My DD who turned 13 in November seems to have suddenly changed into a very angry and aggressive child over the past 3 months. We are at our wit's end and don't know where to turn.
Bit of background - she started having joint and back pain last summer and had morning headaches and nausea. She had a full investigation from a hospital consultant (including brain and spine MRI). Bloods showed she'd had glandular fever in the past (not recently though) and that her thyroid function was 'borderline' and that she tested positive for an antibody that could eventually lead to hypothyroidism which would need treatment with thyroxine. She is due to have her thyroid levels checked again in April. She has also been diagnosed with Joint Hypermobility Syndrome and is under the care of a physio.
She seems to have had a personality transplant at an alarming rate - is either very quiet and withdrawn (obsessed with her Blackberry phone which I will go into later) or very, very angry, picking fights, throwing hurtful insults at me, answering back and has now ramped it up lately by trying to physically intimidate me when she doesn't get her own way. Then she twists it back saying I'm a horrible, disgrace of a mother and she hates me and that the family are 'all freaks that annoy her into being angry'.
She was on report at school last week for not doing any homework and messing around in class. Rather than punishments we've been trying to go down the consequence route (read lots of good advice on here about this), I've asked her if there's anything apart from feeling angry that she wants to talk about but she tells me to 'go away, not telling you anything' etc etc. She ignores me for several hours a day, completely blanking me. She sleeps a lot after school, feels freezing and hides under a duvet on the sofa.
She hides away on Facebook and her Blackberry - both things that I bitterly regret allowing her to have free reign with. She locks her phone so that I can't see anything; it was taken off her last night (following a warning) due to her aggression towards me, DD2 and DS. She threatened to trash my room, followed me round the house chanting insults at me, plunging me into darkness and then switching the light on and off, lots of 'give me my phone back NOW'. The phone has gone to work with DP (her step dad who has been in her life since she was 4). I don't want to give her it back.
She is also deliberately winding up DS, making him anxious - he has ASD of which she's well aware, but she appears to enjoy being cruel to him and knows which buttons to press. She tries to intimidate DD2, calls her names like 'smelly tramp' over and over again.
I feel sad typing this as it paints such a bad picture of her. She's gone from being a lovely person to be around to someone I'm scared of in many ways. Other times she will be nice, but it doesn't last for long.
Sorry this is long and rambling; there's so much all going on at once it's really hard to put in any sort of order or not miss bits out.
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I don't know what's happening to DD (13). Really worried.
56 replies
FlyingFig · 07/02/2013 10:37
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