Feel like i cant please my 10 year old

[treesprout124]

Im a single parent to a 10 year old daughter. She has seen her dad regularly since we split (3 years old) and goes for around 2/3 nights a week. I am very active, into eating healthy and exercise. I encourage this for my daughter too. Her father is the opposite. Eats rubbish, doesn’t move and thinks I’m weird for enjoying keeping fit… anyway.

my daughter seems to be getting worse with her mood around going out the house or even for a walk. She has a more than fair amount of time doing what she wants, tv, YouTube, iPad, then when I tell her we’re going out now (park, walk, etc), she has the biggest attitude and melt down about it. Her whole mood changes, she won’t speak, will be miserable and moody, make sh*y comments. It’s like she wants to be sat inside constantly binging her iPad, and because I won’t let her im the worlds worst mum??

her dad will leave her on her iPad constantly, to eat crap and watch tv as much as she wants. I’ve spoken to him Numerous times about this and he doesn’t change.. I don’t know what to do. I’m sick of her ruining the summer holidays. I feel like I don’t want her around me at the moment. Today we’ve had a relaxing morning, she’s had some time on her iPad with friends gaming. We had lunch together and let her know repeatedly we were going out this afternoon together. Lo and behold, soon as it’s past lunch and I tell her to get ready, she’s miserable, making comments. I’ve lost my temper with her massively and told her to get out of my face and go to her room. It’s set the whole tone for the rest of the day and I’m sick to death of it. Sick of pretending she’s not hurting my feelings and making me miserable. Posting because I just feel so fed up.

My advice would be get on, do some things you'd like to do and don't put yourself out to do things that are purely for her. She's probably enjoying them more than she is letting on.

I'm speaking having had a brother who from about age 8-16yo was similar to that.
Dm decided he was terribly depressed and they were going to make sure he had a great summer holiday and was determined to do this.
So she'd take him somewhere, he'd moan all day, then come home and she'd ask if he had a good day and he'd say something along the lines of "boring. I only did it because you made me..."
So she start planning another fantastic day.

Then the day at the end of the holidays where she'd announced another long day out for him and he'd said, as he often did, "I suppose I'll have to go on another boring day for you."

Well something came up and they didn't go. About lunch time he appeared and said wasn't it time to go. When dm said they weren't going there was an almighty strop because actually he did want to go.

There were two things. Firstly he didn't tend to be enthusiastic, and I think dm was unconsciously putting on pressure for him to be, so he reacted going the other way. Secondly, it was a really good way of manipulating dm to do things for him because she thought he'd had another boring day, so she tried to make up by taking him swimming in the evening or playing something he liked.

After that she backed off a lot (to my relief - it was genuinely a very boring holiday for me waiting at home that year) and stopped putting these days on for him. He learnt to be a little bit grateful and not moan quite as much.