Dd17 just attacked me…

[Totalmayhem]

Caught dd17 lying (again) this morning and told her that as a result I wasn’t going to take her for the hair cut we’d booked in. The result was her throwing a screaming fit and deciding to ‘runaway’. I followed behind her at a distance as we live very rurally and she was in a state so I was concerned. When she realised I was following she turned and attacked me - blows mainly to my body and verbal threats as to how was going to go for my face next. I stayed calm asking her to stop and asked her to come home to calm down. She kicked her sliders off in the kerfuffle and eventually came home (I assume not want to walk the very shitty roads barefoot). She stormed to her room and broke the door handle slamming it (it’s old and been dodgy for a while) so now can’t get out. I’m sitting outside her door so when she does want to emerge we can try fix it. But for now I’m
just sitting shell shocked. Dh had to pull her off me at one point. WTAF. I know she’s worried about going back to school - there’s loads of work she’s meant to have done but hasn’t. We’ve really been trying to support her but she just tells us to leave her alone or lies to say it’s done. She’s lonely I know - she makes friends easily but looses them fast. Where the hell do I go from here?!!

What a horrid experience for you all. Maybe talk to school to see if they can signpost you to the appropriate service? Or the GP? I hope she has manage to regulate herself so that you can calmly discuss what happened with her.

If this were my daughter we'd be done. There's no excuse and I don't know how you get back from this. Why aren't are you just leaving her to it? She'll need to come out sooner or later. Stop trying to placate her.

Thanks all. We’ve tried to always tread softly as know she goes off the deep end when challenged but it was at a point where I couldn’t let it slide again. She’s been treating everyone in the house like 💩 - her siblings really try to help her and be kind but she’s incredibly rude to them in return. She seems to think she’s entitled to the perfect life without having to take any responsibility to facilitate that herself. When things go wrong/she doesn’t get what she wants it is always someone else’s fault. She just doesn’t seem to get that the common denominator is her, not other people. I’m still so shocked she kept hitting me again and again - even when I was calmly asking her to stop - she needs to at least admit her violence was wrong, if not where does that leave us?! I get she needs time to calm down, but she also needs to accept her behaviour was beyond unacceptable, whatever the cause. How the hell do we move on if she doesn’t?!

Oh she will, but the anger and adrenaline needs to subside first otherwise you’ll end up with a repeat. I’d try not to conflate a bunch of issues into a general approach.

you might want to write it down and talk to someone else before you talk to her. Differentiate the violence from any other concerns.

Agree. If you try to address it when she’s still distegulated it will just fan the flames. Leave her alone, as you would a tantruming toddler, and then when she’s calm, she’ll be in a better position to understand what she did wrong, and the consequences.

well she has obviously worked out that going off the deep end causes everyone to tip toe around her and not upset her. Yousay that yourself .
There is your answer. This is an escalation of that.

What do you mean 'done'?

How on earth would society function if every parent in the OP's situation bailed out?

The fact the DD's behaviour was unacceptable doesn't make it appropriate for a parent to immediately walk away.

Police will refer her to youth offending which is a much better avenue for help than CAMHS or social work TBH

Her behaviour is not ok and needs addressing but she is a teenager, they are known for their lack of judgement.

It does all sound a bit smothering though - punishment for lying (about school work? It's disappointing and upsetting - I've been there with my youngest. But punishment and shaming is not going to help)

• following her because she's left the house. She's 17, it wasn't the middle of the night!
• sitting outside her room waiting for her to want to leave the room.

It sounds like she reacted like a cornered animal. She needed space to calm down - and walked away - and yet you just kept pushing yourself into her space.

I think she needs therapy and you need family therapy probably and better ways to handle a distressed teen.

She's a few months away from being an adult.What are you following her out of the house for as if she's still a ten year old.

Not condone her violence in any way. You do sound stifling and suffocating though.

I hate to be "that" poster, but have you considered that she might be autistic?

I only ask because that was me as a teenager - I couldn't stand a last minute change of plan and it would totally disregulate me to the point of tears and tantrums, even into my twenties. I was diagnosed with autism last year at 36.

I was also excellent at masking at school and performed well, was a prefect and participated as much as anyone else did, with no behavioural issues whatsoever.

Did you feel she wasn't safe out alone?

I'm just wondering because it sounds like she needed space and you following her made her see red.

I think you need to sit down with her and try and talk through the part you both may have played in this.

Tbf this wasn't an ordinary "last minute change of plan", it was a punishment designed to upset her! Presumably she was supposed to get upset in a more productive way.

Do you think that treading softly is why she behaves how she does? If shes always behaved awfully when she’s not got her way and you’ve walked on egg shells to keep the peace rather than setting boundaries, giving consequences etc, this seems to be why this has happened.
You need to make sure there are serious consequences to what she did and
if that means calling the police then so be it

But the duaghter needs to understand she can never ever attack anyone physically. She will end up with a prison sentence if she does.

OP, please tell her that is she ever physically attacks you again, you will call the police and press charges because that is what you would do if anyone attacked her or anyone else you loved, or if you witnessed an attack in the street, her being your daughter doesn't make physical violence excusable. Make it 100% clear you mean this. It's not a threat it is a statement of fact.

FFS about autism. My DH is autistic, So is my son and so are a number of my close friends and colleagues. None of them hit people or ever have. Several of them have a problem with controlling emotions but that is never an excuse for violence.

I'm not a 'gentle' parent and do not happily take a bad attitude from my teens. But cancelling the hair appointment was mean spirited and inappropriate.

She needs her hair cut for 'back to school' I'd imagine and it seems really counter productive to cancel something that's a necessity.

You need to support her. Why is she lying so much? Has she always been a lier? Out of interest, do you tend to hit the roof or get super stressed when she tells you difficult things about her life? Or alternatively, are you super strict? The teens that lie a lot have complex parents and I can see why they don't want to share challenging things with them.

How is your relationship other than today? Are you close? Do you do things together? Chat? Laugh? It takes lots and lots of bonding to also handle the inevitable teenage parent fallouts.

I totally agree with this. We should never tiptoe around shitty behaviour from anyone. We should always call it out and confront it for what it is. No excuses for anyone. Why would we want to teach our children that violence is acceptable if they are the ones lashing out?

I have said similar @HorseandHeron to dc in similar circs. Think it’s entirely possible to look at the red line behaviour and the causes separately.

that said, violence in autistic girls is not uncommon and medical staff acknowledge this.

Youth offending will cause more damage. It sounds like she's needed help in the past. Probably autistic and trying to hold it together.

Child to parent violence is fairly common, it just isn't spoken about. I've done parenting courses with quite a lot of teachers who have their own violent kids.

Can you help her with emails to teachers about what she's struggling with?

Is your daughter lying about things you or others are asking her to do?

I know it was designed to upset her, but her reaction is still way beyond what you'd expect from a pissed off 17yo, which is why I'm wondering about autism.

I'm not remotely excusing her behaviour (I am mortified that I behaved the way I did as a teenager) but at the time, I genuinely felt I had no control over it. I was just so overwhelmed that it was like my brain shut down any sign of logic and I just reacted primitively - it was terrifying and almost like a panic attack.

Several hours later I would calm down and feel absolutely fine again.

Sorry - another essay…Older and younger siblings watched it play out. Older stood a way back and would’ve come to help if I’d asked but I told them to stay out of it. Both are horrified, but both often find her behaviour awful. They try to be kind, offer help and to include her in stuff but she throws it back at them more often than not. Eldest would like to wash their hands but I ask them to keep trying. Yes, I should have just let her go - but she was looking wild and threatened to break/smash her way into a relatives home (they are away) and I actually thought she might! She’s still in her room - I’ve been up several times to ask if she wants to try & fix the door - she just tells me she wants space. I did at one point calmly add on that hitting & violence are never ok and we need to address this and get help - she just said ‘whatever’. She’s not a classic nightmare teen - if only she were invited to parties or had people to go out with!! But she’s made herself very unpopular at school. She can be amazingly brilliant and wonderful and fun but she can also turn very quickly and be unbelievably selfish, rude and mean….she seems unable to understand that once people have experienced this behaviour they (sensibly) walk away. She ruins so much for herself. But she absolutely will not see that any issue is hers - she firmly believes that other people are the problem to getting what she wants. I really don’t want to sit back and watch her fail but I think that’s probably what we are going to have to do. All I want right now is for her to acknowledge that hitting me was wrong. I wonder if seeing the bruising will make her realise?

If my seventeen year old daughter attacked me I would be calling the police and she would have to be removed from the home .