Reply to Rude and recalcitrant 14 year old

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[quote=Anonymous]OP here and thanks for the feedback.  I'm hopeful the evaluations will help all of us navigate this better by helping us understand what the issues are.

In the meantime, I feel at a loss on how to handle things.  On days off, she refuses to even come out of her room until after noon.  I don't know what she's doing in there, and she ignores me when I tell her to come down to eat breakfast.  I'd let her do whatever but the eating thing is pretty important.  She has not been able to eat breakfast for months now, because she "doesn't have time". Sometimes she eats the lunches I pack for her, but often there is something she fixates on that is wrong with the food, and she will refuse to eat it because it's not to her exact preferences.  Meanwhile she keeps falling off her growth curve and the pediatrician is harassing us to intervene and put her through further testing.

She calls me and DH an f-ing idiot pretty much on a daily basis.  For what?  For things like turning off the wi-fi after 9pm, or taking her to a therapist, taking her to doctor's appointments, or getting her evaluated.

Nothing seems to work with her - and she sees our reccent attempts to figure out what's going on with her as an all-out attack on her instead of us trying to figure out what's going on and trying to help her.

I really want to focus on the positive, build connection, to do fun things together, but at this point, it's like going up against a brick wall. Yes, there are definitely moments when she puts her guard down and we can be "normal".  But then, usually without any trigger, she decides to go on the offensive and pick fights with us about anything and everything and hyperfixate on every "wrong" we've ever done to her (lie, ike taking her to a therapist).

I do a pretty darn good job of being very patient through all of these barrages.  I listen, I try to be empathetic, and I answer all of her questions as honestly as I can.  Because it's better than her shutting down and not talking to us.  But it's never enough.  She will go on for several hours.  And when I finally hit a point when I say "I'm sorry, but we've been having the same conversation for the past 2 and a half hours, and I just keep repeating myself, and I'm tired", she will keep at me until I am very firm with her about the fact that I'm done talking to her.  Then she will go find DH and go and harass him.[/quote]

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