for her. She obviously knows that bringing the knife to school would result in an automatic suspension. It was kind of a big deal and a big leap of trust for DH to even give her that knife to have the judgment and responsibility to use it appropriately.

In other words, the exact reason she even did that was because she knew how seriously I took such a thing.

But in some respects, I feel like taking it away would be purely symbolic. It’s not like THAT would somehow prevent her from being a danger to herself or others. It would reinforce some view of herself that she is someone who would actually do such a thing, rather than in a compassionate way and understanding that that was something she said to try to distress me so that I would feel a fraction of the terrible feelings she was experiencing.

She’s also not dumb- taking away the knife doesn’t make it any less dangerous. There’s a thousand things in the house that are more dangerous than that little knife.

She is in reality so afraid of unknowingly breaking the rules of society, I think that’s more problematic. It’s a constant state of anxiety, feeling like that if she were to be herself, she would get in trouble. It prevents her from even talking to anyone in class because she’s afraid of getting in trouble.
[/quote]

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