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

Fav yes that's exactly it for us with DD too.

She has form for sudden refusals
She's sitting in her room smiling,
She's said to another child that she's already ruined the holiday.
This is what is so chilling: there is no drama, just a cold-blooded determination to destroy.
If, of course, it is true.
If it is true, this family has serious problems.

But if you have younger children who are expecting a holiday you have to go- it is non negotiable- or do they give in every time? Do they win because they are difficult and you make the more ameanable siblings suffer?

Ashtrayheart I found your post fascinating if you come back to third thread can I ask you at what age your daughters mental health difficulties became apparent? I ask this because my son also has a chromosome disorder and from my research his patcular disorder has a lot of links with schizophrenia and bipoler disorder. Just to make it clear my son is only four and I am a mental health nurse and I realise that such serious mental illnesses are extremely rare in children I am mainly asking out of concern for when he is an adolescent Ds. already has ASD and learning difficulties which are in themselves very disabling and I know from my many years experience working in mental health how disabling bi poler can be .

This is what is so chilling: there is no drama, just a cold-blooded determination to destroy.

It's not chilling. It's a struggling child communicating ineptly.

Good grief! Someone will be recommending she's sectioned next!

I still don't understand what you do with younger children - say 'sorry - no holiday' and expect them to put up with it happily?

Do they win because they are difficult and you make the more ameanable siblings suffer?

Nobody wins. It isn't a war.

We think and talk and work out the reason for the behaviour. Then we do whatever we need to do to make it possible for the child to comply.

With DD1 and school, we fought for the support she needed to feel safe enough to attend school without being forced

With DD2 and going away, we spend time beforehand preparing her, make sure that the time before leaving is calm and organised, ensure that there are no nasty surprises when we get there as far as possible, use measures like deep pressure and relaxation techniques to help her manage her anxiety and support her.

x2boys funnily enough I just clicked on to have a look. By bpd I meant she has an (emerging as she is only 17) personality disorder. She was diagnosed with asd at 14 but her consultant has withdrawn the diagnosis - which I agree with, it never seemed right to me. The chromosome disorder is that she has three X chromosomes instead of 2-we only found that out on a routine blood test. She has always been difficult but things deteriorated from about age 9, then awful from age 13/14. She is currently sectioned in a long term secure hospital.
I will leave it there as it's not my thread but pm me if you want to x

Well I'd rather hope that she'd go with the first of SDTG's options and get in the car rather than have to go Nuclear.

Agree that it's not fair on the other DC at all - depending on the holiday logistics though if needs be i guess I'd send DH on ahead and join later if possible/affordable.

Delphinium try looking at it another way.

If a child is refusing to move, how does telling them it is non-negotiable change anything? They aren't negotiating with you anyway!

No- but some lose if the most difficult( for any reason) gets their way.
I think OP just has a child who has never been given boundaries - I don't see any evidence of AS. If she was then by 12 yrs she would have worked out strategies ( even if not diagnosed).

You have them from birth- they would jolly well know it was non negotiable with me - it is booked and they go- especially if they have siblings.( If they were SN of some sort obviously I work on this for ages- not spring it on them.)

So you have a 12 year old refusing to leave the house and you tell them it is non-negotiable. If that child is too big to manhandle safely and still refuses to move, what do you do next?

I don't see any evidence of AS. If she was then by 12 yrs she would have worked out strategies ( even if not diagnosed).

Yes, it's that simple isn't it. The strategies always work and never backfire at inopportune moments.

Ah sorry Delphiniums you were talking to Gold.

In my post I was assuming what would I do with an NT child.

So far with our ASD DS2 there have been quite a few outings/situations we have had to abandon if not manageable (equally lots I've been able to resolve too), but nothing major (careful planning to try and ensure so)
and other DC always compensated, and make the effort to take them out without him too.

My story is similar to ashtray's x2boys. Message me if I cAn help

Hey wanna, was so pleased to see your post about how well your boy is doing, that's great news x

Missed this too If she was then by 12 yrs she would have worked out strategies ( even if not diagnosed). easier said than done!

But I think this is a red herring, obviously if she were AS that would change matters, and there's enough to suggest OP look into this. But we're mainly talking about what we'd do if she is NT aren't we?

MN never admits to there being naughty, difficult to manipulative children! It doesn't matter if they are screaming 2 yr olds in cafes or older ones refusing to comply- they are given SN by some posters.
There is nothing in OP to suggest AS. If there was my advice would be different, as they would have had 12 yrs to work out how to approach a situation.
Whether they do or don't - you simply can't let them cancel a holiday for siblings when you are packed and in the car! You either make it non negotiable or you use all your previous experience to get them in the car. Last minute is a bit late if they have SN and you know it will be difficult.

Finding a strategy doesn't mean that it'll work every time though Delphinium.
Ds is 13 and we still battle to get him to school, go out for a meal, go on holiday.
Even if it's something he is really looking forward to, and will 100% enjoy once there, the stress of doing something different overtakes any of his positive emotions about it, and he will do anything in his power to stop it happening. I suppose you could say it's chilling to watch, but it is very specific behaviour that he only exhibits when anxious.

Dh and I spend all our waking hours trying to deal with things, and it's exhausting.
Instead of judging and seeing the op's dd as a spoilt little madam who has obviously been allowed to rule the roost, try to understand that all children will do well if they can, but often there are underlying issues that need to be understood.

This reminded me of an incident with my stepson, who would have been about 12 at the time. His mother had booked a week in what was meant to be a rather ritzy holiday complex in Turkey for herself, him and my stepdaughter. The night before they were due to fly she - very unusually - rang her ex (my husband). My stepson was flatly refusing to pack, she was in a total state and would he (ex/husband) please sort his son out?

So my ex talked to his son on the phone calmly about how much he was likely to enjoy the holiday, and encouraged him to just pick some clothes, books etc and get on with the packing - as that meant being one step closer to being on the beach and being able to do nice things..

About 10 years later we very belatedly worked out that my stepson had high-functioning autism. He could appear very confrontational and defiant and unco-operative as a child - and still more so when puberty started to hit. I think at 12 he was becoming aware that he was different, and also was conscious that it was seen as childish to admit to fear of new experiences. So doing defiance seemed more independent and grown up. Up till that point holidays with his mother's family had always involved visiting his grandparents in another part of the UK. Looking back it does seem likely that he may have had some apprehensions about the Turkey trip and that refusing to pack was his way of attempting to deal with that

I wouldn't make any assumptions about the OP's daughter being similar to my stepson . Perhaps the point is more that a very calm intervention, seemed to work well when there was a similar sort of occurrence in my own family.

Delphinium, my ds doesn't have SN, but I can completely identify with her post, as can other posters.

MN definitely admits to there being naughty dc, but in cases like this I find it refreshing that nowadays we can see that our dc aren't naughty, but that the behaviour is often a sign that all is not ok.
Who knows, if people continue to be open minded like this, one day there might not be the taboo surrounding mental health and special needs, wouldn't that be good?

There have been some horrible posts about the op and her dd, really judgy and unnecessary.

But she doesnt need to have AS (or ADD, or ODD or any other An) to be struggling, rather than just being difficult.
And even with a child who is purely being "naughty" or defiant or wilful, if they're digging in their heels it is very likely that just digging your own heels in or "not standing for it" is going to be ineffective.
Even when kids make you want to pit your own head under a truck, its better (surely) to try to understand where they're coming from than just to enforce tighter, mor rigid controls?

Sorry, tired, so probably not making much sense.

They don't always have a label on their heads saying 'sn' or 'notsn' at 12 I wouldn't have said my dd had sn, she has no learning difficulties and had no diagnosis, she was just hard work I thought! And as they get older problems change or can develop and these magical 'strategies' are something you learn on the job and don't magically prevent issues.
Regardless of whether the op's dd has sn or not, if she is resistant to the usual parenting approaches then looking at why the dd is behaving as she is is surely more useful than 'well it's non negotiable, she wouldn't be like that with me' comments.
Also refusing to go on holiday, surely something pleasant, would be more likely to make me think something else is going on than sheer naughtiness.

"She likes the power of being able to wreck it for everyone else". OP says her dd is used to being bribed and this is is "another extortion attempt"

Is this indicative of SN? Seems to me it's a family that needs to change a parenting style that may have worked in the past but is now being taken advantage of by a manipulative child..... Let us know how you're doing OP, hope you managed to get away with as little fuss as possible......