12yo DD thinks she's the boss.

[GrabtharsHammer]

We are going to the ILs for lunch and will be out for about five hours so I've asked DD to get dressed and take the dog out for half an hour first.

She has kicked off. The conversation went as follows.

Me- DD can you go and get dressed and take the dog out for a bit before we go to grandmas?

DD- no, why should I? You do it.

Me- I need to have a shower and get ds2 ready. Do as I've asked please.

DD- why should I? You're not in charge.

Me- Er, I think you'll find I am, take the dog out now please or you will be grounded for a week.

DD- (shouting now) What? You can't ground me just because I won't walk the dog! You should walk her!

Me- (also shouting, not proud of that) You are the child and I am the adult and you need to do as you are told.

Cue storming off and tears and Dh getting involved and she's now sulkily getting dressed.

She doesn't have many chores, just washing up after dinner every other evening and taking the dog out once a week, which I rarely enforce anyway as we usually all go at weekends.

This is fairly par for the course, she is hugely reactive and any request is usually met with shouting and stamping. She says I ask her to do too much and that she's not a slave. She speaks to me like dirt.

AIBU to ask her to do occasional chores? And how on earth should I be dealing with her. She doesn't speak to Dh like this at all.

Thanks, Yoda.

RhiWrites - I trust you know the difference between "figurative" and "literal".

We're supposed to be adults here. I also trust you will better discern in future the context of that phrase.

How many times do we as parents say "oooh I could kill XYZ" - we do not literally do that though, do we?

I hope that clears up any confusion. Thanks :-)

Not that I want to continue to derail...but I wouldn't count a good hard slap as child abuse, in isolation. Don't think child abuse is a term that should be bandied around.

My mum gave me a good hard slap once, around the face, aged 16. I can't even remember why we argued but I lost the plot and shouted a load of nasty abuse at her which was really personal, spiteful and uncalled for. She slapped me (hard, very hard) and told me calmly if I ever spoke to her like that again, i'd be out of the door. I never did it again and in the circumstances it was what I needed.

Anyway, not automatically child abuse IMO.

She's obviously a clone of my 12 year old who seems to think that I am the unpaid help who is here to serve her every whim.

Green

You are derailing though. This argument does not help the OP. People seem to be angrier about her daughter than she is. I don't think that's helpful

Fancy, there was nothing in your post to suggest you were being figurative although I'm glad to know it. Next time perhaps you'll take more care in how you express yourself. Here's a biscuit to help you remember.

Can you and DH sit down and have a conversation with her when she's calm about how everyone needs to muck in and help out at home, and that what she does is a tiny fraction of what you and DH do for her so she really isn't being ill-treated? Try to get her to explain why she reacted like that without jumping in and criticising her or contradicting her, and discuss with her maybe how it could all have been handled better without blowing up into a crisis. If that means conceding that maybe you could have asked her earlier and shouldn't have shouted back, so be it. But she needs to be clear that in the final analysis she has to do what you ask, otherwise there will be consequences for her.

It won't be a magic cure but if just a bit of it sinks in, it will help.

She does NOT need slapping, no one does. What a very old fashioned and stupid suggestion.

This girl is having counselling through young carers because of her mother's mental health problems.

I think people should stop commenting because there's obviously a lot more to this problem than would occur in a family where young carers etc were not involved.

I think good cop bad cop isn't working. Time for bad cop, worse cop. DH could do the majority of the discipline, don't shout back, it never works, believe me. Stop spending a fortune on her and put some serious sanctions in place that will hurt, obviously not physical!

I am that anyone would suggest violence as a resolution for a child already in counselling or any child actually

Anyway, back to the thread before it gets completely derailed.

OP I wonder if she sees you as the weak link because of your MH issues? She is taking the piss to be honest. Professional nails and eyebrows? At 12? I wouldn't hold onto the outfit you bought I would send it straight back and tell her why.

If the love bombing isn't helping, maybe you could try disengaging, so when she lies on the ground kicking like a toddler, just step over her with a sigh and walk out? I wouldn't have given her so long to take the dog, I would have said, very calmly, as you aren't taking the dog I am taking them now and you won't be going to the party.

Just keep at it, it will take time but she will benefit from it long term.

Teens go through a toddler stage when puberty kicks in, where they test their dependence/independence from you.

So it is like a toddler tantrum only with an older child who's testing their boundaries.

Not really to do with your mh or her being a tricky child, but more to do with her natural development.

What does she have in her room, OP?

Toys, books, games, Xbox, TV?

I'd be stripping her room down to the bare essentials and changing the WiFi password.

I think I remember reading several posters in the past describe batshit irate fathers removing their bedroom doors as punishment for far less.

Wow, Fancy! Are you that patronising and condescending to people in real life?

Interesting, Green.

When I was about 15, I once gave my mother a load of mouth and she slapped me around the face. I told her (everso calmly) that if she ever did that to me, again, I'd slap her back. She never did.

To me, it sounds like your mother cowed you into submission by threatening you with homelessness. Which is not the type of mother I aim to be. (My DC are 17, 15 and 12, incidentally, so I do have some real life experience of parenting teens.)

@thatdearoctopus Stick to the thread. Any differences or miscommunication has been cleared up now. Thanks

Young Carers... are you the OP that posted about giving your DD a phone and then demanding it back when yours broke?

You seem to really hate your DD. I will say what everyone said on the last thread: your DD has a lot to cope with, given your situation, and you should be nicer to her.

Telling your DD to take the dog out or she'll be grounded for a week, given the context that she's a young carer for you, is different to her "being a toddler".

I did have to borrow 'her' phone back, yes. But it was a bit more nuanced than just demanding it.

Of course I don't hate her. That's an awful thing to say.

As I said on the other thread, she isn't a carer for me. The kids come under young carers because of my illness but we work hard to make sure their lives are as unaffected as possible. She doesn't undertake any extra chores or have to deal with anything she wouldn't ordinarily. The input from young carers is to offer her a safe place to talk about what worries her and a youth club to be with other kids in similar situations.

Caring is not just about physical things. The emotional toll is much more significant. She is having counselling and you have minimised the impact of your illness on her on a previous thread.

It sounds as if your DD is a bit rigid and stressy and she doesn't cope well with unexpected setbacks or requests. If she is seeing a counsellor and you are love-bombing but she is still having tantrums over trivia and she's winding you up then you may find some of the de-escalation and management strategies in Explosive Child useful (though hopefully she is nowhere near as difficult as most of the kids in that book!)

In which case... Try to make your DD's duties routine ones, things she can do at the same time every day or week. And do give her warning, don't ask her to do things right now. Extra time will lower the stress for both of you. If you tell her "we're going to granny's tomorrow so please walk the dog first thing after breakfast" then that gives her time to recover from her first "no" reaction, and it gives time for you to do a bit of persuasion, and it gives you time to make an alternative plan if she doesn't change her mind. You might even find it useful to have a schedule or timetable for the weekend so your DD knows what's coming and can plan round it.

Ignore all her arguments about who is boss, along with all the grumbling and moaning. That's just mouth-noise. Best strategy at the moment is probably not to react at all. Keep things calm. Later on when things are more settled you can start to pick up on her venting.

As for the printer cartridge... that sounds like a severe case of Plan Malfunction Anxiety . What to do about that is say "I will change the printer cartridge in 20 minutes" and stick to it no matter what she says. Drink your tea, ignore all her nonsense, do not explain or justify yourself (words only make things worse), do not threaten or punish, and in 20 minutes fix the printer cartridge. With any luck she will have calmed herself down before that; if not then once the cartridge is fixed and her plan is back on track she will calm down.

You must not take anything away that you gave during a love-bomb session though you might want to spend less money on it in future, love-bombing is about time and attention not stuff. And the rewards are not immediate, they build up over time. There can be a come-down after a very intense day, even a very enjoyable one, and she might need time to recover from it. I would not have tried anything so full-on as a whole day with my own DS; we did hour-long periods of similar "child-led activity" instead (though he was younger).

Kleinzeit

I like that phrase 'mouth noise'. DS2 specialises in it.

Keeping calm is the main message for parenting teens. So hard. So worth it.

She's angry with you. You know perfectly well why.

Our children learn how to behave from us.

Sorry dude, but it's true.

i agree with Klenzeit, althought my 10yo has Autism, i tend to try and avoid his meltdowns, and when they do happen, i don't argue and i just ignore, then do a small 'love bomb' afterwards. He can't help that he cannot regulate his emotions, so i will always express my love for him afterwards with a cuddle, but i still will not budge on whatever i've just put my foot down over.

If you argue with them, you're giving them ammunition to continue the meltdown. Simply tell them how it is, then don't react, remain calm but stick to your guns.. and your DH absolutely needs to back you up.

That's bollocks SaucyJack my sister was a complete bitch from birth and it was nothing to do with how my parents bought her up as all the other siblings were just fine (and in fact she got more attention because she always played up with tantrums et)c. As an adult she is still the same.

Some children can just be mardy, selfish gits.