DD13 told us to f*** off.

[GoldenRoses25]

I have name changed for this.
It's late - 10 15pm and she's upset because I won't order a Pandora bracelet as they put the price up from this morning. I told her it may be Black Friday but retailers still do dynamic pricing.

She had been given a £35 voucher but that doesn't cover the cost of a charm bracelet. I was going to pay the extra but I said we'd wait now.

I think she gets grounded and doesn't go out tomorrow with friends
DH thinks I'm always dangling punishments over her. I have a tricky relationship with her, that's true and I know I can be quite punitive. However I don't think such bad language can be ignored.

Any advice appreciated
Screen ban doesn't seem sufficient.

I responded to your OP but reading further you sound like my mother.

I was a troublesome baby with (what I now know was) silent reflux, my mother had no treatment of understand of her PPD andloathed me and made that very clear throughout my life. My sister was a chubby smiley wee thing and was the favourite. Its only now that I am able to be the carer, when my sister is not, that I am appreciated.

Your DD knows that you dont love her, like her or want her around. She wants you to show her that you do love her etc by keeping your promise and you havent. So you have proved that you dont care about her. To her money is more important to you than she is.

She needs therapy more than you.

You absolutely need to follow through on punishment for swearing at you - that is completely unacceptable and she needs to know that. Perhaps she has to wait until next birthday or milestone for her bracelet. Its not so much the swearing but the lack of respect that it shows.

But it sounds like you need to really work on your relationship with her. Do weekly fun stuff together - late night shopping, cinema, go for ice-cream, whatever. Sounds like you dont like each other very much, and its probably a good idea to try to change this before she gets much older - or the rest of her teens are going to miserable for you both.

It really isn’t.

stop spewing hate about your daughter and get some proper help, the therapist you have is clearly not working.

I’m sorry OP but it sounds more like a you issue rather than DP. Not only are you projecting your bad childhood but also your horrific birth experience, added to that you have also bonded with your disabiled child.
In no way do I mean this as judgement but how must your daughter be feeling when she is going through puberty herself & hormones are flying.
Try & put yourself in her shoes remembering you are the adult here & you spend a lot of time with your other child.(completely understandable)
Maybe imagine she’s a toddler acting out to get attention, what would you do?
I would suggest try calmly talking when you are both in better head space.
Best of luck there’s no manual for parenting. Xxx

I think this is pretty unfair of you honestly. She shouldn’t be swearing at you but the more you overreact to it the more it’s likely to continue as she knows it gets a reaction. I’d treat the swearing like a toddler and say that’s not acceptable and then ignore it.

Why would you want to do something they you admit isn't working?
You need to interrupt the toxic cycle, you're the adult, don't except your DD to do it. She's struggling with a mother who doesn't like her /hasn't liked her her whole life,.on top of all the usual 13 years old difficulties.

Why are you angry at her still and want to punish her so much?

I think it sounds like she has a pretty tough go of it actually between your time and attention being elsewhere and you still bringing up your pregnancy and labour when she is 13!!! That part isn’t normal or ok at all?! She isn’t the cause of the hard pregnancy or labour. She probably has a hard time of it as a sibling of a disabled child too. I can see why she also got frustrated you didn’t have enough time for her to measure her wrist as agreed and then you are punishing her by now refusing to order it, when she hadn’t done anything to warrant that. It’s shitty of you.

I agree with everyone else to sleep on it. I think a talk and grounding is fine. You made a mistake, but she felt like you were being careless with something that meant a lot to her. However, it’s a bracelet and her reaction was horrendous. I know the bracelet meant a lot to her, but if she already has a lot of her needs and wants met, then it verges on being entitled. You are allowed to mess up occasionally without being told to F off.

If you feel like the relationship is adversarial, you should try to see her perspective when you chat with her. Be calm and willing to see her side. Repeat what she says back to her in your own words so she knows you’re listening. Then both of you say your apologies. Afterward, reflect on what she said and try to implement her suggestions in your actions.

Also, try to hang out with her more often and build a stronger bond (if your work schedule gives you the time to do so). If you’ve got a heavy work schedule, tell her and still try to make time for her and make her feel heard. Be open and honest.

Ultimately, she can’t speak to loved ones like that, and setting a boundary will be healthy for her. Take what I said with a mountain of salt since I’m not a parent, just a daughter.

I also don’t think your dd’s life sounds particularly nice. Yes, she may have nice things. But by the sound of it, she’s got an emotionally unavailable mum, who flips easily and a severely disabled sibling, who she will undoubtedly see as the favourite child as due to their needs, they get all the energy focused on them.

Having nice stuff is very different from having a nice life. And it sounds as if your dd is permanently walking on egg shells, not knowing when a bomb is going to go off. Ie you. A prepubescent child will try to contain the bomb. Not so a hormonal teen and in this case, it is totally normal that she explodes, creating the bomb. I did it as a teen myself and was punished for it all the time when actually most of the anger was my mother’s stuff. And I get that’s really easily done as I’ve very occasionally fallen into the trap myself of being punitive against my teen dd because of my stuff. And then I’ve had to apologise for messing up. Because when I’ve calmed down, I can see it’s me, not her.

My advice is to talk to your dd. Lean into what you want instead of pushing her away. Tell her you messed up and she then overreacted and you're not going to punish her for swearing at you. However, you want to find a better way of going about all this stuff because you’re both getting really angry and it’s not good for your relationship. And you love her. And want things to be better. And you ask her to work with you on that. Then reassure her you’ll get the bracelet by x deadline, eg Christmas latest even if you have to pay full price.

If otoh, you punish, all you’ll end up doing is creating a terrible dynamic between you and your dd. And you haven’t even entered the trickiest teenage stage, because at 13, she’s only just starting to be at an age, where she really needs you. And girls especially push away from their mums. It’s a natural and normal process and she will probably get meaner before she gets better and you don’t want to be ruining the relationship in the process.

Your dd will soon be spreading her wings and she will need you to be there for her if she’s had too much to drink, taken drugs, if she’s in a very sticky situation with a boy, abusive relationship, if she’s pregnant, miscarrying, been raped and so forth. And if sounds as if you and your dh haven’t yet worked out her to enforce good boundaries to keep your kids safe. Try the book ‘how to talk to teens so teens will listen and listen so teens will talk’. I haven’t read it but the younger kids stuff was great and it’s been recommended on here as a good guide.

I know some people will say what I’m suggesting is so permissive, their parents wouldn’t have put up with that, their parenting didn’t do them any harm etc. The difference being that if you have a good connection with your parents, they can get away with messing up more. And people parented differently in the past to now. And you have already said you and your dd do not have a good connection at the moment.

So I am not suggesting permissive parenting. I’m suggesting firm boundaries and parenting with love. Quite simply, the world has changed. Our kids now expect us to be emotionally intelligent and parent them in an emotionally intelligent way. This is such new territory for most of us because most of our parents won’t have come across emotional intelligence cso we are playing catch up, having to go out and learn it all.

And to your dh: please, never, never punish with food. That’s incredibly dangerous and can lead to life long food issues, even eating disorders and you really don’t want your dd to suffer any of this. Eating disorders are horrendous.

She swears because she's beyond frustrated, and she is trying to get you to hear and take note of that.

She's frustrated because she's a child and she has no real control over her life - you hold all the cards.

She likely senses your resentment, you resent her for things that are entirely outside her control and are in the past - that is deeply unfair and I really hope you know that.

I feel like you also resent her for not being hugely grateful that she isn't severely disabled, but from her point of view, she can't be hugely grateful that she has a sibling who almost certainly gets the lions share of attention AND listened to properly AND isn't punished or yelled at all the time...

So no I don't think she has a 'nice life' at all, I think she has an incredibly frustrating emotional rollercoaster of a life, beyond what most early teens have.

Does she have a coping strategy for when she is frustrated - you expect her not to swear at you (something you do when you are frustrated and do in front of her, so you are expecting more of her than you can manage yourself), but what alternative does she have?

Does she have a pillow she can thump, a punch bag, my sister used to go to the shed and lop lumps off an old log with a small axe, I had my drum kit.

You need to talk to her calmly, listen to her, admit when you've fucked up and apologise, and offer coping strategies because she is not old enough to do that for herself yet.

You dont have long to fix this before it dawns on her that attempting to control herself and do right will largely go unnoticed and will be overridden by any error she makes and so she may as well be as bad as you all clearly think she is.

Could not agree more! No child of mine would ever speak like that to any adult including parents.

OP just because she is an angel at school and high performing (zero relevance to having manners and politesse) her behaviour at home is completely unacceptable.

Yeah the punishment happens but for me it would be no bracelet. Entitled, rude behaviour has to be addressed.

You called your child a lazy cow?! Or did I misunderstand that?

You say you've been getting therapy, OP? Perhaps seeing a parenting coach might be more productive use of the money, at least for a short while.

Parenting coaches talk to the parents and help them work out strategies to deal with specific parenting situations etc.

Maybe have a google and see if there's one you like the look of?

So you dont think that the DD not being liked or wanted by her own mother, and her younger sibling being openly preferred is ok?

This kid is SCREAMING to be heard!

How does she sound spoiled?. Her mother (who didn't deny it when she said her DH thinks she's always dangling punishments over their daughter) counts having a tough pregnancy with her and her non stop crying as a baby as part of them having a tricky relationship and it doesn't sound like she gets a lot of attention due to her parents being busy with taking care of a disabled child, ill parents and working.

She shouldn't have sworn but she's not completely to blame for the fight. Anyone would get angry if someone made an agreement with them then broke it; the OP should have been upfront with her that if the price changed, she would have to wait to get the bracelet.

Telling your parents to 'f off' isn't quite the same though, is it?

Depends on how insecure you are I suppose.

As the former child in this relationship, don’t overdo it. Have a proper conversation about respect, and fair enough make her wait for the contribution but grounded on top of that seems too much.

Use of expletives to express anger is natural when they’re testing out boundaries. The harder you push, the stronger she’ll push back and it will make for a miserable few years. I wish my mother had showed me some compassion in my early teens for the flaming ball of uncontrollable rage I had to live with constantly inside of me due to hormones. I never got any slack for how little of it actually slipped out; sometimes I really couldn’t help it. It was like being at war with myself.

I’d entirely forgotten just how hard that is until I perimenopause and it’s all come flooding back.

Sorry but you definitely sound like the problem here. Language is poor of your DD. How much has it gone up by? Couldn't you just order it?

Yeah this was me too, OP.

understanding will get you further than punishment. My mother and I could barely talk for about 5 years and I wish it could have been different but it was her fault, not mine. I wasn’t coping with the mental health side of puberty at all and she just constantly punished me.

Terrible advise. Theres obviously a huge back story someone shouting F off. OP did cause this situation it sounds like an excuse (a poor one at that) she needed to measure her DDs wrist. DD could of done it herself surely?

Kids remember things like this and unless OP wants to wreck her relationship further with her DD I would not do this. It's cruel.

That's what I thought too. OP behaviour isn't normal.

I’m not remotely insecure but wouldn’t tolerate being told to fuck off by my kids. It would result in a grounding/tech ban whatever.

However, I have massive sympathy for this girl! Her mum doesnt like her, has no bond with her, possibly doesn’t even love her (who needs to be told this by a therapist?!), her brother is disabled, her grandparents are ill and her parents work a lot. She may have material things and no demands on her time but that does not sound like an easy life to me.

Who shows her warmth and love? Who gives her attention, shows interest in her feelings and makes her feel secure? Who gives her a cuddle when she’s down or upset? Who tells her they love her? These aren’t rhetorical questions OP, I’m actually asking.

Deal with the swearing in an appropriate way but then you need to rescue your relationship with her. With time spent with her, with attention, with warmth, with shared positive experiences.

No offence, but the reason why our high schools are increasingly full of entitled, rude brats is because of advice like yours.

If you let your child off the hook for shouting at you to 'f*ck off' - what sort of message does this send? What is OK next? My 13 yo does not even slam the door in our house, never mind tell me to eff off (!!), and we have a brilliant relationship.

I would hope my daughter very much would remember not getting her pandora bracelet as a result of her behaviour. By giving her a bracelet now she's essentially telling her daughter 'this is how you get stuff. Go on, try it again, it will probably work then too'.

I'm not surprised she's started acting up as her life sounds pretty shit to be brutally honest. You need some help with building a relationship with her - if you haven't left it too late. I understand you've had a difficult time, but you are the adult here, and you've failed to do anything about what you recognise has always been a poor relationship with her. It may only seem a short time to you, but it's been her entire life for her. If you don't do something now, it'll just get worse.

Looking at Black Friday ads it would have cost you max £20 to top up her voucher so she could get something that obviously meant a lot to her, and you presumably volunteered to do this. Then you whisked it away from her at the last moment.