Hey @bradyblend, welcome to the forum. I love your username - I grew up watching the Brady Bunch, so knew immediately your family situation haha.
This sounds like it might be more common than we think! My daughter was the same when she was attending school. She had a 5 minute walk to the train station, catch the train to the next station, then a 5 minute walk to school, but demanded I drive her. She had problems with school attendance and I was always worried she wouldn't go if I didn't drive her, so parented out of fear and caved right in a lot of the time. When I didn't she'd often come home annoyed with me and carrying on.
It was always 'I'm running late!!!', 'my bag's too heavy' (she had a locker but to put her books in it after school meant she had to catch the later train that she didn't like...), 'it's hot', 'it's cold', 'it's raining', 'I'm tired' to name a few.
It's awesome that you've sought family counselling and she sounds great. It is really hard, I agree, but it does get easier over time as our kids learn that the boundaries are strong. You sound really tuned in, and I was going to say that my daughter pushes them every now and then still, and I think it is just to test them, as you said. They do arc up at first but they actually feel more secure knowing they can't manipulate the boundaries. And when homebase is loving as I can tell your is, they settle down. I'm so glad you had some bonding time walking the dogs. Those times are always special when things are rough so much of the time.
With the back chat and the guilt trips, it's so hard not to let them affect you. It's really upsetting and frustrating hearing their words that feel so unfair and mean. I can find myself getting into defending myself and trying to reason with my daughter which never ends the way I want it to - i.e her calming down, seeing the error in what she's saying, and just doing what she has to do! I've stooped to the 'when I was a kid' statements as well!! It never worked when I was a teen, so I don't know why I thought it'd work on my daughter lol.
The other night my daughter was having a meltdown, and my voice was low and firm, and I told her everything she did was a choice she made. And she had a choice now - she could choose to use her techniques and stop swearing, shouting, abusing me and throwing things, or choose the consequence (we have a pre-set consequence). She started yelling, I told her 'uh-uh, your choices are you stop yelling, swearing and abusing and throwing or the consequence. I went into my room with her shouting abuse but she chose to settle immediately after that. It really hit me how well it works to give clear choices - even if that is for your daughter the choice to get a locker, or not get a locker and choose to carry her books making her travel more uncomfortable. Or the choice to do jobs or whatever to earn lifts, or not do jobs therefore get no lifts. It's kinda hard for them to argue back when they're reminded of the given choices, therefore their actively chosen action.
I really like @Beingme2017's reply, particularly her sentence about there being different currency for your son and daughter. They're individuals so that makes total sense to me. I guess the trick is finding each one's currency. Being a mum of just one, I haven't had the sibling issues. It was reassuring reading in another thread that they do come out the other end okay, so I'm hanging on to that!
