Daughter punishment too severe?

[Debfronut]

Please help me with a reality check. My daughter goes to a private school which I do a job and a half to afford. She chose the school and loves it but she does have a long day and gets tired which I accept. However she keeps crying and trying to get time off on a Friday saying she is ill. When I was away two weeks ago she told my mum she was ill and stayed home and today she refused to go claiming she was ill. She is 14 bigger than me and so too big to put in the car in her pyjamas. I have rung the school and they are making her stay in every lunchtime next week to catch up on work. I have removed her phone and computer until Monday (she lives on those all weekend) she is now screaming, kicking doors and saying she wants to see a counsellor. I have said unless she attends school all term I am moving her to the local state school. Am I being to harsh? Her crying is tugging at my heart but we all feel rubbish in the morning I need her to develop some resiliance. But am I going about it the wrong way?

Oh my word Dadaist I am gaslighting and you have decided I am an issue with the relationship with my DD? Really? I have a very positive relationship with all my DC including my teenage DD. Who openly discusses issues and tells me about challenges her friends are experiencing. Me making a joke about my DD being a little shite doesn’t make me a cold abusive DM. So please stop with your personal attacks as they are uncalled for. I don’t come onto public forums and attack individuals

I'd say your daughter's mental health is the main concern here and that should be the primary issue rather than her being punished.

Hello everyone Thank you for all your opinions and thoughts especially the level headed ones. I am as I said a counsellor myself, I am very aware of mental health and I knew there were no issues at school or friends. We are very close, so her behaviour which has been getting worse was a puzzle. She had a chat with her head of year on Monday and nothing to report from that so I was puzzled. Until Monday night when my son came in and woke me up at 4am as he had heard her talking. I am ashamed to say I crept down the corridor with the iron in my hand thinking someone was in her room, and went in to find her with headphones on and using a mobile phone. Except I had her phone? I discovered she has been given a friends old mobile phone as she now has a new one and she had been staying up most of the night online with her friends using mobile data. Apparently friends dad had not cancelled the contract when he bought daughter a new one so she gave it to my daughter. So why she is so tired is solved but I now have the issue of her disobeying our wishes. She says it is my fault as all her friends don't have to go to bed at 11.00 and don't lose the internet so early and I am unreasonable. Whereas I thought I was being generous. So still feeling mad at the moment. And still taking hub to bed at night. Thank you all again for comments.

Well you have your answer. You need to find a way to cut her off from the tech, permanently. Sorry I cant help with how you should do that. Good luck.

She's spoiled rotten and you've spoiled her. You did it from love but it was a mistake all the same. You're working yourself to the bone to give her the best quality of life, luxuries and privileges.

Phones and computers are not a 'right', expensive education is not a 'right' - your punishment is not tough enough. She cries because she's knows how to manipulate you.

Do NOT let yourself be manipulated, show her you're the boss and the parent, little children resort to tantrums, so treat her as one. And if she continues to miss school take her out and put her in the free comp.

You are the mother. Act like one.

So glad you've found the cause.

I know she's fourteen and "The worlds isn't fair and everyone else is allowed [insert item of choice]", but she needs to learn and accept that she needs to just crack on.

Good luck OP. Hope it all goes well.

keep talking to her. Keep explaining you don;t do it to be mean or unfair but because she;s so tired, because she needs a chance to resta nd unwind and most of all, needs to give herself the chance to do well in school. Show her that you realise it will be relaly tough at first, but she'll start to feel better.
Do you know any of the friends' parents? Could you discuss with them a group approach of limiting screens at night? Can't believe they're not all having the same problem.

For every brilliant mental health worker there is another that should not be allowed near vulnerable people. @ledzepplintooasiseclectic you're one of the latter. Your posts actually give me a chill, the way you speak about your own child and others is wrong, it's just wrong.

Sorry for going off topic OP. I just hate to see people picking on others, especially when they're holding themselves out as a mental health professional. I hope your daughter gets better soon, tech addiction is becoming very common and a real problem for people of all ages.

We've had similar battles to this and it's where teenage girls particularly seem to go into a tunnel of selfishness and start to test the boundaries.

There's options here for tugging on the reins a bit. What's her pocket money plan? Who pays for her normal phone contract?

At 14 phones should be turned in at night, Wi-fi should be deactivated (we've programmed device switch off times through our BT router) and rules must be observed regarding bedtime and school.

You don't have to be too harsh about it, for ours it was a bargaining tool between having funds to spend on themselves and the things they enjoy, being given the privilege of a smartphone with data (there are options to reduce this heavily if you pay the bill) or trying to ride out a few months of misery whilst they tried to get past ya abs make their own rules up.

If they kicked off though, the first thing that went was the phone and the allowance. Simple!

I don’t want to undermine any potentially important issues, only you will know if your DD is genuinely struggling with MH etc. but as a bit of perspective, I was such a shit at 14. I had everything I needed to succeed, but lied and bullshitted and got in hysterics (and asked to see a counsellor), to get my way. My way at the time was not tech, but being able to physically hang out with my mates, or be on the phone with them, eventually graduating to PC/MSN messenger as I got older. The “everyone else can” line was always screamed at my mum, I would lie about being ill on agreed days with friends so we could all skive off together, or I’d lie and say I was doing something in the evening with cadets/youth club/school to just hang out with them, and I would sneak downstairs to call my friends and we’d chat for hours into the night. I suspect a lot of teens just now do similar but via internet, as in, they’re together but not physically. Obviously I can look back now and no, I’m not some kind of menace to society, but I fucked up my potential in my teenage years, and drove my mum nuts. My feeling about your DD is that she’s taking the piss. But it’s difficult to really say that because no, I don’t know her, and how can I know what’s truly going on. Just based on experience though, she’s spoilt and taking the mick. No way on earth would I be allowing a 14yo that level of phone and internet access. I mean, I attempted to outwit my mum at every opportunity, but if I’d been caught doing any of it there would have been hell to pay. What happened when you discovered her with her friend’s phone? My mum would have chucked it on the fire (maybe mega harsh), but still, there would have been no continuation of anything that I’d been caught out with.

I used to tell my mum that she was such a bitch and that everyone else's mum would let them:

• Drink alcohol
• Go out to clubs on the weekend
• Have boys over to stay
• Wear skirts short enough to see my knickers
• Wear a shed load of make-up.

Her comment was always "I don't care what anyone else's mum does, you are my daughter and whilst you live under my roof you will follow my rules".

I am 41 now and we live half an hour away from my mum and pop over most weekends. She is a fantastic mum and a lovely person to hang with (but I still have to do as I am told at home!!!!) I have started to say the same to my daughter!

11pm is plenty late enough for a teenager on a school night (perhaps an hour too late in my opinion). No-one needs internet access 24/7. Turn it off at 10 and she can read a book or watch TV with you before bed.... Like we always used to do!

I would be having a stern talk with her regarding her deceit, and the fact that she has been sly, using a phone somebody had given her. I would also contact the person who is paying the bill and ask them to cancel it. Furthermore, I would not give her any allowance or pocket money to spend meeting friends. Do this to illustrate that lying to you has consequences. It's better that she learns honesty now, rather than later on in life. Tell her that liars do get caught out and that nobody likes a liar.

As for the wifi, change the password on the router (google it, it will tell you how, for your provider) give the password to your son, and put a lock on your 'computer room'. If she screams and shouts, just explain that the minute she lied to you was when you realised you could no longer trust her. She needs to build that trust again.

I would also follow up the story of the mobile phone where somebody is supposedly paying a phone bill for someone random. If they are that lax then there are probably no restrictions or settings on it so she can probably access porn, horror etc.