blazing rows with 11 yr old daughter

[jellybelly25]

I would like to know how people stop themselves losing their rag when faced with an attitudey child who refuses to take responsibility for her m istakes (e.g. taking homework to school and not handing it in - a minor example) and chooses instead to have a massive go at me for even being annoyed in the first place.

She really knows how to distract me and push my buttons and I do often end up screaming at her which is awful. I want to know how people keep their cool when dealing with these situations?!!

It is true.

Fuck it is the way to go.

jelly -

my dd is uber organised, organised to the point of scary, she is always way ahead of everything and all is planned and ready. She is very neat and all her homework is not only done, but presented beautifully. She is very clever. I am like this (largely, not the cleverness or presentation...).

My ds lives on his own special ds planet, he walks along trailing belongings/school books etc and loses at least one pe kit a week. His work is just terrifying - pens blot across pages, pages have fallen out, files have collapsed, books are lost. He never ever knows what is going on, who anyone is, where he has to be etc etc. He is very clever.

Neither can help what they are, I just have to work with it. With ds his teachers despair of his organisation (but love his ability) and say that he must do this and do that. I smile pleasantly and say, well, good luck with that, because He Can't Help It.

We are all different, we can only try and help them the way they are and try and come up with strategies to help them manage life according to their individual personalities.

Or kill them.

I don't do guilt.

Why do you do that??

With the clothes - don't tell her what to do, it's guaranteed to cause conflict.

Say, hey, you look nice! You know, it's up to you, but I don't know if you've realsied people can see your knickers? If you don't mind, that's fine, but do be aware people might laugh.

See her run up the stairs to get dressed...or go out like that, get the consequences, and choose not to do it again.

Anecdote: today was non-uniform day, and as I was leaving with the necklace, I got a call from secretary saying that the TEACHER (the moany one) had forgotten that they needed their uniform just for the afternoon for a special trip she and three others are going on as the school's most notorious bookworms, and could I bring that. So I went back in and got the uniform which by some MIRACLE, dd had hung up - skirt, tights, shirt and jumper, NEATLY on the SAME HANGER, as though it was just ready to go... Amazing (I thought I was going to have to root around under the bed/in washing basket etc). I felt really pleased with her that she'd done that.

Hurray!

See, amazing bookworm, her mind is on better things. Be grateful!

Jelly....just an off the wall thought, but I wonder if your DD is dyspraxic? I have a very dyspraxic daughter and know that it is often very difficult to diagnose in girls: its not unusual foe them to be diagnosed in their teens or even twenties, after history of getting into trouble at school for daydreaming/being forgetful/misplacing kit/forgetting instructions etc. My DD would have left the gift on the table because she is poor at sequencing the get bag ready/clean teeth/find shoes/brush hair/leave house without mum shouting routine that happens every day! She's 8 btw. many dispraxic children are mislabelled as lazy, forgetful or disorganised when they simply have poor short term memories. DD has a fantastic long term memory and performs well academically, but is very uncoordinated so was easy to spot, but other children I am aware of were harder to identify. Just a thought.

Guilt? Why? I dunno! I wish I could help it but I can't!

Yeah maybe re the clothes, but I would not put it past her to say she doesn't care that everyone can see her knickers. And then do you step in or not? That's the dilemma for me. She's worn my top to school today, lol - I am about four times the width of her

she sounds like your ds. and like me when i was younger...

I just know that dd2 is going to be the opposite - she will be standing on my belly when I am still asleep, fully dressed (not always in entirely appropriate attire, mind) and ready to go to nursery. she knows which day is football day (trainers) and which day is forest school (boots). I dunno how, it's just in her. So you're right, I know she can't help it.

I think it's also the fear of her having a miserable time at secondary school when she forgets her homework all the time that makes me so desperate to get her more organised this year...

jelly, let her go out in her knickers, she'll learn! Mine wear astonishing things to school sometimes, I smile sweetly and leave it up to the teachers to tell them off...

When ds was little he went to school with ten sparkly hairclips in his hair (bless). I did warn him, but he wanted to. He didn't do it again (shame).

BCBG that is not a bad idea - the thought has crossed my mind previously but I thought so many of the classic signs eg terrible handwriting, unco-ordination were missing that it couldn't be that.

It is that sequence that she can't do - it's like the fact that it's the same EVERY DAY has had no impact whatsoever - the cleaning teeth thing - I am dippy, but I don't forget that I need to clean my teeth...

Lol ok. I will try that. (ANd die from embarrassment on her behalf). I'll let dh fetch her next time she tries that lol. Better go get dd2 from nursery. Have failed miserably to do any work today at all.

The other thing with secondary school (my ds is there) is that they are used to kids like these, she won't be the only one..

hully & pag are right, we have to let our children experience things (like embarrassment at sartorial choices) or they will turn into those horrendous 20-somethings who still get their mums running around after them and are unable to take responsibility for their own lives. They are learning all this from an early age, they can make decsisions, we can calmly point out an alternative (with a reason) and they do what they think is best. I find that the thing I am shouting about is rarely the thing I am angry about so I try to take a step back and think 'am I shouting about what happened last week/night?' whatever, and get some perspecive on whether it actually matters.

Jelly, I do think it is possible, as sequencing is one of the hardest tasks for dyspraxics! I make very sure that I don't give DD a series of instructions and I accept that some daily tasks will always need a reminder. Another key indicator is that dyspraxic children often have no concept of time in e way that most people do: they can tell the time confidently but it is meaningless. If I say to DD 'hurry up or we will miss the bus' she will just explode because she feels stressed but doesn't understand it. if I say to her please clean your teeth; we need to leave in ten mins, she will wander off and may or may not clean her teeth depending on wether or not something distracts her on the way. If I point to the clock and say it's quarter to 8 so we need to leave the house now (to be on time for the bus) she will clean her teeth quite happily because 'now' is an elastic term meaning complete tasks and go!!! We have a great friend whose daughter was excluded from three secondary schools for being disruptive, not attending lessons on time, being stroppy when challenged and being permanently without whatever work was required. Her handwriting was untidy but nothing unusual and she wasn't uncoordinated, but her clothes assembly was unique to say the least .... She was finally diagnosed at 16 and it made all the difference to her.

Pag - I had exactly the same thing with DD and a mufti day. We drove past a boy at the bus stop and DD mused about why he was not wearing his uniform. Then we got to school and she realised it was a non-uniform day. I told her she would just have to live with it, but, it was also her birthday and she had iced buns to take around the school, and I just didn't have the heart to let her be the only one in uniform.

Amazed at your DD OP, hanging her uniform up.

Parenting is such a tightrope walk sometimes.

Hmmm. Now I am wondering about my hideous guilt.
It may be being a catholic. It may be post ds2
They were some tough years and I still feel bad about what ds1 went through. And I never feel I do enough for ds2

I had a shit upbringing tbh for reasons not much to do with my parents. Well maybe a bit.
I get insomnia and whilst I am very happy during the day, when I am awake at night I endlessly worry about how shit I am and all the things I could do better.

I need to drink more don't I?

I would like to ditch the guilt. I must work on that.

BCBG

Whoa I think you are onto something. I had that exact discussion with her maths teacher yesterday - she can look at a clock and work out what the time is by a learned method, but it literally means nothing to her. It's either right bloody now or next week as far as she's concerned. 'Ten minutes' means nothing at all. I keep saying to her that she must still look at the clock all the time to check how close she is to 'leaving time' etc but it just doesn't make any sense to her at all. It's like she has to reinvent the wheel everytime she looks at the clock. She's very capable academically in everything except maths, which she's average at. But within maths, she can do lots of very complicated things, but not tell the time....

Pag - I used to be an insomniac too! Horrid...

My daughter is just like this and nearly 17! Never forgotten what I call a 'no clothes' day though!

Hmm...might be worth seeking advice - and don't get fobbed off by anyone who tells you she's fine or like my GP a couple of years ago who said that dyspraxia was a middle class term to describe children who were a little bit different (had to eat his words a year later but that's another story ) .. Maybe google ? Like I said the time thing is very typical of dyspraxia, and nothing, absolutely nothing will be helped just by your DD remembering to look at the clock a thousand times a day if the concept of chunks of time is missing!

BCBG I second everything you say. I had exactly the same problems with DD1 and I just couldn't walk away, or ask her to go to another room. If I was cooking she would stand there obstinately and continue yelling, if I walked away to another room she would follow me, frequently barricading the door with her body so that I would have had to use unacceptable force should I have attempted to leave, demanding that we "have this out now!"

She was at a private music school and was constantly in trouble for being late for lessons, not having the right materials, forgetting to hand in coursework/prep, losing coursework/prep etc. right through 6th form. She failed to "achieve her potential" in exams because she just couldn't seem to "pace" herself through them and habitually left papers unfinished.

I lost count of the times I spoke to her tutors/housemistress but always got the same response: because she was such a talented musician there was "obviously" nothing wrong with her coordination so she "couldn't" be dyspraxic.

After a long illness during upper 6th, which meant she lost more than half her classroom time, she left, having sailed through Music but having only just scraped through one of her other A levels and failed the other two.

She enrolled at a local state 6th form college to retake one A2 and start 3 new AS courses and I went in with her to speak to her tutor about the problems she'd been having. She was tested, found to be dyspraxic, and immediately given extra help with exam technique and they applied for her to have extra time in the exams. She is now definitely "achieving her potential" and to see her developing into such a happy, self-confident young woman just does my heart good!

Frantic I am so glad your DD is now doing well and I hope Jelly sees your post too: my daughter also has dyslexia so saw an Ed Psych who also told me that girls get missed more than boys because they can present in a less obvious way, and its interesting that your DD can play instruments: my DD can play a recorder but struggles with the piano (which she just does for fun at home) because when her right hand is picking out a tune her left hand is often 'mirroring' the action .

BCBG That was the problem, she was so very talented musically; Grade 8 distinction on the violin at age 12, the same on the piano at age 13, they just found it impossible to believe there could be anything wrong. But, when she started to study the organ, she really just couldn't grasp the pedals!

The same thing with tennis. She started playing on a holiday in Portugal when she was just 6 and she and DS loved it so much they asked if they could carry on when we got home. They were both pronounced "promising", hand/eye co-ordination fantastic etc until the coaches started to move them around the court. Although DD's strokes were every bit as good as her brother's , she just couldn't get herself into the right position to address the ball!

I tried for years to get the school to take my concerns seriously. It didn't help though that I got no support from her father who "didn't want his daughter labelled abnormal"!

I've been in a number of times about the maths/time thing. I even thought she had dyscalculia (sp?) but I think this is more likely. She's also musical - plays clarinet very well considering she only started a year ago, and she is an awesome dancer. But before she started kickboxing/dancing she was unbearably unco-ordinated... She would fall over just whilst standing talking to you! (This is aged about 6-7ish?) I thought the kickboxing/dance had sorted the co-ordination but it may have just masked it, in a good way iyswim.

I think because she's so good at so many physical things (loves cricket, netball etc - can't shoot but can defend fiercely ) I don't see that trait, but the other stuff I've seen on the couple of websites I've found sounds just like her. She gets really embarrassed by the time thing because people will arrange to meet her halfway to school and she just says yes but has no idea what it means (e.g. 'twenty to') but goes along with it because she feels silly. Poor lass. We are working so hard on it but perhaps should approach it differently.

So how do you go about getting tested?

I just went into the college and talked to the tutor. She arranged to have her tested within a couple of weeks.

The maths/time thing seems to be a recurring theme. She was brilliant at maths up to the age of about 11/12, always top of the class, knew all her tables by the age of 7 etc. As soon as it became more applied she began to lose ground. By the time she got to GCSE she could only manage a B grade, and she really did work hard.

Even now, she has issues with time keeping. If I need to be out of the house with her by, say, 9am I'll always tell her we need to leave at 8.30 (She is aware of this and laughs about it herself and indeed has got into the habit of telling herself the same)