To think teenager should be grateful for birthday party and gifts?

[Mama1209]

My 16yr old daughter is sulking, moody and crying after I didn’t get her anything from her (extensive) birthday list! On the list was a new iPhone and designer clothes & makeup which added up-to around £2k. She has been awfully behaved for the last few years in general. School day she may end up NEET - not in education or employment. She wasn’t allowed to go to prom due to poor behaviour/ performance at school. Vapes, drinks, is rude and abusive to myself & her siblings, doesn’t work or do any jobs around the house, the list goes on! We have tried everything including family counselling. Nothing works! She is so entitled -think Paris Hilton. Demanding £400+ for hair extensions, then nails, lashes etc every month which her grandparents pay for! Her dad passed away when she was 9, so his parents tend to try and make up for that. She plays Us off against each other. Anyway.. she expected a full on sweet 16th like she’s seen on TV in America. I got her a Pandora bracelet, charm & earnings, provisional driving licence and have said I’ll pay for all her lessons and test and give her £50 for each C or above she gets at GCSE. I’ve also got money which I’ve been saving since she was a baby, ready to buy her a car. I’ve hired a hot tub, glamping tent & disco bouncy castle for the weekend, she’s had her boyfriend sleep over in it as well as a special cake, Mac Donald’s & sweet deliveries (most of which got wasted) but she’s moped about all weekend. She said her friends got designer coats etc and when she told them what she got they said “that’s a bit shit” and was crying telling me this. She’s also got about £200-300 cash of family members so far! I did pre warn her that if her behaviour continued I wouldn’t be getting her any birthday presents but she still confined to swear at me and call me names. We also took her away for the weekend last weekend, we had to cut the trip short due to her behaviour, fighting with her brother and calling me names. AIBU not getting her more gifts? Or expecting her to be grateful for what she DID get?!

Totally agree! I pushed for it as I myself am dyslexic and only got diagnosed 2nd year of uni.

It sounds so tough op.

She sounds like a very unhappy, mixed up girl. I know people are calling her a spoilt brat, yes, but she can't be happy to be behaving this way.

You might get some good support on a teenagers section of the parenting board.

It sounds as though there's a lot going on, losing her dad, the boyfriend, you mention a step daughter so presumably she has a step parent? Sounds like she's using stuff to make her happy and regulate her emotions with all the money from grandparents.

The only other thing I could think to suggest is getting her involved in something outdoorsy. Camping or something sporty, back to basics.

Good luck, hope she does come through it. Lots of teens do and go on to be decent adults.

Thanks so much! There’s been some lovely, interesting & helpful replies on here. I didn’t expect some of the negativity but I will take it onboard all the same! I guess I did ask for it!

I think your daughter’s behaviour sounds awful but on balance, I would have not spent any money on a festival themed birthday and lovely weekend away and told her she could choose one item from expensive birthday list. I obviously don’t know how much all that cost to hire but I know it can be very costly, whereas a new iPhone on contract could work out less. I also agree that a provisional licence at 16 is a waste of money.

That's interesting. My father died when I was a child, my husband's the same. We don't really do birthdays for us, he's worse than me as he is really miserable for about a week or more before his birthday and he's the same at Christmas. Neither of us have ever had a birthday party, both in our 70s.

Pictures of party

Seriously…. I think you have been more than generous Op. My daughter said something extremely rude at Xmas as she didn’t get present she expected, she acted entitled and I thought it was rich that she was so rude considering despite the amount of stuff we do for her she hadn’t even brought us a Christmas card.

No one I know got anything for their 16th (well they might get a bit money and/or a few presents of parents but nothing expensive/designer and no one had a 'party').

I was straight up told by my parents I wasn't allowed a 16th party when I tried to book a function room. My mam was the party QUEEN when I was a kid, I had a huge party every year but that stopped at 12. My DS a teen and there doesn't seem to have been any parties among his peers since primary school either.

Myself and lots of my friends had 18th parties, nothing crazy though. Usually the function room of a pub then onto town to the clubs celebrate being 'legal' finishing back at someones house.

@Mama1209 I think you need to get over the vaping. It’s the least of your worries and quite frankly irrelevant at this point. She’ll find a way to do it.

Concentrate on the big things.

Totally agree! I found out when she was about 14. The agreement we came to was she just wasn’t to bring the vape in the house around my younger children. I won’t give her money for them or buy her them either. She knows I don’t condone it and I keep reminding her and sending her articles etc but I don’t argue with her or try and take them off her etc now. It’s not worth the stress!

Every day I show up and do my best even after her calling me a fat cunt and telling me to kill myself.

I missed that.

And she was allowed to get away with it ??

Any daughter of mine that was so blatantly disrespectful would have consequences like she'd never seen before.

OP, when I was a teenager, I really liked the approach that my best friend’s parents had to money - they were working-class and learning the value of money was really important. Essentially, they matched her contributions. So when she was 16, she got a part-time job and started saving for a car with the idea of collecting about £2000 over a couple of years. When she successfully saved that up, they matched it and got her a 4k car.

And it was like that with everything – cars, presents, Uni money, house deposit, everything. Nothing was completely ‘gifted’ out of the blue because they weren’t wealthy and they wanted her to have a work ethic but if she made a good attempt to do it alone, they would add their own contributions as well. It was a good strategy and now she is extremely sensible with money.

Like what?

LOVE this! Parents of a girl I know did this too. They charged her rent of around £20pm or something small when she got a job, then when she graduated uni they gave her it all back towards a house deposit! We just aren’t at this stage yet as she doesn’t have a job

No she has a younger brother (11) step sister (13) and baby sister (1)

Who's paying for her drinking and vaping?

Yabu on the basis you've created this monster, diva behaviour. What you've given and done is complete and utter over kill for an average birthday, I suspect you've over compensated due to loss of her father however all you've done is create an expectation that's are beyond realistic. I would completely cut back don't keep rewarding poor behaviour.

She actually shouted this at me down the street as I was calling to her to pull her school skirt back down when she left the house! I did ground her and take her phone but she had forgotten all about it by the time she got back from school!

What consequences would you have given?

Phone contract cancelled for a start.

Wash own clothes.

Allowance stopped.

Does she feel pushed out?

That's a big age gap and many teens hate it when their mother has another baby

well op doesn't give her daughter an allowance for starters.

A colleague at work had a daughter like this. She actually pulled her out of that school and put her in another. It was fireworks at first but it worked

It’s confusing how some people like yourself have said I’ve done/ given too much then the other half have said they can understand why it’s shit, shit bracelet, shit party etc I feel like you can’t do right for doing wrong sometimes so you just have to do what you think is best. I just wanted her to have memories of a celebration with her friends and family and a keep sake bit of jewellery for her 16th.

@Mama1209 Have read your posts mostly and I think one of your biggest issues is the grandparents. They are albeit unintentionally undermining you, in their efforts to make up for her late dad. You all need to be on the same page.

The numbers of teens vaping seems to be off the scale and it's difficult to control kids when they have got to that age. She seems to have had a lot of agency too, things like having her boyfriend sleep over at such a young age, and it's hard to pull it back.

At 16, none of my kids would have wanted a birthday party. Maybe you need to rethink? If she had wanted a Pandora bracelet then she would probably have put it on her list? You need to manage her expectations a lot more.

Finally if the GP have money to throw at her, it might be better invested in her actual wellbeing - go privately for therapy, for investigation if you suspect she is ND - that would be money well spent. She needs to get herself a job too - she needs to learn to take some responsibility.

As I often find myself saying here - ignore the catty and nasty comments because these are people who seem to need to validate their own sad little lives by disparaging someone else's. Don't give them airtime. Best wishes.