Reply to How to deal with teenage a-holery?

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[quote=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.[/quote]

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