Naughty 13 year old girl

[Evelyn]

I’ve been battling dealing with my 13 year old out of control daughter for almost 12 months. We live in a small country town, so waited quite some time to get professional help. At the moment, I’m struggling to get to to go to school. She says she hates school & has no friends. I’ve offered her to change schools, but she doesn’t want to. I’m at the point where I’m sick of going up to the school for meetings & them ringing/txting me, because she just doesn’t want to be there. I’m a single mum with a 6 year old also. I do shift work & on the days I’m home, I could spend till lunch time, trying to get her to go to school. She just wants to stay home & do nothing. She is on medication for anxiety & depression.

[TOM-RO]

Hi @Evelyn ,

That sounds like it's a really mentally exhausting, and time-intensive for you to navigate, especially as a single-parent. I can recognise it's really difficult to constantly be on the beck-and-call of what's going on with your daughter. Do you have any support from family or friends to help you manage? I can't imagine that it's an easy task for you, especially with having a 6-year-old as well. It can be hard to find strategies on convincing your daughter to go to school; I can imagine you've tried all the ways you can think of. One resource I can suggest is getting in touch with Parentline if you're after professional counselling in the meantime. I know I haven't been of much help, but I just wanted to pop in and validate how difficult it sounds like it is. I assume that if they're being medicated, that they themselves are linked in with at least a GP or psychiatrist?

Hope you're managing.