Hi all… New member.
I have half-time custody of a 15-year-old girl, who on one hand can be a very nice smart and talented kid, but on the other hand can be a raging maniac who can be verbally abusive & completely self-centered.
Does this sound familiar to any of you?
History:
The two houses that she lives in are very different. Her mother’s house is very high anxiety, has had a history of verbal spars back-and-forth, although her mother would do anything for this kid, perhaps too much. Her mother makes good money, and will pretty much buy her anything that she wants or asks for. Me on the other hand, I barely have a penny to spare, so I can do a little of almost nothing financially for this kid.
I think her mother’s anxiety is manifested in her buying things to keep her kid happy, and I think it is backfiring. My lack of money manifests in my kid being very anxious over my house, because she doesn’t get what she wants here, and she has to contribute by buying her own things and taking care of her own affairs. It’s a tough fit over here because of that.
Over the last six months, she has decided to advocate for not living here as much, and staying with her mother, where she says she feels safer. My house is old, there are bugs here, it’s a big old house… I think she has a fair amount of irrational anxieties.
For about the last month and a half, things have been going fairly well here. I’m starting to ease up with confrontation, which I almost never instigate… Her mother wants to put her into an outpatient mental health program, which I have been advocating against, and acting as a buffer between her and her mother, who has been off the charts with anxiety over the last month or so because of this kid’s mental health.
She has had episodes of cutting over the last year, which complicates matters. It’s our understanding that cutting is fairly common with girls her age, and it is become almost a little bit of a fad.
This kid is also not used to hearing no. Here’s where the current crisis heats up.
She has a couple of guys that she is circulating around. She doesn’t make and maintain friends easily, and often has a lot of people that don’t care for her, because she acts like a punk, alienates people, and walks around with a chip on her shoulder. One of these guys has been her acting boyfriend for about the last four months.
We have learned that she has been engaging in sexual activity as of late, which is of no surprise, but it has gotten to the point where she is flaunting it, and engaging in risky behavior online, like sending nudes, etc.
We had a fantastic weekend, and I invited her to help out as part of a staged musical for kids that I was involved with, with kids a handful of years younger than she is. At the end of the production, she was brought to the stage and basically swarmed with kids who just loved her. I thought all was good.
On the way home in the car, she basically told me she was going to have her boyfriend over to the house the next day, which I thought was fine, but there would be expectations… Her mother and I had decided that if her boyfriend comes over, they remain in a common area downstairs in the living room and not upstairs underneath the covers in the bedroom, which is what had happened several times before, which neither her mother and I thought was a good idea. I told her I was not going to be a part of her sexual conduct with her boyfriend in my house. Neither was her mother.
As a result of this new expectation, she went absolutely ballistic, and started to become verbally abusive. A few minutes later when we got home, I disengaged, and she called her mother screaming and sobbing to come get her because I was an effing asshole, and she doesn’t want to live here anymore. Her mother has turned a corner and basically told her that she needs to work this out with me, which I thought was a good strategy, considering that she had previously caved in to this kid, and has even said she thinks the kid should have a say in where she lives. This kid sat in the car, screaming at her mother at the top of her lungs obscenities and sobbing. I stayed away from it.
Then, about 20 minutes later, she stormed into the house and went into her room and began talking with a boy that is not her boyfriend, which is causing problems in that relationship… And I could kind of hear her swearing my name and saying all kinds of nasty things about me as her father.
About an hour later, I went into her room, and she seemed to be calm and on her phone, so I went and sat on the bed next to her, but she covered up her face as she was on her phone, and I quietly began to try to stroke her shoulder and to say something nice to her, and she basically said something nasty to me so I left the room.
Her mother and I were very anxious that she may try to hurt her self again, although she seemed stable. Her mother still insists she needs some sort of outpatient or inpatient program to help this kid learn strategies. I tend to think the kid is too young to fully accept what would happen in a program like that and just rebel even more. Provided we could even get her there.
So what’s my question? Have any of you encountered behavior like this? Certainly are there any considerations I should be thinking of moving forward with this kid to prevent this kind of outburst, and potentially self harm?
She has a therapist that she really likes, and I think the therapist is good, but the therapist has also crossed the line several times, in what I think was a divisive and unprofessional manner. But, her therapist believes that she should be able to choose to stay with her mother over me if that’s what she wants. I tend to think what she wants should be of lower value then what is best for her, and I don’t believe her living with her mother is necessarily what’s best for her. It’s a highly charged environment over there, and I think living there exacerbates the problems that may have caused this kid the kind of anxiety she has in the first place. That is certainly arguable, but that’s my thought on it.
I’m trying to remain calm, and I always give her enough space to try to be herself, but now she thinks she can just dictate what she can do, and treat her parents like complete punching bags. It was such a bizarre change from the responsible decent girl that everyone loved at the musical over the last week, to the complete crazy verbal assault a couple of hours later in the car. I just can’t wrap my mind around all of this.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts!