Friend being blackmailed by her 14 yr old DD

[peppajay]

My friend is being blackmailed by her teenage daughter. Her 14 yr old DD has left home and is now living with her older cousin. She refuses to speak to her mother until her mother gets rid of her stepfather. My friend has 2 yr old twins with her husband so is very complicated. I like her husband but he is strict and when my friend brought her children up alone there was no disipline and when he took her and her children on he wanted rules and respect and He insisted on curfews and dinner round the table all together. My friend is very timid and has always been scared by her DD hence letting her rule the roost. . Her DD can't cope with being told what to do by an adult as has always been allowed to make her own choices. She has been excluded from one school for bad and violent behaviour and is very close to a permanent exclusion from her current school. She is currently living with her 20 yr old cousin as she can do what she wants. Social services don't seem bothered as she is living with a responsible family member. She has been on the phone in tears me to most days this week - it is like she is being made to choose husband or daughter - don't know how to help her or advise her what to do. She regrets the way she brought her children up now and her DD can be violent if she doesn't get her own way. She sees her twins and new husband as her second chance and her twins have rules and routine, but if she keeps her new family unit intact she loses her other DD.

" I do wonder how many posters on this thread have teens "

I do!!...:)

square you can 'just imagine' what kind of man he is.... an arsehole! Wow... you know this how??

Where's the evidence? He's a man so obviously in the wrong

I think the Stepfather is an adult and should be working with the Mum to try to bring the girl home. Surely it is up to the Mum not him to impose rules and discipline? And respect should be earned, not demanded. The mum needs to step up for her daughter: I suspect there is more to this than meets the eye.

Agree with getting your friend to send Travelling's message.

I can't imagine many 20 year olds are in high paid jobs with vast amounts of spare money to keep a 14 year old. I can't imagine a 14 year old who 'doesn't do rules' is easy to live with long term - certainly isn't going to be cleaning up and doing their fair share of all the housework for the free bed and board...

I stood firm with my DD and it was the hardest thing I've had to do , it broke my heart because although DD was utterly vile , all I saw was a very frightened girl who was out of control but couldn't pull herself back .

Op let her know that you love her but don't cave . I wish you luck x

My advice to the mother would be to tell her daughter that there will always be a place for her in that household. Then the ball is placed back into the daughters court...

Yes, make children's services aware of the bigger picture. It might be an idea for the mother to put this in writting? That way it will be placed on file without her words being misconstrued? I would personally outline the fact that a 14YO child is living with a 20YO. If the daughters behaviour continues to decline at school then the school will put in their own referral to children's services. As the mother has parental responsibility then it will most likely go full circle back to the mother...

Another one wondering where the bio dad is in this picture? If he's completely off the scene and mum has 'replaced' him with a new version and had children from him you have to see how that's got to sting for a 14yr old! Step dad, mum and their new childre are pretty much the nuclear family whilst 14yr old is possibly feeling like a bit outcast from the rest of them? Sounds like mum wasn't the best mother to DD but is doing a better job with the twins, which is great, but for DD might appear that she got her shit together for them but not her.

We don't necessarily know that the bloke is an arsehole, but we don't know that he isn't either, and we need to be careful not to automatically jump to demonise a child who has spoken out against a step parent.

Are we really to believe that social services aren't in the slightest bit interested in a girl who A, has a track record of bad behaviour in school leading to exclusion, and B, has moved out of the family home and in with a twenty year old, and SS don't care? Yes, some teens go off the rails, but for SS to say they won't get involved says to me there is more which the OP likely isn't being told.

And bear in mind that someone can be abusive without being a paedophile.

Yes we are right to believe that off ss.... they do their checks then leave alone

Except the OP is getting her information from the friend, who is going to be telling her her side of the story...

square you can 'just imagine' what kind of man he is.... an arsehole! Wow... you know this how??

Where's the evidence? He's a man so obviously in the wrong

Guess I 'know' this the same way everyone else 'knows' this is just a cow of a teen
Threads are full of 'timid' women who can't stand up to awful men. And yet, despite the cries of 'think of the children' they rarely do. So, yeah, it's just as much a possibility here that timid, afraid mum has married someone who was looking for just that. It's just as much a possibility that the 'rules' and 'routines' etc that he demands are far more than that.
Add in that a 20yr old is willing to take on a 14 yr old and I can definitely imagine a far more sinister scenario than a troublesome teen just having a hissy fit because she can't get her own way.

If there aren't abuse issues from the stepfather I'd hold firm. Sometimes being a good parent isn't giving your child every thing they want...in fact it very rarely is. Being able to push everyone around at 14 leads to an adult who thinks she can push anyone around and not follow the rules at 18, 22, on and on.

I've seen it myself in my friend who was allowed to run the house from the time she could talk. I was so jealous of her when we were teens...she got absolutely everything she wanted, she spoke to her mother however she wanted, she was allowed to have her boyfriend sleep over from 13, etc. Every time anyone said anything to her mother the reply was that her daughter came first.

Not so jealous these days...she's served jail time for selling meth, has gone through numerous houses and jobs and men, has two children who are being parented solely by her mother. Her brother's college fund was eaten up by her mother, who used it for my friend's legal fees. It's a mess. Her life is a mess. She has never been able to reconcile real life with her child and teenhood of getting everything she wanted, of being able to do whatever she wanted. Rules and the way normal people live their lives mean nothing to her because she is "special".

That's an extreme case of course but WHEN does it stop? If her daughter was 30 and didn't like the new partner would the mother still have to drop him? And what of the two little girls? IF there is no abuse going on, is their big sister really so selfish that she'd deprive them of their father so she can have her way in everything?

My parents didn't abuse my brother and he still left home at 15 (in the States it's supposed to be 18) because my parents gave him the option of going to school or getting a job. He wanted to do neither, so out he went.

But if her behaviour stems from the fact she has never had boundaries then this is a fundamental parenting issue rather than just a child who is always the trouble causer.

If you bring a child up with no rules, no discipline and no boundaries then you can't start wailing that you're an innocent victim of a trouble teenager when said child takes you at your word and goes off the rails because they have never been shown any different.

Even if the stepdad has come on to the scene in the past three years and tried to enforce some boundaries, the mother still has to take responsibility for the fact those boundaries weren't there in the first place. You can do a lot of damage in eleven years, why on earth would a teenager who has never been told no suddenly decide to toe the line just because there's a new man and a couple of new babies on the scene?

if all he's tried to do is bring in some rules and discipline, the likelyhood is that she was far beyond saving at that point.

But it's all too easy to blame the child, when actually, if she's never had discipline the majority of the blame should rest with the mother.

A lot of projecting on this thread.
Some people have interpreted rules as abusive demands where as the rules might be on the lines of asking the teen to be quiet after the twins have gone to bed.
Bit worrying that the mum has gone from living with a more dominant daughter to living with a more dominant husband. As a friend I would be worrying about the potential for abuse of the mum.
If the mum does genuinely see the error of her ways and would continue enforcing house rules if she were single, then she needs to stand firm. If the mum is so timid that she is following the rules to placate her husband then she needs to become single and bring the children up with a reasonable set of rules.

What's your question here, OP?

Are you trying to work out how best to support your friend?

If you are, I'd say the best thing is to listen 95% and offer advice 5%. That advice would probably be that her daughter does need boundaries now, but that it'll be way harder since it's coming later.

Too much here is unknown; how strict the stepfather is, what the school and SS involvement is, if there's anyone else the daughter trusts and can speak to.

I wonder if the mother is too lax and the DH too strict. Both can be quite negative parenting styles.

Shes hardly a small child though. She's transitioning into adulthood and will soon be able to make all her own decisions. A parental role at this stage is to help DC make good choices through helping them reflect. An extreamly authoritative or lax approach fails to help kids develop the skills to make good choices.

I wonder if she is feeling pushed out and not having her emotional needs met? Does the mother spend any quality one to one time with her 16 year old? The twins, DH and friend are a solid unit.

Springy apparently the brain finally comes out of the adolescent stage at around 24 years old . Hang in there

Give or take 5 years? please say yes

No, wait. It's probably my fault. Of course, why didn't I think of that.

Thanks for all your advice. Living with her cousin her mum at least knows she has a roof over her head and food to eat my friend gives her niece money for her DD's food etc. Her dad now lives in Thailand after walking out on her mum when the DD was still a toddler so she has had very little to do with her dad at all. Due to her nearing expulsion from school no 2 and her violent tenancies she has been referred to CAMHS. I ve known my friend since her DD was about 3 just after her ex left and she has always been a very demanding highly strung manipulative child and I think my
Friend found her so hard to parent at the time giving in was the only way. I think she is hoping that if she let's DD stick it out with her cousin she will eventually come home when she realises her mum isn't going to leave her DH. Her DH is so good for her he had taught het how to love again and before all this kicked off with DD she was so happy.

I have one teen and one very-recently teen and I absolutely agree with SeaEagle and others that we cannot possibly know who is in the wrong here, or if perhaps both parties are in the wrong.

A young girl is unhappy and has moved out- why do we have to call that blackmail? Whatever the faults of the girl, it is certainly easy to see how a situation with lax mother/strict stepfather could make things worse. Even the greatest stepfather who turns up and sets boundaries which are different from those of her original parent is going to make life very confusing for a child. This is a situation which would have needed great tact and willingness to compromise on all sides. Instead, what seems to have happened is that he took over the parenting and decided on all the rules.

And yes, before you ask I have dealt with a violent 10yo, at any rate, and CAHMS involvement and school refusal in a teenager, if not with expulsion from school. Consistency and a joint approach from all involved are absolutely necessary ime.

While I don't agree with wannabe that bad behaviour in a 14yo has to come from her parents, I think she is totally right about the way this girl is being spoken about as if she is the whole problem: it lets the mother off the hook both for her original inefficient parenting and for not doing more to smooth the transition to stricter parenting. Or to put it another way: if a new man moving in and setting firm boundaries came as a shock to the girl- whose fault was that? The child's or the mother's?

When dd was having her problems, we did not automatically assume that there was nothing about us that needed changing: we went to family therapy to learn what we could do to help.

Just read the OP's last post and you seem to be suggesting that even when you first knew her as a 3yo it was the girl's fault for being manipulative. Don't you see how you are being manipulated by the family slant here? It wasn't the mother's job to be in charge of a 3yo, it was the 3yos job not to manipulate her mother.

I had one of those 3yos: highly strung, emotional, demanding, rebellious. It was hard work. But I was the adult, I was her parent, it would never in a hundred years occur to me to think this was in any way her responsibility.

How many thousands of post do we read where dh/dw/dm/df are narcissists???

It starts early,?cery early. A 14 year old can be a fully blown narc.

OP there is so much projecting crap going on simplest advise is a 14 year old doesnt get to make the rules, ever

So you friend basically gave into her DD from before the age of 3 (when you came along) for an easy life.

At the age of 10/11 she met a new man who she then gave into and allowed to impose strict rules etc over DD.

Your friend has abdicated responsibility of her DD since you have known her and is now wondering why she has chucked her toys out of her pram when another person is allowed to control her.

Meanwhile her DH has taught your friend to love again and she has been so happy with him (and her new family) while her elder DD sits there and sees this.

It may be too late but it is a shame your friend never stepped up and actually mothered which is what it sounds like this child has cried out for since being very young.

At no point did I say that the mother is definitely to blame, however, if you never have discipline then you can't really be surprised when a child reaches almost adulthood and then thinks she can carry on as she always has.

And it does seem that from the OP's posts that the child has always been blamed even from when she was extremely young, so this clearly isn't just a clear-cut case of a child going off the rails when she became a teenager, there is very clearly far more to this, perhaps even undiagnosed issues which everyone needed to be on board with but weren't for whatever reason.

TBH I take the "my mother is a narc" posts with a bit of a pinch of salt - people throw the term out there as if it's commonplace, when actually, it isn't, but far easier to put a name to something.

It wasn't her fault that she was manipulative aged 3. The poor parenting created that dynamic and the situation hasn't changed. I think your friend needs to read some books about parenting teens now so that she can try and make the relationship work better.

The mother should tell new man to butt out of her parenting of her daughter.