AIBU to just let my DD crack on?

[ASundayWellSpent]

I'm struggling with DD11 (nearly 12) so much at the moment and today I just want to give up. She has been lovingly and caringly brought up her whole life, stable childhood with both parents supportive, younger sister who is a breeze and idolises her sister, close grandparents, great school with small class sizes. Ironically I work with children including teens and am closely linked to wellbeing, but I guess its different when it is your own and in the home environment. She has gone through a few different phases of being more difficult/ needing more support, strategies etc, notably at 2, 8 and now again at 11. She was screened as part of a research study when she was 10 for any underlying needs / emotional wellbeing etc and it showed slightly high indicators for anxiety but nothing more. She visited a psychologist for a few sessions last summer (and will be going again starting next week) and they discussed her worries and preocupations with friendship groups but the feedback was generally very positive and no further sessions were recommended at that time. I still have my suspisions that she might be neurodiverse and is masking/ high-functioning due to the high levels of support from home and school.

For the past year since she started Secondary we just seem to be in a constant cycle of her pushing boundaries, making poor choices and putting her attention/ focus / energy into superficial things and not engaging with what is important. She is becoming increasingly defiant and argumentative (feels like every 5 minutes), mainly with me but also with father, sister and even on occasion grandparents. I have explained til I am blue in the face that I would like nothing better than to give her more freedom and let her make her own choices but everytime she is given the opportunity poor choices are made and I have to go back to scaffolding and support which I believe she resents.

After a particularly difficult week I am at my wits end. I have just spent half an hour journalling writing "do what you want, just leave me alone" again and again as it is the only way I can see out right now through my stress fog.

Would it be so terrible for me to make good on the list that I have just written and let natural consequences have their effect, in an attempt to protect my mental health and have at least a break in the constant arguing?

List: Wear what you want, use your computer when you want, wash when you want, leave your stuff where you want, tidy your room when you want, empty your bathrooom bin when you want, study when you want, manage your school stuff however you want, go to sports when you want, give up piano when you want, opt out of family outings when you want, eat whatever/ whenever you want, manage your hygiene how you want, just please give me a break and make the arguing stop before I have a break down?

If she is seeing a psychologist next week OP do you get the opportunity to discuss what is going on with the psychologist.? Will it be an opportunity for you to get any help and guidance as to how to handle your DD's behaviour?

This sounds like very normal teenage girl behaviour to me and very typical. At this age they’re contending with hormones that do affect how they feel and react as well as their age and mixing with other kids the same age at school meaning that they want to test boundaries.

It’s a difficult age but you don’t describe anything that would raise red flags for me if this were my own daughter.

I think pick your battles wisely and you may find life a bit more peaceful.

if you have suspicions of ND have you considered she might have PDA profile? If so you need to change your approach with her and see how she responds.

Whats the hygiene thing? I have an 11 year old. Its a tricky age its not every day. I do stress to him that he must shower on an evening as he is getting older and people can be cruel and he doesnt want to smell.

Is the piano an extra lesson?

I don't think you can follow your list to the letter (unlimited access to screens, school, and basic hygiene are non negotiables and there do need to be some restrictions around food unless she can be trusted to eat a broadly balanced diet herself). But I'd look at areas you can give her more control over to limit friction.

Would it be the end of the world if she gave up piano? Or sat out of some family outings? Or if her room was largely clean but untidy. Try picking your battles and see if it makes life any easier for you all, at least in the short term

She sounds like a totally normal pre teen girl undergoing hormonal changes. Maybe your work is making you over analyse her

Agree she sounds pretty typical. Maybe you should see a psychologist yourself if you're finding it hard to cope?

What specifically is she doing or not doing that’s causing the issues?

I do think some adults have insanely high expectations of behaviour for children and teenagers and forget they are children not tiny adults.

This sounds incredibly hard OP. A stage of parenting I haven’t yet reached so I can’t talk from that side of the experience, but if I were to have any thoughts it would be that to follow through with what you have written in your journal would not give your daughter much emotional containment. Showing her that there are safe boundaries and consequences and behaviours that aren’t acceptable might give her a sense that somebody is in charge and has responsibility for her which ultimately will make her feel safe and held and lead to better wellbeing in the future. Those are my thoughts based on my own experience as a teen but of course I don’t know the details of your setup so do take it with a pinch of salt! X

Normal teenage behaviour is not morning an 11 year old

It's not clear what the specific issues / examples are? What "poor choices" does she make. You really do have to pick your battles, for example, basic hygiene, studying, keeping room in a hygienic state. if she wants to stop piano, fine why would you argue with that?
Sending her to psychologist over friendship group worries seems massively OTT. i think you might need to look at your own anxiety and expectations.

Sorry I don’t understand your post.

The thing is if you do let go of all the things on your list, it won't necessarily make the arguing stop! But I wonder if you could let some go and not others. It's a difficult age I think, my DD is 11 and had loads of tears this morning about what to wear to school 🤷🏻‍♀️ I think sometimes they lean more grown up at this age and the next day they're still a little kid.

Sorry you're having a difficult time with her OP.

I say this gently, but this does sound like typical preteen/teen behaviour that's developmentally normal. Your list sounds pretty extensive there, you need to remain on top of the important ones and hand her control of the rest. So for me I'd remain firm on school work, Internet access/screens and personal hygiene and let her decide on the rest with the condition she is respectful of others and your home.

Could you access some therapy for yourself? It sounds like you have perfectionist tendencies you're forcing on to your daughter.

No, you know at 11 just letting her do whatever she wants knowing that it will implode on her is a terrible idea. This is not likely to give her a wake up call, it will just make everything more overwhelming for her and then make it harder to get out of the cycle once that has happened. It is unlikely that she will ask for help. She will just

OTOH I understand the current situation can't continue. You need some kind of shift. Certainly some of the things in your list can be let go (wear what you want?) or some of the things you could take over, short term (emptying bins?) in the spirit of lowering demand/reducing conflict.

Something I've found really helpful in parenting is the idea of division of responsibility. We cannot control the actions of another person, and even though conventional parenting wisdom seems to suggest that we ought to be able to control our children, it's true even for children. All we can realistically control is the environment, what they have access to, and then our response to their behaviour.

DoR usually applies to eating - with the focus being that we can provide regular, healthy/balanced meals (control environment) but children will choose how much and whether they want to eat, and most of the time this works because humans have an instinctive drive to eat so even if they have a few mealtimes where they don't eat very much, for the vast majority of children they will balance out and not starve themselves.

I think you can apply this to various things, and it definitely helps take the pressure off you.

However it can fall down a bit when ND is involved because to go back to the feeding example, children may have severe sensory issues around food. In this case it would be a cue to seek professional support. When that's happening around multiple issues, then it's trickier especially in the UK where waiting lists can be so long that by the time you ever get to see anybody the problems have all exacerbated each other and become tangled up. Because you have multiple issues happening and generally high levels of conflict, I would probably say it's worth pushing to see whether any referrals can be made in this direction.

Have you come across the Ross Greene collaborative problem solving approach before? It's in The Explosive Child which is the most famous/well known of his books so you might have read this, but there is another book called Raising Human Beings which also explains the same approach without the focus on explosive behaviour. It's essentially a format where you list all the things you're currently fighting about, as you've done, and then triage and drop the demand on basically all of them temporarily, and then for the highest priority most urgent unsolved problem, you explore with DD at a completely unrelated, calmer moment, what's getting in the way of that unsolved problem, which is usually different to what you originally assumed.

This is only a very brief summary but I don't have time to explain more, I can probably come back tomorrow. I don't think it will solve everything, but it might be worth looking at as an approach.

You might also want to report the thread and ask it to be moved to the SN board so you don't get lots of replies insisting you need to make the house into a military discipline camp.

Try a compromise first, maybe say the things that affect her only, her hygiene, her room etc, do those when she wants, but the things she should do as part of the family, such as emptying the bin, are non-negotiable

I felt exactly like you when my now 13.5 yr old was 11/12. It was horrible, every day I ended up in tears. Same stable background, supported and loved by both parents. but the battles were incessant (I bore the brunt)

A year later and I got my normal lovely child back, I can only put it down to hormones.

I really hope it passes for you soon too. Just wanted to post to say you’re not alone.

Too much freedom? When exh had literally no boundaries for our 2 ds's they came and lived with me full time. They wanted parenting. Their own words at 12 and 14. .
Now 22 and 24....well adjusted adults.

I have a similar age DD and similar struggles. I think you need to drop some battles and focus on the essentials. For me it's school. We have dropped the piano (for same reason), and I don't care what she wears as long as it's not vulgar or unnecessarily revealing (no very short skirts etc). If it's ugly, I don't care. Her room isn't tidy, but she is not allowed to have food there.
And I don't care about her hygiene (to be fair, she is almost the other extreme on this). But if she didn't wash and stank, her peers would soon let her know. I think that's a 'safe' ball to drop.

List:
Wear what you want
Re. school uniform, buy all the right stuff, then let the school handle it if she doesn't wear the right stuff in the correct manner
Re. going out shopping on a Saturday, or visiting relatives, as if dressed for the beach - yes, let it go. She will learn not to embarrass herself in time.

use your computer when you want
No, being online is like crack cocaine. You have to enforce screen-free time and provide other activities.

wash when you want
Yes, her friends will tell her if she stinks.

leave your stuff where you want
No, but not worth nagging about. Have a big box or trug in a corner downstairs and dump all her random stuff in there.

tidy your room when you want
Yes, it is her room. Shut the door if it starts to smell in there.

empty your bathroom bin when you want
What? She has her own dedicated bin in the bathroom?
Whoever is cleaning the bathroom should empty all the bins.
She should be on the rota for some housework tasks, not necessarily bathroom cleaning though.

study when you want
Yes. Let her teachers handle it if she fails to do her homework.
Fully support the teachers whenever she gets a detention.

manage your school stuff however you want
Yes. Let the teachers handle it if she doesn't have the correct stuff.

go to sports when you want
Yes, except if it is paid termly and she fails to attend regularly, just don't pay the next term and she loses her place. She can't be half-in-half-out.

give up piano when you want
Yes absolutely

opt out of family outings when you want
Only when childcare is not a problem. You can't leave her home alone, but if one parent is home, the other parent shouldn't force her to come out.

eat whatever/ whenever you want
Yes, but don't buy too much sugary junk, so her options are limited to what is in the house. Put her on a rota for preparing family meals - this is an important life skill she should be taught, and she gets to choose what to cook

manage your hygiene how you want
Yes, see above, friends will tell her when she stinks

So in summary, with the exception of screen time, stop nagging her or bossing her over her personal choices and start giving her real family responsibility on a housework rota and cooking rota.

Eleven year old girls can be awful. I recommend gin for you. Between the body growing, the brain going through massive development and school, basic manners can be in just the too hard basket. Emotions are enormous in size.

So, work out what you are prepared to be a little more relaxed about, what you are a lot relaxed about and what you deem essential. Pick your battles. Never give in to “but everyone else does it” without finding out from other parents the truth.

After all that, enforce your boundaries. Teenagers need strong boundaries. They need to know what’s not negotiable. Be strong and consistent and your dh needs to be on exactly the same page.

Lots of drives in the car are good. Kids talk better when they are not having to talk face to face. Plenty of food. Remember to get plenty of water into her. It’s really hard to recognise that you might be thirsty.

This stage of life will not last but it must be got through.

I did wonder about the younger dd “who is a breeze”? Does your elder dd feel that she is second best?

I agree with all this.

Sorry but this is parenting! You cannot just opt out of it. 2, 8 and 11 are normal milestones to have challenging or new boundary pushing behaviour. You seem so eager to have her diagnosed with a problem so you wash your hands off her to the world you have an excuse. I think you need to visit someone to talk to about coping with motherhood. Your daughter sounds absolutely normal, this is standard puberty it's your attitude that is the problem here not her.

List: Wear what you want, use your computer when you want, wash when you want, leave your stuff where you want, tidy your room when you want, empty your bathrooom bin when you want, study when you want, manage your school stuff however you want, go to sports when you want, give up piano when you want, opt out of family outings when you want, eat whatever/ whenever you want, manage your hygiene how you want

I didn't give a shit about most of those things, and I now have 2 daughters, 15 and 21, both lovely people, very successful high-fliers, who now do all of those things out of choice.
Hygiene - younger DD didn't wash enough for a few months, but she soon learned when the other kids at school started commenting.
Sports/music: these are supposed to be leisure activities, if she doesn't enjoy them why on earth would you force her to keep doing them? At age 11 my DD2 did virtually nothing, now age 15, she's completely self-taught on the piano, can easily play grade 8 pieces, plays guitar, sings, and has bought herself various other instruments out of her own money. I never once forced her to a single music lesson, and she point blank refused piano lessons. I was forced to do "hobbies" and grew up with a very distorted view of "hobbies", as in, I genuinely thought they were things to be endured, not enjoyed.
Both my DDs (and me) have always eaten whatever we want, I've never restricted anything, we're all slim. For the vast majority of children, their body will crave savoury food if they've eaten too much sweet food or whatever.
Tidying - don't really care what their room looks like, they soon learn that a tidy room is easier. My rules have been that they don't eat in their bedrooms at all, so avoiding food being left and going mouldy in there, and they let me in to clean, if I decide I want to clean (I like cleaning).
Computer - don't care - as long as they get school stuff done, they can use it as much as they like, DD2 is a big gamer. I'm a techy, my job involves writing AI code, I love computers and what they can do, what's so bad about them? It's a good career and I earn plenty, for sitting on my arse at home writing code, 100% flexibility.

The main thing I was super strict on, was school - they had to go to school.