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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t get it. You each spoke to her calmly, but issued the ultimatum, “eat now or not at all”? That doesn’t sound like deescalation. Next time, tell her to take the time that she needs to calm down and that there will be a plate waiting for her when she’s ready. Just fix her a plate and stick it in the fridge. You can still go ahead and clean up the kitchen. Kids need food; don’t withhold it as a punishment.[/quote]

No.  She was upset and in her room. We said it’s time for dinner. She said she wasn’t eating. Over the course of 30 minutes, each of us went to her room to talk to her, and said we knew she was upset but this is time for dinner if she wants to eat. She came to the table once and we said the same thing - this is dinner if you want to eat. It wasn’t an ultimatum or a punishment - it was dinner time.

I offered her bread and butter when she finally wanted to eat after last chance and she refused that because she wanted “dinner.”

[b]For some background, she has a very long history of waiting until after last chance to say she wanted to do something. We gave in a lot when she was younger but for the past several years we’ve been very firm about last chance. So there’s definitely a bit of her wanting to do things exactly when she wants to do them. It wasn’t that she calmed down and then wanted to eat - more like she waited out the clock and then wanted to eat. [/b]

I’m trying to think through how it would have worked to say “you can eat whenever you’re ready” instead of “you can eat when you’re ready within this time period.”  Would you let her eat whenever? Even at bedtime? I feel like our kids would exploit that. [/quote]

You did nothing wrong, and posters criticizing you for not giving her food when she asked are not understanding the bigger picture here.

Her behavior might be concerning. A friend of mine has a very oppositional child (plus others who are not), and as a tween she was diagnosed with ADHD. She is also suspected to something else, but no one is quite sure what: she can be very rigid and apt to interpret everything as an offense, rewrite history, fight back at every turn, fly into rages and then demand stuff. Her family is exhausted by her demands and tendency to turn the slightest interaction into a fight. At the same time, when in a good mood, she can be very social and absolutely charming. It's hard to live with someone like this.

There really isn't a win-win solution, OP. At best, it's always win-lose, and sometimes, if you don't play your cards perfectly (and you're only human and sometimes make mistakes), it's lose-lose.

You might want to get her a neuropsychological assessment at a psychologist's.

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