Am at a loss to how to deal with 13 yo stealing

OP, from the little you have said about your marriage, it could be suggested you may be a quite passive person. If your husband is absent from you all for 9 months of the year and you are entirely dependent on him for money and family decision making, eg he doesn’t like the counselling idea, then you are in a pretty much impossible position.
He isn’t there to know what’s going on and yet you abide by his decisions and rely on his provision. Are you prevented from parenting as you would wish to at all ?
Could this be connected to why things are going wrong for DD2. ?

Your daughter doesn’t appear to have an effective authority figure in the home. She is easily able to say ‘I don’t care’ because may be to her, her own father appears not to care and she gets away with everything so easily with her mum and older sister.
That isn’t a good feeling for her at all, poor girl, and I wonder if it comes from not feeling the safety and security of firm and confident guidance / boundaries where they are needed now, - and when they were needed in earlier childhood.

Is DD1 able to assert herself strongly at all?
Does she not give her younger sister a massive row when she realises her stuff has been stolen and messed with and does she not put her own strategies in place to protect her stuff?

Is it possible that DD2 is learning to assert herself (good for her) but in the wrong way because she hasn’t had assertiveness demonstrated for her in the family. She is floundering about, trying to find her way. She needs lots of examples by way of family debate and discussion as well as by way of role-modelling of family values.

It appears that you are a single mum for most of the year yet unable to parent effectively because you are beholden to an absent husband who does can do little proper and active, face to face parenting.
Could it be you are sometimes waiting for him to make decisions or waiting for him come home and sort things out and for things to get back to normal? Meanwhile, ‘normal’ never really happens and problems are left to solve themselves. Is this any where near the situation OP and is it unsatisfactory to you in any way?
I see you have now further commented that you are happy with him and the situation so may I have the wrong end of the stick entirely. But I think it’s still worth thinking about.

I kindly suggest that you could have a real heart to heart with your two Dds where you could all speak your true feelings in turn. You first. Take the lead with confidence and be really honest. You could explain exactly how you feel and how and why you are struggling. Acknowledge the unusual marriage arrangement openly and let your girls see that although it is far from ideal for any of you in some respects, you will still protect your own self respect, as well as theirs, by not accepting any more abuse within the home, eg verbal abuse and allowing stealing. And they should both do the same. Talk about it a lot without pointing the finger all the time at DD2.
Let the girls talk and agree that you all need to stand together and support each other.

I do think you need to get to the root of what is going wrong for DD2 rather than by just treating the symptoms. I feel for you doing it largely on your own. Good luck!

teenagers literally need more sleep than all other age groups, it doesn't ruin their sleep in the week.

So you're a single parent in reality. Well, you can make the decision to call social services and ask for help. Regular visits from an experienced social worker who talks to all of you might be just what you need. If things escalate I would call 911 and have her taken in to child psychiatric ward. I don't want to scare you but this reminds me of something I have experienced as a social worker and it's important to get help asap.

@shill4nuttn

That’s more common with girls than boys though. Girls mask their behaviours. Boys don’t as much. Of course they can, it’s not universal but on the whole, boys will show it everywhere. Girls will mask at school.

All schools these days have Pastoral Care. Make an appointment with the designated person at your daughter's school. They are not just there for school related matters. Be honest and frank with them. You need to find out from the school if there are issues too. Pastoral Care can signpost you to various agencies to help. If your husband is away 9 months of the year, leaving you to cope, to be honest, what he thinks is irrelevant. He doesn't have to deal with her behaviour on a daily basis. I agree with many others posters, there is something more going on with your daughter, than just 'normal teenage' behaviour. Children don't usually act out for no reason at all. Your relationship with your daughter is fragile, and her relationship with her Dad is virtually non-existent due to him being away more than he's home. Do you spend time with your daughter's individually as well as together? You need to build your relationship back up with her and a professional would help give you the tools to do that. Not saying it's going to be an easy road, but you need to seek professional help for her.

You are wiser and more experienced than me.

My son was horrid at home and fine with all other adults, now he is fine with all adults. I was projecting.

@Ivehearditbothways ,

‘It might be hard but parenting is hard sometimes. You still need to do it.’

This!

I taught for 10 years as a second career.

90% of the time, when a child is struggling to learn or with behaviour, it is explained when you see the parents at parents’ evening. The other 10% is probably undiagnosed SEN or just some children being hard to parent.

And these types of threads are really interesting from that perspective, because so many parents think a lack of boundaries is kindness and really want to be their teen’s best friend.

The happiest and most successful pupils I have taught had bedtimes, weren’t allowed to sleep in all day, even at the weekends (as that ruins decent sleep in the week) and had strict limits on screen times. They had kind but firm parents and you could see the mutual respect when you saw them together with their parents.

(As I said above, it is not a 100% correlation, as some teens are just young adults from 13 and others are hard to manage whatever you do, but the correlation is very strong).

I disagree. Our DD's teachers tell us she is a model student. In fact, they wouldn't even know she had ADHD unless we told them. But when DD is home--it's a whole another story. She admitted to her psychologist that she keeps her feelings pent up till she can get home and unleash on her family. Her doctor explained that she does that to us because she knows we will tolerate it and will love her no matter what. We are her safe space.

Op, I'd be way more concerned about her eating. You say she isn't finishing meals, is she a healthy weight? Please, please take her phone off her, she sounds so like my sister who was trying to stave herself from this age. It just got worse, only your child has access to the Internet and a hole host of information on how to do it. I'm so glad my sister didn't have that.

I would be very worried about what she is accessing online. Ask for help from your GP and remove her phone.

My kids who are teens have had it drilled into them that their phones are a privilege and any misbehave they will be removed and replaced with a brick phone. DS 13 has had his removed several times for infringements to the rules. He wouldn't dare kick off about it. You need to be the parent and put your foot down. She may kick off to start with but you need to put those boundaries in place to protect her. The Internet is not a safe place for teenagers.

What you’re hearing will be the tip of the iceberg. So whatever she is doing is worse than what you’re hearing.

You have to parent her. You won’t take her phone because she has a tantrum. You won’t make her replace what she takes. You won’t put in any consequences. You’re failing her.

It might be hard but parenting is hard sometimes. You still need to do it.

This makes it less likely that it’s ADHD or similar- she is only lashing out at those she loves, and is able to control her behaviour around other adults.

So @applebananagraphs, have any of the range of suggestions or advice given in this thread so far felt helpful to you?

Of course you can. Stop being wet.

You shouldn't have to sneak it off her!

Honestly we take DSD phone off her when she's been in trouble in school / not done as she's asked / spent too much time on it. Yes she has a meltdown sometimes but so bloody what?! She's a child and you're the parent! Let her have her tantrums, scream and shout. Just get your other DD out or in a safe space and let her let rip. You have shown you are in charge, not her!!!

I remember having epic meltdowns when my mum used to disconnect the landline when she'd asked me to come off or when I spent too long on the internet and she would come and unplug the cable (the good old days 😂). We still had the best relationship ever and I came out of my teens knowing how to behave, that I needed to stick to rules and that there would be consequences for my actions!

Is she having problems at school? Is she like this with other adults, or just you?

How do you spend your time with your kids OP? What do a typical school day and a typical weekend look like for you and your DDs in terms of time spent together?

My advice to you is to Self refer to CAPA first response, they have a free very specialist service to help with exactly the problems we were talking about. I have been through their service and it has helped me stop the issues for my child and I after us being in absolute crisis

I can see a number of mistakes you are making in your approach, your general resistance to solutions, the way you’re talking about your husband, refusing to give you a 16-year-old a lock on her door, … The situation is likely to get a lot worse if you don’t change all of this.

These sorts of problems tend to surface when kids hit adolescence so that’s the big change that happened at 11, hormones and individuation

you are the adult here, you have the power to change this. Your daughter is still a child and is lashing out. Because she is unhappy and you seem to lack insight in what life is like from her point of view. If you simply punish her without addressing the underlying issues you will damage your relationship with her and probably escalate what’s going on

It's your DH that's the problem, being away 9 months of the year means that he's barely around to parent yet he financially controls you from afar and blocks any steps you could take to help your daughter like disapproving of counselling.

I think you have a very big DH problem and your DD2s misbehaviour is the consequence. Seriously OP if taking her phone off her makes her violent and she's stealing she desperately needs counselling and intervention. Xx

Take care

"Finance is the problem here as I am a stay at home mum and I don't want to make dh mad as he provides for us"

Your DH is the problem I would start with. Your DD needs help, nothing in this world would stop me accessing any help I thought might benefit my daughter no matter how angry it might make her dad.

Not normal behaviour at all. I would see the GP for a referral to CAHMS.

Of course you can make her, just take it when she is sleeping or not in the room. Get her a non smart phone if you want her to have a phone for security.

Oh. And to add. I’m really glad we didn’t have the phones then. I agree that that they are massively problematic, I believe the parents who tell me/I read who say that they need to be dealt with and that it is really distressing to sort out.

There are elements of me in your description when I was around that age. I was probably less confrontational but I did a lot of stealing. Mostly shoplifting but sometimes other things. It’s often said that stealing is for the thrill of it, or because of selfishness or entitlement and while that may be true in some cases it wasn’t for me.

I’m several decades beyond that now and have done a lot of reflection and the bottom line is that I was unhappy. I would steal little trinkets and they would make me feel happy when I handled them and looked at them.

There was no single thing that caused my unhappiness. Looking back I can see clearly what was wrong with the situation and I feel sorry for that girl. Fixing it would’ve meant my parents facing up to things that they really wouldn’t want to face and accept responsibility for. But I resolved it myself by moving out to a city 2 hours away at age 16 - not something available to 16 yr olds these days, I know.

Do you not think the kid is already doing a great job of that? Take the phone off her 100%.