bloody bloody child.

[DameHermione]

grrrrrrr what do i do with this?

Today i went off to work at 6.45. I woke the dds before i left as normal.

At 11ish i get the text from school saying she wasn't at school.

I get home and ask her what time she went in - lunchtime. I ask why.

Her answer......

Because she went back to sleep and didn't wake up til 10.

WTF do i do? My work hours are random. I have to sometimes work early. If i can't bloody trust her to actually get up and go i don't know what to do.

Of course the days i am there early she rarely goes anyway but still i now have additional crap working mother guilt on top of it all.

You aren't going to be able to force a teenager to go to school. This is not for you to feel guilty about.

Does she want to stay at home and have a home tutor visit? Does she care if she leaves with no qualifications? Can she vocalise what the problem with school is at all apart from anxiety?

Have you started the statementing process yet?

I'd contact the EWO if you haven't already to tell them about the difficulty that you are having so that they don't try and take action against YOU when it is not your fault.

Pester power is the way. they try it on us and it works in reverse for us too.

Ring her at 7.00, 7.15 7.30 etc until you're sure she's out of bed and on the way to school. It's difficult to ignore a phone ringing every quarter of an hour.

Withold privileges.

Set very clear boundaries and penalties.

I appreciate it's dofficult but you need to make her life so difficult that she complying is easier than avoidance.

This just reminds me of my father who used to shout up to us to wake us in the morning... 15 minutes later another shout from downstairs. "Are you kids up?" A couple groggy "yes"s from us. His response? "You still sound pretty horizontal to me!!! Get up!!"

I think this was just normal teenage badness. I am so cross with her.

( poor child can't wiin. I'm cross when she's normal and cross when she isn't)

And i just used normal twice. Which makes me cross with myself.