Think DD has just destroyed relationship with DH her dad. Final straw.

[Facefacts]

After a long rocky period with DD 17, I thought things were getting better. Again, tonight, DD determined to get her own way. Wanted boyfriend to come over we said no as I had to be away all day and overnight, husband had to leave later as working away. So after I left mid afternoon she has massive argument with poor DH who is already having counselling (partly from previous rocky period as well as other things). She is so unsympathetic and uncaring and verbally very attacking. DH in pieces, DD just continued attack. And flounced off to boyfriends saying would be back for 11. Just arriving back now. Refused lift back and DH couldn't face scene if just went to fetch her. He now has two hour drive and has to be up early. He's broken and I'm fuming with her. She has a brilliant social life. Saw boyfriend 2 or 3 times in week. Nightclub Friday and friend stayed over Saturday. Don't know how this is going to go but we have been on edge of throwing her out before for stunts like this. Is this what we have to do to save DH from total breakdown. When she decides she is doing something there is no compromise, no care of the impact on others. It seems the more understanding and caring we are the more she takes. Someone please give me a plan to change this before she throws away a lovely home and family.

Pretty - that is spot on. A blanket "no" is meltdown central.

You are just too quick to work out what she is doing to you OP and not trying to see why she is the way she is. Even "heart to hearts" are being seen as manipulative and grabby.

Jeez. What could she do to please you? What would the answer be? And why do you think it is your daughters job to find that answer?

I do the saying no without saying no to a certain extent sometimes but might try that more often.

LizKeen. You do know you come across as really critical don't you? You have made lots of posts but none of them have had anything helpful in them. Just lots of jumping to conclusions.

Thanks Maryz. Like those.

"He eventually did lose temper and fall apart"

OP - What did this look and sound like? How often is this pattern/cycle repeated?

Your DD's MH is as vulnerable and fragile as your DHs. So try to look her behaviour with compassion, rather than anger - respond to her emotional outbursts as if she is having a panic attack / meltdown -- so diffuse any volatility - employ "C&R" = calm and reassurance - do not square up to her - do not escalate or enrage - she maybe feeling out of control and terrified and therefore has meltdowns and attacks - teach her another way to emotionally regulate.

I generally am critical of parents who take their children's behaviour personally and refuse to realise the damage they are doing. Parenting is not something you can just opt out of because your child says something you don't like. Nor can you shift blame onto them when things aren't going your way.

maryz is saying basically the same thing I am, she is just much more eloquent about it.

But there you go again, more focused on how you feel than what is actually being said.

Don't know how this is going to go but we have been on edge of throwing her out before for stunts like this. Is this what we have to do to save DH from total breakdown. When she decides she is doing something there is no compromise, no care of the impact on others. It seems the more understanding and caring we are the more she takes. Someone please give me a plan to change this before she throws away a lovely home and family.
You need to acknowledge that there is no way of looking at this statement other than as a firm belief that it is DD's responsibility to prevent her dad from a total breakdown and that DD owes you and her father this. This belief is toxic and it has to be banished.

You are very quick to grasp at suggestions that DD needs a diagnosis and to be fixed. However, I suggest that both because DD would refuse to engage with any talk of fixing her and because this is a family problem, you and DH need to start with yourselves instead, if you are interested in changing things and not just manning the barricades until DD leaves home.

You should start with yourself. It is not your job to protect DH or maintain his equilibrium or to make others do so. You have to stop trying to do that, and establish proper boundaries between you and him. This means understanding that his emotional reactions are his own and that you owe him no supporting response. It means you expecting him to seek help from his MH professional and not expecting his family to adjust, accommodate, work around.

It is not DD's job to protect DH either but you will see that once you have done some work on your own sense of boundaries and have created a few between you and DH. Hopefully once that happens you will see that DD is not you, and did not sign up for whatever you understood your relationship with her father to be, but has her own road to travel though all of this and is owed support in negotiating it by both parents. Other posters have suggested this but I don't think you are receptive to their suggestions.

DD is looking for something from you and her father that she is not getting. You need to stop the heart to heart talks, and any picking over of DD's feelings that you hope to accomplish in your sessions needs to end.

Those conversations are not emotional support. They are putting DD under a microscope and pathologising her. Nor is giving her things on demand supportive in any way.

Emotional support involves giving her a framework where she can anticipate what will be happening in the family -- family scheduling meetings that were mentioned by a PP would be ideal. That way she would know if she was expected to be in a certain place at a certain time and could plan accordingly. Or if you are going to be away from home, you could all agree to check in with each other by phone or facetime at a given time just so that you can say goodnight, make sure she has set her alarm for the morning so she can get to school, etc.

Emotional support means not being afraid of saying no when no is what you mean -- it is much easier to do this within an already agreed framework/calendar, or within an already agreed budget (DD needs to be paying for herself at this stage of her life). So I really strongly suggest you start getting yourselves organised and improving straightforward communication, using the calendar as a useful and neutral tool, with everybody's input welcomed and attempts made by all to understand relative importance of dates/times.

I suspect DD would see that she could fit in more studying/homework if she were to get a good visual handle on each week in advance. However, in a teen's life things can crop up and there should be an element of flexibility on your part if work has been done and grades improve.

Emotional support is the opposite of using guilt to get things done your way or getting others to support your unhealthy agenda. You say you have shielded DD from any suspicion that she caused DH's MH problems, but you also state several times here that you felt she owed you something, and I suspect you use guilt to manipulate her more than you perhaps realise:
We say yes more than 9 times out of 10 and ask her to consider us one night

and
We were asking, for once for her to put us first. For the first time in months. We have done lots of things for her, talked us into buying various things. We've dropped our plans for her convenience, rarely do we ask her to do anything like this and for one night, so we can have a stress free night, not worrying about her or having our evening disrupted by visitors and giving lifts. Just once. She can see boyfriend any day this week. I have given her lifts to his and him lifts home. So just once can she not put her plans on hold for us.
I wonder how much of that exasperation you conveyed to her?

Emotional support means being explicit in your assumptions and your expectations, not keeping a mental ledger with debit and credit columns and DD coming up short every time. You seem to have the clear expectation that favours on your part are given in hopes of receiving a quid pro quo. Your anger here was partly due to a feeling that you are owed consideration and have been owed for the last four years, and a feeling that DD has failed to meet your expectations. You cannot expect DD to read your mind or to understand things that you have not been explicit about. If this is how you feel then you need to communicate that to her. But first, ask yourself if it is a realistic expectation on your part when someone has, for instance, no car.

Emotional support also means real consequences for breaking doors or other damage. So you need to consider warning her that you will call the police next time, and you should not treat material damage as a personal insult or yet another nail in the coffin of DH's equilibrium. Emotional support involves showing DD exactly how far she can go in real life and not in terms of DH's fragile state and your lack of boundaries where he is concerned. You are teaching her nothing useful if all she understands of consequences comes from life within your four walls as it is right now.

Emotional support means showing her how to fight fair, how to negotiate, how to compromise. She has not learned this so far because DH is so fragile and because you are secretly trying to store up her goodwill in order to cash it in. So DH must deal with his problems and you must learn how to set your own boundaries, stop manipulating and plamasing (an Irish word for a less than open and honest style of communicating; disingenuousness, having a hidden agenda), and start parenting DD and partnering DH in an adult way.

Everything that mathanxiety said.

I get your feelings of victimisation but you have more power than you think and the change starts with you. Seek professional support if you need it but doing the same old, will only yield the same results.

Coming back to this and agreeing emphatically with math, Sheba, Liz and others.

This is sounding more and more like my own upbringing, in terms of the general atmosphere and instruments employed to keep me in line rather than the details. I recognise in these experiences the dramatic talks about the awful things that might happen to me if I didn't get back into line, the laying on me of responsibility for my parents' mental and indeed physical health ('your mother's hair is falling out', 'you've made her ill with stress', 'I don't know how your dad is going to get through the day' - the crime that had brought on these statements was being, in my early 20s, in a relationship with my then boyfriend and now dh, a lovely dependable bloke 2 years older than me, not a mid-40s drug dealer or anything which might have vaguely justified the opposition), the enumerations of how much they had done for me and the mental or overt labelling of me as selfish and incapable of 'putting them first'. And I recognise the transactional assumptions behind the relationship - that stuff was done for me with the expectation of a return, created the obligation for me to do as I was told - an expectation that, as math describes, was kept implicit until it suddenly burst out upon me in torrents of hurt rage - as if I had been expected to know I owed this debt without it previously being made explicit. I recognise the keenness to get me fixed (this going back to my teens now). I later found out that a professional suggested family therapy, which was refused - because after all, I was the problem, wasn't I?

My parents sound a great deal worse than you, but I recognise the 'atmosphere' and the way of thinking exactly. You and your dh need to wake up and you need to listen, however difficult it is, to the people on here saying unpalatable things - more nicely than I can manage it, as my own experiences make it hard for me to be sympathetic here. Suffice to say my parents pushed me too far and now have no contact with me or their three grandchildren.

Yes. What MathAnxiety said. Absolutely.

Everything math said. And one thing to add - please, for the love of all good things, would people stop diagnosing behaviour over the internet as neurodiverse? We are hearing one side of the story here and nothing the OP has described overtly is any worse than a lot of teenage behaviour (and a lot better than many).

We are no more capable of diagnosing PDA or ODD or ASD than we are of diagnosing a brain tumour or liver disease. Just stop it.

Your and DH's happiness revolving solely around the DD's life/behaviour is not good.

PErhaps that was the situation when DCs were younger - perfect DCs means you were perfect DPs

You need to get a life, the both of you, that brings pleasure and fun into you r life, not on a monthly basis but on a weekly one. Then you aren't waiting for the next upsetting clash but busy doing your own stuff. Takes teh pressure off DD, might earn some respect from her.

Perhaps this is the case but it doesn't sound like it.

We are no more capable of diagnosing PDA or ODD or ASD than we are of diagnosing a brain tumour or liver disease. Just stop it.

Amen.

If you genuinely want to help your daughter, you will get your family to a counsellor specialising in family issues. As far as I can see, it's the only positive option that you have. She deserves this from you.

As I have said I have been brought to my knees by a difficult teen which involved physical violence and smashing up my home, now all resolved but I sought help here and then CHOSE to listen to the people on here who had walked that path and followed their advice - Maryz was one of the many - and it worked..... I DID NOT LISTEN to the judgey ones who DO NOT have any experience of this situation but who assume they can pontificate and dictate (cote would be one I would ignore on this thread for instance) what on earth have they to offer here?

Maryz et al saved my family, sanity, marriage and most importantly my child by giving this advice:

1. Watch their actions not words - in your case your DD did as she was told!

2. Dont escalate by engaging in the verbal drama - walk away - you DH is not doing this. If she follows you around the house (toddlers do this when trantruming also) - get in the car and drive away.

3. Give them physical space.

4. Approach them with compassion, see outbursts, meltdowns as her having a panic attack, feeling under threat/stress and employ "calm and reassurance" to nip meltdowns in the bud....if this isnt working do 2.

5. Protect yourself emotionally - detached love.

6. Know when this is bigger than you - call the police, school etc when appropriate - damaging your property or threatening physical violence.

7. Back off and let them grow - micro managing her life is controlling - free yourself up and do less for her - she will be happier and so will you.

8. This will pass.

I do think that your DH MH issues have caused him to loose perspective and over react and catastrophise and that you have been drawn into his wrong headed approach.

He has MH issues, he is not managing it effectively and he is projecting his issues inappropriately on to you and onto his daughter- he has YOU walking on egg shells - YOU need individual support to the family through this. His way is not working.

Did she damage the door before, during or after the point that "He eventually did lose temper and fall apart"?

Nobody has diagnosed PDA, ASD, ODD etc, we have mentioned these things based on our own experiences, which I believe is more helpful than those posts blaming parenting. Considering conditions such as ASD can lead to strategies that can work well with tricky children, whether they have ASD or not.

My son has a formal ASD/PDA diagnosis (made by a paed and psych in person, not over the internet), but we would not be at this point if no-one had mentioned these things in the first place, we would still be feeling beaten down and shit by those saying that he needing us to step up as parents and to enforce boundaries (which was making things worse). Those posts at that time, for me, were incredibly unhelpful, and it was difficult to explain family dynamics with those kinds of difficulties to those who only judge based on their own experiences and don't look beyond that.

We're not armchair diagnosing, we're making suggestions that may help the OP to make her family's life better, and personally, looking back over my last few years with ds, I'm glad that here are those posters who will stick their necks out and say "have you thought about.....", because with a violent child you do have to consider that there's a very real chance this is down to SN, not shit parenting.

Parenting a violent child is incredibly stressful, and I don't think anyone could possibly understand how difficult things can be unless you've gone through it yourself.

Parenting a violent child is incredibly stressful, and I don't think anyone could possibly understand how difficult things can be unless you've gone through it yourself.

Bang on.

OP listen to the people who have walked in your shoes.

Please ignore the ridiculous, condescending, dictatorial rants of those who have not walked this path but somehow are so deluded, self righteous, arrogant and fired up enough to tell you how to do it and where you are going wrong....

I think the people offering advice are wonderful, but sadly it's pointless.

Sorry, but OP seems only to want to blame her dd, not help her.

Only cares about her special snowflake husband who is a total drama queen based off past threads.

Even her thread title is saying dd has ruined her relationship with her dad.

It couldn't be more telling.

Having been through similar (and still going through it) with my son, I can see how the op has got to that point Walter.

Special snowflake husband is in your opinion, I have similar worries about my dh and try to protect him from ds's worst. And when dh was ill a few years ago it was very difficult not to blame ds,s behaviour on some level, we are only human after all, and we all think unhelpful things at times, especially during great stress.

It's very difficult to stay rational, caring and calm (and adult!) in the face of violence and aggressive threats, and the op posted when feeling emotional and stressed.
Yes things need to change, but the op needs support and help to get ere, not criticism and dismissive comments.

I suppose it boils down to reading her posts with a different understanding when you've been there.