Quick Advice DD2 refusing to go on holiday...

[fun1nthesun]

We need to leave now! dd2 has decided she isn't going (12 years old). Leaving her with relatives/friends isn't an option. She has form for sudden refusals, and in fact we lost £££ the last time she demanded to do expensive lessons and then changed her mind after we had given the money.

Any suggestions? Our holiday is ruined

Why on earth are you allowing a 12 year old to rule your roost ?

But it isn't abnormal behaviour of someone who is used to getting their own way, and has a taste for manipulation and power. She won't be the first NT 12yo behaving like this, and she most definitely won't be the last.

Different children respond to different forms of parenting; there is most always a method that will be successful without sucking the spirit out of a child. The OP's sounds like she needs very firm, but fair, boundaries, and consequences that are apt and always followed through.

For example, and this is a true story about DD2. She went, age 6, to a fair with her best friend. I overheard them talking, and made it very clear to her that she was not, under any circumstances, to come home with a bloody goldfish.

Guess what, she rolled home later that evening with not one, but two goldfish in a bag. I told her I was extremely disappointed with her, and first thing the next morning I took her to the bank, emptied out her savings account, took her to the pet shop and spent every damn penny she had on a lovely tank and bits for the fish.

Yes, she kept the fish. But she had to feed and clean them (under close supervision) for years, she lost every precious penny she had saved (this is what hurt her the most, she was incredibly into saving her money, and was saving up for a big Betty Spaghetti thing), and the fish lived in the kitchen, and not in her bedroom as she wanted.

There's a knack to fitting the punishment to the crime, sometimes you have to be incredibly inventive and strong, but consequences like that are excellent for teaching kids they can't always get/do what they want.

I'd give her the choice of going on holiday with you or be dumped with social services at the nearest police station

Right, and you could really follow through on that one!

I keep checking this thread to see if OP has returned to update...

My dd can be a little witch. One of my birthday's we were doing something I really wanted to do and when we didn't go shopping she threw a wobbler. She was about to turn 12. It really upset me.

Since then she has been much better and we try to do things for all of us. Especially now my mobility is getting bad.

Exactly Eva, threats like that are pointless, it has to hit hard, be tailored to the individual child, and most importantly be both actionable and followed through.

I imagine (but don't know) that maybe the girl has been indulged or spoilt or bribed regularly to do things before (sorry OP, I may have this wrong) I say this because I just cannot imagine someone wanting to hurt their family's enjoyment like this. At that age my DC's wouldn't be able to sleep for excitement about their holiday the next day. So I can only imagine the parenting has been a bit wonky for a while and you've made a rod for your own back somewhere along the line.

I would have my psycho scarey face on and I would be putting the fear of God into her. Not yelling, not shouting, not nagging but the sort of words and the sort of look that would have her thinking "Mum is really really cross this time, I've never seen her like this before".

My eldest DD was extremely testing pushing the boundaries and there was two memorable occasions where she knew she had gone too far. I won't/can't go into detail as I don't want to out myself, but needless to say the first occasion she did something that embarrassed me and went against what I had told her she could do, I actually texted and rang all her friends and actually told them what she had done. I shamed her like never before. She knew she had overstepped the mark big time.

The second time she pushed it too far involved me in my fluffy dressing gown and slippers flinging open a pub door and shouting across the pub "COME HOME NOW" to her. I had warned her I would but she had chosen not to believe me. She didn't do that again

By the way my DD was 16/17 when these things happened so god alone knows how the OP is going to cope if she doesn't nip this in the bud.

On reflection my DD was probably only 15/16.... so two or three years to go OP before you have yourself a big problem...

I hope the OP is able to update when they get there - hopefully with a full contingent!

There's no way on this little green earth she'd get away with 'refusing' to do anything here. Little bloody madam. But then, she wouldn't have spent her life being cajoled and bribed either. It's going to be a tough time ahead for all of them.

I'm personally a bit annoyed that AS is blamed for so much bad behaviour so freely

If the child does have AS, this isn't bad behaviour. It is an inability to cope.

This is not a teenage tantrum or normal bad behaviour; this child and her family need referring to a child psychologist for Family Behaviour Support.
The child has control of this family and smiles as she disrupts their holiday; her mother is scared to confront her and the child plays on her vulnerability. Psychopathic tendencies.
I don't expect the OP will return to this thread if she has read half the comments posted here, but hopefully they will make her realise she is not dealing with normal family behaviour which will pass. It won't; they need professional support.

Hope the OP comes back with an update.

And to whomever suggested a hug would solve the issue of a spoilt 12 year old who enjoys causing her parents problems.

And if she had AS, I imagine the OP would have mentioned it.

Jeeesus.

Another one speechless.

How the hell did it come to this?

Actually I need to rephrase that.

If the child does have AS, this may not be bad behaviour. It may be an inability to cope.

Goblin the professional support you're suggesting almost fractured my friend's family beyond repair in a similar situation.

There definitely are children out there though that just enjoy the wind up enough that the punishments don't matter to them - I suppose it's a form of sociopathy, or antisocial personality disorder as it's now called.

While I can't possibly know whether or not the OP's DD would fit into that diagnosis, nor could anyone other than a psychiatrist, this "Confessions of a Sociopath" article made very interesting reading.

But she could just be testing boundaries too.

Psychopathic tendancies

More likely a child who has learnt that she can wield great power by refusing to toe the line. That's learned behaviour; no, not every child would behave like that, but she's obviously getting something out of it. It's similar to the old 'bad attention is better than no attention' adage, she's getting something out of it.

On a previous thread the OP mentioned a DD who came home on a school bus with a supervisor.

I don't think we should be diagnosing mental health disorders! It's more than likely she's been a naughty girl and enjoyed the control over her mother's feelings.
Let's hope OP is having a good holiday, I do agree that OP should sit down when she comes back and talk to someone, sometimes in these situations bad behaviour becomes the norm and you honestly do lose the ability to see it.

Psychopathic tendencies.

How can you possibly draw that rather damning conclusion from a short post on an internet forum, Goblin?

The child has control of this family and smiles as she disrupts their holiday; her mother is scared to confront her and the child plays on her vulnerability. Psychopathic tendencies.

More likely a child who has learnt that she can wield great power by refusing to toe the line. That's learned behaviour; no, not every child would behave like that, but she's obviously getting something out of it. It's similar to the old 'bad attention is better than no attention' adage, she's getting something out of it.

How about a child who can't cope with the prospect of staying away from home and thinking she may have prevented the holiday from happening at all, is relieved but, being inept at using facial expressions and body language, appears to be smirking at the prospect of spoiling the holiday for everyone else?

The possibilities are endless. The point is that the OP needs to try to understand this behaviour before deciding on the appropriate way to manage it.

I really hope she doesn't just go/hasn't gone wading in with the type of draconian measures recommended on here without looking carefully for the reasons behind what her DD is doing.

There's a bloody huge leap from pre-teen refusing to do something and smirking when told off to psychopathic tendencies. I'm not sure there's anywhere near enough information in the OP's posts to make a judgement about what's going on.

I just read the OP's first response after posting ' Oh Dear!'
OH DEAR?
Indeed Love..

Something tells me they didn't go on holiday..

Behaviour like this doesn't appear from nowhere. There is ALWAYS a reason.
The fact that at 12, she doesn't want to go on holiday with her family indicates that there is a problem in the family. She doesn't feel part of it, feels ignored, not included.

None of this excuses this kind of behaviour, but the head on dragging her kicking and screaming to the car, or the extremely harsh punishments of stripping her room, will reinforce the feeling of exclusion so ultimately won't fix the problem.

When kids behave badly and parents punish by being horrible to them, this damages the relationship. At 12, the damage could be permanent is the punishment is particularly harsh. You might get a bit more compliance, but your child ends up hating you. You really don't need to be horrible to a child to teach them how to behave well. If the parent ups the ante every time the child behaves badly, then it ends up with competitive horribleness.

My kids are autistic so I have had refusal behaviour before. We stop, find out what the problem is calmly, that generally reduces the behaviour, or they might need a bit of information or reassurance, then we carry on. Demanding they do as we say, without listening to them, is a recipe for a stand off.

You can't force a child into a car. They can just undo their seatbelt. You can't force them onto a plane, they could get you all thrown off.

I have never and will never accept bad behaviour, I won't pander or give in to demands, but I will listen and I will try to get to the cause of a problem and I will never be nasty to my kids. I want them to come on holiday because they want to, not because I have forced them. I don't know how you even get to the point that they don't want to go and the first you know about it is the morning you are due to go.

I think the problem here is using bribery as a convincer. She probably wanted something out of her refusal.
I give things to DS because he wants them and if I think they will be useful, not as rewards for behaving the way he is supposed to. That's a given and expected. Otherwise things may start be taken away.
However, I am of the school of using reason and having proper conversations before punishments.

It does feel like this family needs help.