DD (11) is driving me insane.
Current annoyances:
Stays awake half the night then refuses to get up in the morning. If I try to turn her light off she screams that she's scared and is generally so impossible we have to turn it back on or she'll wake the entire neighborhood up. Every morning it's a huge battle to get her out of bed. Every night it's a huge battle to get her into bed. She has woken DH and I up 5 nights out of 7 in the past 6 months - complaining she doesn't feel well, or can't sleep or thinks there's been a break in.
She never, ever, ever does anything she's asked to do. Hair washing, homework, having a bath, tidying her room, getting her uniform/bag ready for school, picking her stuff off the floor. Won't do it until you've asked her 10 times and got angry. Not even then most of the time.
Has graffiti'd her newly painted bedroom wall with moronic slogans: "Yo, Gabz!", "Hate the haters, love your friends!", "My life, my rules!".
Refuses to do any exercise at all.
Hides junk food in her room and eats at all times of the day and night.
Is rude to me generally but especially in front of her friends.
Won't take responsibility for anything she does wrong - losing her uniform, upsetting friends, getting detentions etc. It's always someone else's fault.
Is very attention seeking - has lots of annoying strategies, her latest being to ask forcibly, volubly and at length for us to buy her things that she knows we are going to say 'no' to - a hamster/new phone/high heels/make-up, and to keep asking and going on until one of us loses the plot with her. She's also always going on about her aches and pains - always ill, always feeling sick, always got a head-ache (unless there's a chance of a shopping trip/burger/bar of chocolate on offer in which case she makes an instantaneous recovery).
She's an absolute pain in the arse about homework - doesn't write it down at school, or writes it on random pieces of paper which she then loses. If she absolutely has to do it she'll get it done in about 10 seconds, and it's usually done very badly.
For some reason her teachers mostly think she's great (she's very lively and engaged at school, though she complains about school constantly at home and says she hates it) and has just been put on the gifted and talented register.
She's lovely to everyone else's siblings but utterly vile to her own two younger brothers, especially my 5 year old ds who has autism. She deliberately winds him up, and shouts at him. Calls him a 'freak' and a 'spaz'.
She's driving me and ds NUTS. We're trying to be calm and firm with her, and to sing from the same song-sheet so she can't play us off against each other, though she tries. DH told me the other day that he finds her really unlikeable and I understand why. She spends about 90% of her time at home being obstructive, rude and lazy. She gets loads of attention and affection and is not missing out on anything. She's also got lots of friends.
In the past year she's experimented with every type of dysfunctional behaviour. She self-harmed for a few weeks, scratching her arms and sucking big welts on them. She showed it to me and to the school nurse straight away and we talked about it. She got bored of that after a while. Then she started playing up about food. She'd refuse to eat anything I made her and storm out the house in the morning without breakfast. She'd go hours and hours without eating and then sneak into the kitchen and eat biscuits while I wasn't looking, so I'd think she hadn't had anything that day. Then she started eating everything in sight saying 'I just can't help myself, I can't stop eating'. That lasted a month or so and she put on a bit of weight. She's not doing that so much at the moment so I assume she's brewing up something else to worry us with.
A few weeks ago she disappeared after school after telling some friends she was going to run away for 3 hours just to worry me and her dad. It was a freezing dark night and I was beside myself with anxiety when she didn't come back. The school and the police liaison from the school got involved helping us to track her down, and she did eventually appear come home of her own accord. She wasn't at all contrite even though she knew I'd been in tears and that the whole family, including my newly widowed mum, had been terrified that something had happened to her.
She's been referred to CAHMS and is waiting or an appointment, but in the meantime I'm at the end of my tether with her.
If things are going her way (ie she's getting what she wants) she's generally very high-spirited, confident and cheerful), but if anyone thwarts her or says 'no' to her she just becomes impossible.
Would you judge the behaviour I've described above as normal for a child who won't be 12 until August? Doesn't seem that way to me. I'm tearing my hair out over it.