To not let DD celebrate her birthday this year?

I’d go out with her, just you two, for dinner and have a grown up discussion about expectations. Remind her how much she’s loved & what you expect from her. Remind her of all the good things she does and what you appreciate about her. Tell her the last thing you want to do is to cancel her plans but she’s leaving you no option. If you’re out she won’t storm off or act up. Hopefully you can reset boundaries. It’s hard to be loving when we’re feeling annoyed but it works wonders when it’s balanced with firm boundaries & expectations.

Choose a restaurant she loves and tell her it’s a date for a very important discussion. If that fails get her adopted! 😉

This

so no party or shipping trip

bur obv presents and maybe meal with family

talking back, lying, not pulling her weight at home, and even skipping school once

These should be tackled as and when they happen, with focus on why she has behaved that way with some flex given for a bad day/hormone driven grumpiness.

I do not think cancelling her birthday trip with her friends makes sense. It seems to be retribution, something designed to hurt her psychologically. It isn’t a consequence. The have a cake at home with mum and dad sounds like twisting the knife because you may expect her to act jolly and be grateful.

You have mentioned her ‘attitude’ a few times and I have never agreed with dictating my children hide their feelings or discomfort. No human being can have a great attitude all the time. Demanding a good attitude is emotion and thought policing. It’s a shut up, you can’t be a moody teen because I don’t want to put in the effort to emotionally support you through adolescence.

I'm not a violent person and I was a reasonable teenage, but I think if my parents had punished me and decided just to have a cake on my birthday, I'd have shoved it in the bin and my behaviour would probably have got worse.

I'm not excusing the behaviour, but you can't just allow these things to happen and then mete out a humiliating punishment!

Every dog should get one chance as the old saying used to go

Give her a present, but no party.

DH is mid 40s and one year he didn't get anything (his brother did something but he got the blame) and hes never got over it.

Definitely do not back down.
Her birthday is being celebrated but you have no intention in doing huge celebrations when things have been so unpleasant.
She needs to learn about consequences.
So let her give you the silent treatment.
If she gets rude over it, you can just say we needn't celebrate at all if that is what you would prefer.
Awful behaviour should not be rewarded.
She will behave better if its in her own self interest to.

Having something to aim for is a great idea.
She needs to know that much as you love her, you will not allow her and her poor behaviour to dominate the house.

So often parents allow one child to dictate things, it never ends well.

I agree with this, over and above all the “earning stuff back” stuff which is a bit wet.

This year’s punishment has been decided and should stand for this year - she’ll have other chances in future for bigger celebrations, and to make better behaviour choices.

In a nutshell.

Big punishments like this just don't work on 15 year olds, a sulky teen won't be made into a bright, happy, helpful teen by taking away everything she's looking forward to, it'll just make her more resentful and less inclined to do anything for you. It's certainly not going to make her want to talk to you more and I expect the last thing she'll want now is a family meal!

This isn't a happy kid, she's struggling in some way to be acting out like this, maybe peer pressure, maybe struggling at school. You can't keep escalating the punishments in an attempt to punish this out of her - have you not noticed that already?

How is she having to pull her own weight at home? It should be things relevant to her - making her own breakfast/lunch, washing and drying her own clothes, washing her dishes/putting them in the dishwasher, tidying her own room (or not, her choice). Treat her like a young adult where she can make some choices herself and be more responsible for herself. It works much better than trying to make her hoover the house or whatever because if she doesn't do it then she's the one with no clean clothes/a messy room/nothing to eat etc.

If she talks back then listen to what she says - why do you call it 'talking back'? If you reply to something she says then is that 'talking back'? You're treating her like a child and not listening to her. If she is rude then just calmly point out 'you're being rude'. You need to recognise she's growing up.

Skipping school is not acceptable at all - what does she want to do after school? It sounds like she might need some direction and help with what she might do after school and how important school is in keeping your options open. Does she want to go to uni? College? What are her interests? Help her make school relevant.

Lying is part and parcel of being a teen - didn't you ever lie to your parents? I was well behaved but still spent my whole teen years lying to my mum. Make it clear you're disappointed and the concerns you have about what she's lying about, put in some rules for the future and move on.

I agree. She’s behaving like a teenager because guess what? She is one. It’s way too harsh a punishment for minor misdemeanours.

Of course the child won’t be happy. But consequences are something that come along side of bad behaviour.

She will still get a birthday and celebrations just not the one she wanted.

Theres a middle ground between giving the child everything she wants still for her birthday and locking her in a cupboard and pretending the birthday isn’t happening.

If I had done this, I'd sit down with her and say, ' I hate having to keep increasing sanctions and punishments and I'm very upset that it has got to such an extreme that I've had to cancel your party. None of us wants this. Can you help me understand why you would risk missing out on such lovely treats? Do you think people should give money and treats and organise parties for someone sho lies and is rude to them and refuses to help when asked?'

Make sure she answers the question.
Then say if she is prepared to change, you'd be delighted to. If she helps without complaint, is polite, truthful and turns up to school, then the plans can be reinstated.

Can you say you'll do something at the beginning of the summer holiday if she gets her act together between now and then?

I've got a similar age teen, a year older, and I would never withdraw a birthday as punishment, but we don't do punishments at all, we do natural consequences.

All behaviour is communication, and the teen years are pretty normal for answering back etc. In fact the only thing you listed that I consider to be any kind of "crime" is skipping school, and again I would rather get to the bottom of why than leap to punishment.

You absolutely can back down, and in fact it shows your DD how to about you were wrong about something which is an important skill. Just tell her you acted in anger, that you think you were wrong, that her party is back on but you also need to discuss her recent behaviour and how it's affecting the family.

Try to come at it as being a family team, not you and DH versus her, because that will just push her away and as she gets older that might end up permanent. Place your relationship with her at the centre of discussions and decisions and let her know how much you love her, and find out what's going on. You may have forgotten but the teen years are hard for them and their brain development is back similar to how it was when they were a toddler, so best that in mind when interacting with her.

I can see why you might just not want to do it. But I don’t think it’s likely to have much impact on your DD’s behaviour. Probably more likely to make her resentful and feed into any story she’s building in her head that she’s hard done by.

I think letting her earn back the party isn’t a bad idea. but at the end of the day you don’t want her good behaviour to be transactional. You need to spend more time building up your relationship, talking with her and doing things together.

I suspect this will massively backfire.

My parents did something similar at a similar age. I didn't forgive them for well over a decade.

(My response to this kind of parenting was to say nothing at the time, but I left home at 18, didn't have much to do with my parents and then moved overseas as soon as I finished my degree and didn't come back till I was in my 30s.)

We then managed to get on very well - because the dynamics were different.

I think this is a really hard situation and you're doing the best you can 💕
Don't scrimp on her presents too much i.e. if you usually spend £100, don't drop down to like £20. But the idea of a small celebration with you all is more than fair give her behaviour.

Bloody bravo.
All this simpering, 'picking battles', and normalising shitty behaviour is big part of why schools have so much trouble with behaviour.

Probably, but that doesn’t mean she should get away with this behaviour!

Was she aware that this was the punishment if the behaviour continued BEFORE you cancelled her party and shopping trip?

If so, YANBU as she knew the consequences and did it anyway!

If not, YABU because just shouting at her about her behaviour and then picking a suitable punishment out of thin air after she doesn’t improve, especially one like cancelling her birthday, is arbitrary and a bit harsh.

From op “back chatting, lying and once skipping school”. No, I do not think those are acceptable behaviours and, far more importantly, they will not work for her as an adult. If she does those things now with no repercussions? She will keep doing them because she won’t learn that they don’t get her what she wants. And how will those behaviours come across when she’s at work? Or university?
As an adult, the things she is doing now will absolutely make her life far, far harder than it needs to be.
I am an adult, If I had been talking back to my mother, lying and skipping school as a child? I would absolutely realise that I WAS that bad.

This. You are soon to discover what parenting by consent means. And you’re not doing yourselves any favours by not admitting you made an error of judgment. Because your dd is learning from you not to back down even when doubting yourselves for fear of losing face. This is not a lesson you want her to learn into adulthood.

Admitting your errors is a very adult stance to take and takes skill to learn. I have of course made errors in the past and taken back punishments as well as having allowed dd to earn things back, where I think she will benefit from the lesson.

On occasion of course I have followed through if I thought it was of benefit to dd. Not to teach her a lesson but because it’s important for her to understand that there are boundaries and codes of behaviour and that as a future adult, it is my responsibility to teach her how to be someone, who can take responsibility for herself. The former seems to be your goal here tbh and punishments are best if immediate even at this older age. A better one would have been to ground her this weekend or take her phone away etc.

Did you at least warn her and give her 3 strikes before you removed both her party and day out? To remove both is quite a knee jerk reaction and seems rather authoritarian.

My other thought is that you've taken a big gamble by escalating it to this level. You'll be lucky if it has the desired effect. There's a good chance she'll escalate too to reassert her own power. The PP who mentioned late night calls to find out where a kid was could be your new reality as she heads towards 16. Better to keep channels open and bring things back down to a more reasonable level.

Too harsh! I did keep in touch for years with my very authoritarian mother (this is the kind of thing she would have done) through FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) but now that she is dead I don't miss her or mourn her.

I also think you're being far too harsh on her and things like that can fuck up relationships for a long time.