@Hales123 Hi there, I gather from your holiday destinations you are in the USA and I’m not sure if you realise this is an Australian forum. It makes nomdifference at all and sadly your experience of your teen echoes mine with our son, who is now 16.
okay, I can’t promise that any of my thoughts will help, let alone solve, your issues, but just maybe something will help.
First of all, everyone has the right to feel safe in their own home. Threatening behaviour, whether verbal or physical is not on. DO NOT tolerate it and make that very plain to your daughter. Every time she speaks to you rudely, ask her firmly to repeat what she said without the abusive, or bad tone, whatever she is using. Only then do you acknowledge her with a firm response.
Use the phrase, “ When you speak to me/ do xyz, I feel.....”. I found this worked on our son, albeit for a time until I had to kick him out for drug induced physical violence and damage to our home. We also used a talking stick technique in family discussions, whoever was holding the stick could speak, others listened. We managed a few good discussions this way and got a few changes in behaviour.
Stop enabling all the behaviours that are passive-aggressive directed at you. Sure, pick up her clothes off the stairs, but just toss them in her room. DO NOT do her laundry, clean her room. Laundry is a life skill, as is housework, and she is well past the age where she can do this herself! I would spen an entire day telling my son the washing machine was fre and he could use it before I put the dog’s blankets through. As part of his control power play games he would ignore me until night time and then go do his washing. I stopped all reminders and left him to it. If his room got so bad he had bugs in there, well, so be it. I know he knows how to vacuum, wash floors, clean bathrooms and use a washing machine. At 15 I was not going to be his slave. I would also sometimes deliberately run out of milk, he drank tons of the stuff, so he would have to walk to the shop and buy it if he wanted it. I stopped buying all his easy meals, if he wants to eat, he could make a meal, fry an egg etc. he would look at the meals I prepared and say he wasn’t going to eat that sh**, so he live on cereal! No way was I going to pander to such rudeness. I’m a good cook and he knows it, so he could go hungry! Likewise to meal times, if he didn’t come to the table, his meal would go in the fridge, and if he chose to eat it later, fine, if it was still there a day later, it was gone!
We have had a lot of nasty physical damage to our home go on, so quite extreme, and I hope you don’t go through the same. We offed our son access to counsellor and for a while he attended but I think he was just ticking boxes so I didn’t kick him out. He never engaged with the counselling properly. My husband has told our son for months now that we will support him engaging in counselling financially, but if he doesn’t make the effort to engage then we will not support it. So, make an offer, but tell her she needs to find someone herself she can work with. It’s a case of leading the horse to water ... each time we organised a counsellor, son refused to participate. They have to take the first step.
stop inviting her or taking her to family outings. I remember clearly the look on our son’s face when he realised husband and I were off to movies, dinners, leading a life not revolving around him. He was surprised and almost a bit miffed I feel. But you cannot put your life permanently on hold. I too was a stay at home mum for 15 years, and I loved every moment, and feel very privileged that I could be that. However, there comes a time where our kids need to know what we like to do, what we enjoy, and see us living a life beyond them too. Preparing kids to leave us is also part of our role as parents. So, try now, to,step back a bit, and let her step up.
it is not easy to,do, but it is crucial to your sanity, believe me. So, stick to your guns, expect a load of blowback, but try to show her that the behaviour is water off a duck’s back. I think she needs to seek help to deal with her abortion feelings. That’s a tough one. Just keep your voice firm, reasonable, stick to your expectations of how your home and family members are to be treated, make that very very clear, and use “ I feel...” as much as you need.
i wish you all the best. It seems we are in the era of entitlement and by golly it’s tough.
