I slapped my 15 yo daughter yesterday

[CrapMothertoaTeen]

Name change as v ashamed about this.

Terrible day yesterday.

DD is nearly 16 and goes to school in a town some miles away from home. I pick her and her siblings up most days.

Scene 1- me in town, in the post office queue trying to sort something, daughter rings asking to know where I am and why I'm late picking them up from school (I'm 10 mn late by this stage). I tell her I'll be there asap

Scene 2, near school; I'm walking up the road with baby walking and empty pushchair. DD slings her heavy bag into the pushchair for me to push. I give her the pushchair instead but am seething.

Scene 3, the car; Another child admits that she is in bottom set for a subject due to not having revised for the test that setted them last year. She has chosen this subject for GCSE. I tell her she'd better do well at this subject. DD chips and says that's really mean, what if she does her best and doesn't do well anyway? I can feel my parenting being undermined here and decide to take a stand about doing the best possible in all our subjects. Mini-lecture/conversation ensues, during which DD continues to insist it is "mean" for me to expect any of them to do well at exams.

Scene 4, still the car, about a mile from home. DD ramps it up and starts interrupting me and contradicting while I'm trying to talk to younger child about said subject and why she must do well in all subjects. I check rear-view mirror for other traffic, brake sharply and suggest to DD that maybe she'd like to walk home from here. She declines and I tell her that she should not interrupt me when I'm talking to her sister then. Silence ensues.

Scene 5, the car, about 150 metres from home. I am still talking to younger child about the importance of doing the best you can. DD interrupts again and attempts to shout me down. I totally lost it. My hand just reached across the car of its own accord (she was sitting in the passenger seat) and slapped her. DS told me I was way out of order (I entirely agree) and violent to boot.

I feel so, so miserable. I have never hit her before, never had to, she's always been so good. It upsets me so much that she is so hostile and difficult at the moment. Where can I go from here? I made a terrible mistake and I'm worried that I've ruined our relationship for ever.

My mum slapped me once in what sounds like a similar way and situation, even though I was upset at the time and after, I somehow understood that she hadn't meant to do it, and to do this that she was near the end of her tether.
When I look back I really think there was no harm done - and it made me realise she was human.

I imagine that if this is the first time you have hit any of your DC's and the eldest is 15 then you cannot be described as having "anger management problems"!!!

A slap is not the same as a punch and surely if you have apologised and talked things through that is the end of the story. Do you not think it is sometimes good for children to see that you may be struggling as well and also have bad days and loose your temper. To my shame I once had a full on scream and swear at my then 10 year old in the car not long after my father had died and I was emptying his house. He was being utterly unreasonable, he let me simmer down a bit, apologised at which I of course apologised as it is not acceptable to swear at anyone let alone a child.

I also have a 15 year old DD. She is bright, doing well at school, not drinking, smoking or taking drugs but still manages to really push my buttons. You are not a bad mother you are just the mother of teens. Ease up on yourself. Big hug from me.

Kandinsky my oldest is 17!

I smacked him once too- when he got a steak knife out of a drawer aged 18 months and ran down stark naked the corridor with it. Maybe I do have an anger management problem.

Ahh that puts a whole new perspective on things.

You do not have an anger management problem! and you smacking your 18 month is in line with me smacking mine when they ran in the road. Did he do it again? Mine didn't.

No he didn't!

i am not saying i am perfect but a lot of threads like this are about the op wanting to be made feel better about their action and tits like fourfourtyfour spouting shite like 'she needed it'

no one needs to be hit and no one needs to be made feel better about hitting their children. i would prefer if this thread made to op look at how she handles these situations and how her children feel when she sits in teh car ranting (and yes it does sound like ranting)

Why don't you post to me personally instead of making comments about me DBitch?

If the OP did not care that she had slapped her child she would not have posted on here. She wants comfort as she knows she has hurt her child but as I have said NO ONE IS PERFECT.

i don't want to post to you personally but as i have your attention do you really think her daughter needed a slap?

Twice in 17 years implies CMT IS handling the situation. Ranting all the time is a problem. Occasionally when pushed is not. There is not enough info in the post to know how often so most people are simply trying to offer support to someone who is clearly ashamed to have lashed out.

Then I won't bother answering you DBitch.

1. I don't think she deserved it. Nobody deserves to be hit. It's demeaning and dehumanising.

2. I didn't come on here to be made to feel better. I wondered if anybody had any good ideas about how to recover my relationship with my DD from this.

I still feel crap and sick about slapping her and nothing will stop that until I have a proper conversation with my DD about what led up to it -she was too angry and upset yesterday when I apologised to her to have a proper conversation about it. I don't even know if she accepts my apology.

I know she's a teenager but she mostly treats me like I accidentally came in on her shoe - most of the time I can laugh it off but it still hurts and yesterday I couldn't laugh it off.

She is probably completely unaware that she makes you feel like that. Sounds like what is needed is a proper one to one. Would it be possible for one of you other children to look after the little one so you can be uninterrupted. I used to complain that my DD spoke to me in a rude fashion. She once left me an answering machine message which I then played back to her and asked her how she thought she sounded. She was shocked as it was not how she intended to sound.

I think you are right, Kandinsky. When I suggested to my daughter that she is pretty rude to me in most of her interactions with me, she doesn't see it at all, but if I ask her what would happen to her at school if she spoke to a teacher that way she admits that she would probably go in detention.

As I said to her yesterday, there is a difference between familiarity (as with your mother) and utter rudeness (which is unacceptable in any circumstance). She doesn't think there should be a difference in my case. She doesn't speak to her father like that though- it's special, just for me.

I understand completly my eldest daughter (21) reminded me of such a moment not long back, at the time she was 16yrs. And her reply to me was if she had been in my shoes she didn't feel that she could have stopped at a slap, as she put it she was being a first class b#t#h to see how far she could push me. We all feel guilty, l am on the other side with 3 of mine and have one in the mist (15) and one about to become a teenager.

how unfair to have a brother who doesn't need to work and does get the results, when you yourselk usually work, and then on the one occasion you don't, you get the bollocking he never had because he was naturally bright enough to keep his results high anyway.

I had the same conversation with my dad about my sister's gcse results. She got Es and Fs but she did not less work than me, which admittedly would have been difficult to manage as I did none, and I got As and Bs. I was roundly congratulated on my GCSEs, and she had my dad going up to the school and rounding on her in front of her friends. So unfair.

colditz, he does get routinely bollocked, believe me. And it wasn't her being bollocked anyway, but her sister who was laughing off being put in a lower set due to not revising. And DD1 routinely is praised for her hard hard, and rewarded materially.

I agree with Kandinsky, your daughter probably doesn't see it. My mum frequently mentions how 'difficult' i became as a teenager (despite being pretty well-behaved, good exam results etc.!) largely because she felt I used to speak to her as though she was sub-human.

Interestingly, I saw a home video with me in it aged about 14 recently, and I saw what she meant - but I also remember how I was feeling at the time - and the two were SO different, it made my head hurt to try and reconcile it.

I remember feeling as if she just didn't understand me, or try to understand me (I know, all teenagers feel that to some degree) - but I felt that everything I said was fodder for her to criticise me in some way, and everything I did was interpreted wrongly. She probably felt exactly the same. She had a lot of other pressures at the time which I didn't really know about/understand too. We have a pretty good relationship now, though.

Perhaps you could try spending some regular time with your daughter, doing something you both like, where you specifically don't allow yourself to say anything negative, and try and compliment her on some of her good qualities and actions (there must be some if you look hard enough! :) ) It may not get a great response immediately, but I think (rightly or wrongly) that if she feels you actually LIKE her underneath everything, it could make a big difference.

Sorry that was so long. I'm only bothering because you sound like a nice mother, who wants the best from your relationship, and I wish a bit someone had given me and my mother this advice 20 years ago - whether it would have worked, I don't know!

Its all so easy to be wise after an event like this... but I say don't beat yourself up about it. You've apologised and meant it - now you need to move on. I do think that teens know how to push our buttons and sometimes, just sometimes, they take it too far - perhaps the slap was out of order but hey, we are human beings and sometimes we just lose it. Shit happens...you didn't beat her up and maybe, you never know, you can really build on this experience by discussing it when both of you are calm and relaxed (if that ever happens at the same time :)) Fingers crossed.

Your DD didn't deserve it and you shouldn't have slapped her but a) you know it, b) you've apologised c) she was pushing her luck and d) teenage girls have some weird ability to know exactly the right buttons to push to send their mothers into a frenzy.

When DD was 15 I sat on her. She was lying on her bed being OUTRAGEOUS and pushing and pushing all those buttons - she'd been outrageous for months and months. And I sat on her, in a pinning her down sort of way, and shouted. Hideous - absolutely awful of me. 6 years later - she doesn't blame me, our relationship is mostly fine, you won't learn anything unless you make the odd mistake.

It may help to share whatever stresses you have with her - not all of them, but enough that she realises that you have your own pressures, that we're all human. And she might be able to help.

Just to say everything's been a lot better again for the last couple of days. I've been through a lot of soul-searching and questioning of my reactions and behaviour and have come to the conclusion that I have to start letting go a bit on my older children, even on behaviour. They are all pretty socialised and polite in the outside world, which is as much as anyone can expect. I just need to get my head around the fact that they are approaching adulthood fast, the older two in particular, and learn to stress less about them. I always knew I would find the teenage stage hard as I didn't have very good models in my teens. It's just a stage I have to go through to let them become independent. I am so not looking forward to them leaving home but I know it's inevitable and I need to let them grow up.

good for you! well done. mine are only little but i am sure i will struggle when it's time to let them go too (except i will be so old by then perhaps i won't have the energy to fight it...)

I was going to write a long and erudite response, but Maryz has done it for me.
Yes, I have teenagers.