What could I have done differently? 15yr old no tea

[Oollliivviiaa]

My 15yr old is being vile to me recently. Everything is my fault and some days she will barely speak to me. Yesterday she was awful to me all day. I got a half hearted apology in the evening.

She has taken to moaning about everything we give her to eat. We've asked her what she wants and within reason try to accommodate it (recognising that others have to eat it, time constraints etc). However she just says "I dunno" if we ask her so Ive started just cooking. That always end up with "ugh I dont want it". Tonight I started cooking and she demanded to know what I was cooking. She likes it but if I told her, she would have moaned and I just cant be bothered so I said "it'll be done soon, can you set the table please". She started moaning so I said "it doesnt matter what it is because you'll moan that you dont like it anyway". Not the most helpful comment I know.

Anyway she stormed off to her room because of that comment and has decided shes not going to eat tea (she still doesn't even know what it is!). Her dad went up to tell her it was done and she refused to come down. Ive gone up just to say that if she doesnt eat it, there wont be anything else until breakfast and if she doesn't eat it tonight, it will be reheated for tomorrow's tea. (It reheats well so Im not serving her anything horrible). I wasnt being confrontational or anything like that. She made a sarcastic comment so I just walked away.

She's not come down so I guess shes not having tea.

Its just All. The. Time. It is constant. I am worn out and as awful as it sounds, Im struggling to care that she hasn't had tea (she had a big dinner, she wont starve).

FYI - she refuses to help. Sometimes she wont even stay in the same room as me.

Her dad / my husband is of no use and just sits on the fence. I dont feel like he ever has my back. Yes, that's a husband problem etc etc.

So, how could I have stopped this? What could I have done differently?

Before anyone suggests it, her cooking her own food isnt an option for a myriad of reasons and would actually cause more problems than it solves. Plus, its not really relevant anyway.

@Oollliivviiaa she sounds like my now 25 year old daughter used to be!! I too didn't ask them to do their own laundry as I had a routine and liked ironing (yes, I'm weird!). But she would frequently stomp around and sulk with me and not want to talk and often ended up making her own food. She is now the most amazing, polite, strong, beautiful and well adjusted young woman I could ever wish for so they do grow out of it.

Tips? Remember when they were 3? The tantrums because they were trying to do things but didn't know how? The testing of boundaries as they learned what 'No' meant? This age is the same mentality just a bigger child . One thing I used to do, when she was being particularly obnoxious was to climb on the bed and give her a hug, tell her I would always love her even though she wasn't being very likeable right now, then leave her in peace. She would always try and push me away and tell me to get lost but would generally come downstairs after a while and give me a hug! This worked with her older brothers too when they were being obnoxious teens.

This.

Regardless of whether she can cook or not, she can make some toast or get some fruit / cereal / a snack if she's starving.

"Tea's ready". Doesn't want it? Fine. Sort yourself out then. Move on.

I agree about checking out pda. My daughter has it. I mentioned it upthread. It involves resisting demands and meals with family are a huge demand. These kids do better if you remove the demands as much as possible, so think creatively and offer choices. They need some degree of control or they panic and it comes out like a tantrum. It is autistic spectrum so often goes with difficulties with friendships.

She was a delightful 3 year old. Someone said to me that if they are lovely during their toddler / younger years you will pay for it in their teenage years... yep! 🤣

I will look at those books. I have read the "how to talk..." book and that helped for a while particularly the imagining the ideal situation technique. The de-escalation book sounds useful.

Thank you for all the helpful replies.

Take back control of the situation op. Your dd is playing you like a puppet because you react this way.

Cook food.
No questions or trying to please her.
Serve food.
Deal with result of a clean plate or not.
Put spare food in a lunchbox.
Repeat.
Cut the drama.
This situation will resolve itself when you dont react.
Do not offer alternatives or fanny about trying to please her.

She is 15, not 7.

Was she held back a year? DD is year 9 and they’re all turning 14 not 15.

Sorry to say OP, you are the adult. She is a child. It's your responsibility to research or work out what might work for and with her. Don't humiliate her, not get angry with her.
Take her out maybe, a coffee maybe at the weekend. Be soft and kind with her.
I found with my DS, being able to talk whilst walking side by side is easier for teenagers I've found.

No. Shes year 9 and will be 15 in a few months. Shes the oldest in the year. Its just easier to say shes 15 especially as I wasnt expecting the school thing / GCSEs to be bought up.

Are you 100% sure she’s not ND?

Only as our DD was doing well in school, friends not an issue and then the wheels fell off in year 7 and she was diagnosed in year 8.

A lot of the traits you describe sound very familiar.

__Oh for goodness sake! All or some of your post might be relevant but it doesn’t give DD the right to use her mother as a verbal punchbag, and while ever OP pussyfoots and placates DD she’ll carry on being abusive to her… because she can.
DD needs to learn some respect, we all have life challenges and it doesn’t give us the right to abuse anyone, especially those who are trying their best and who love and care for us. I can’t image how hurtful DD’s behaviour is towards OP, she must be so drained and hurt. I would do bugger all for her until she showed some respect.

And then parents wonder why their kids go no contact as adults.

The mother clearly didn’t parent her effectively if she is this rude, right? - I mean if you believe she can parent her into being nice now by just refusing to do anything for her, why couldn’t she just as easily have fixed the kid’s behaviour before this point?

Ever heard the phrase “Keep doing what you’ve always done and you’ll get what you always got”? If OP doesn’t make the change she will keep being abused by her DD.
Again, if I was OP I would do bugger all for DD until she showed some respect… you get back what you give out.

An update
Ive been trying not to react. Ive been calm and not responding when she is getting nasty but she has now upped it. I was in tears last night after she had gone to bed.
We have given her the option to cook her own tea but she is refusing to. We have come to an "arrangement" with the laundry. It is really, really not working for me. In fact it is causing me so much extra hassle and as predicted, wet and dirty clothes are piling up. It needs to go back to how it was but Ive been avoiding that conversation.
We've given her more independence in her own life which tbh she is stepping up to but I am getting blamed floor everything.
Typical evening - last night she made herself a snack. No worries. A few hours later we asked her to wash up the dishes she'd used for the snack. Ill do it later she screamed. Later came and we reminded her. She kicked off again about how she was too tired. We ignored her while she stomped aboit. Eventually she did the dishes but she was purposely incompetent. There was a pan in the sink and rather than move the pan (we didn't even ask her to wash it) she ran the water full blast on it and got water everywhere. I happened to walk past and noticed so I asked her to move the pan so she didnt get water everywhere. She started shouting about how shes doing her dishes, would we like her to wash our feet too. Ill admit I had to stop myself laughing at that because it would have escalated. I thanked her for doing her dishes she shouted something I didnt hear and then she said that she was moving oit as soon as she is 16, will never speak to us again and will not be coming out of her room whenever we are at home.
Last night she had a protest again and didnt eat. This morning she didnt come out of her room apart from to shower and leave for school so she missed breakfast too. She hates school food so probably wont eat at school. I offered her sone money to get something on the way to school but she threw it on the floor (I didnt pick it up while she was there because she wanyed to see me scrabbling on the floor).
Apart from the food issue which is really, really worrying me Im not sure how much more of this shit I can take.
I know (apart from the food) it sounds not a big deal but its constant. We walked into town on Saturday and all the way in I was getting low level abuse about how I dont love her and dony care about her, Im a dictator and I'll probably poison her food because im an awful parent.

And we have repeatedly told and shown her that we love and care for her so I dont think she actually means it.

Not a good idea to be battling over food with a 15 year old girl -
try to find other ways to communicate with her about her distress / needs / problems that don’t involve food …
or risk in that you have a worse problem - an eating disorder to contend with -

She sounds (and know this won't go down well) an absolute controlling wee nightmare.
Does she treat any one else in her life as poorly as she treats you?

Are there ever any punishments for her behaviour / the way she speaks to you?

Think this last poster has it right, she's abusive, demanding and rude, but gets rewarded by being offered money?
She obviously knows you're stressed about her not eating so is using it to manipulate you.

Our rule is that our DC don’t have to eat what we cook, but there is absolutely zero tolerance for them moaning or being rude about what they get. Don’t like something, just leave it on your plate.

If that was me she wouldn't be getting any tea for a week.

Well done for not laughing. You're right, it only makes things worse. I know that laugh of despair - see my grey hairs?

Hang in there. Think grey rock. Every time you are tempted to comment on something she is doing just then - don't. Really. Don't. Bite your tongue. Walk on by. It sounds as if DD is in a slightly agitated over-alert state most of the time, and in that state any input at all from you - however harmless - is like poking a bear. Don't even thank her for doing the dishes if she's already agitated, well at least not unless she is clearly already looking at you for praise. Thank her at a calm time "I like the way you've been doing the dishes recently".

Even stop trying to intervene to fix things for her if it involves any direct communication, like giving her money right then unless she asks. It's poking the bear. If she is hungry she is hungry, no-one died from missing breakfast and lunch. Let her live her life.

As for food, maybe treat her like a cat: put food down for her at mealtime, if she eats it she eats, if not she can go forage for herself (make a cheese sandwich or a bowl of cereal, get an apple from the bowl) Otherwise food is no longer a topic of conversation.

The moaning on about how you don't love her is just noise. She is self-soothing. Go deaf, stick some headphones on - mental or physical ones - so she can get on with it. What's the purpose of walking to town with her?

Unfortunately your laundry schedule might be too tight to share with her. I would not go for a conversation about it; instead I'd dry all her wet stuff sometime while she's out or in bed and stack the dirty stuff out of the way. And maybe go back to the old way without even discussing it?

Grey rock all the way for all the negative shit. Try to have some nice times with her if you can - is that ever possible? Even if it's just watching telly together and not talking, even that is bonding and you both need it.

Well yes. Which is why she now has the option to cook herself if she wants to. That is actually really, really difficult to arrange for reasons I described earlier but we are trying to. We always have food she will eat.

I hope not!!! I would be so embarrassed if she did.

School are quite happy with her behaviour. Ive never seen any poor behaviour at the clubs she goes to and she has plenty of friends so I dont think so.

I think she takes it all out on me.

Yes but she really doesnt care.
The only thing she cares about is her Walkman but she uses music to regulate herself so I am not willing to remove that.

At the moment she is getting her pocket money on a daily basis purely depending on her behaviour. She hasn't had any for 3 days so is unlikely to be able to go out with her friends on the weekend which will be a big deal for her.