Tonight 13 yr old dd got me up against a radiator, swearing and shouting and threatening me because I told her she couldn't go to a friend's house. In front of her friend. Pushed her face in my face saying 'You think you're hard, what are you going to do about this then? What? What?' And instead of getting myself away and shutting myself in the bathroom or something, I pushed her away, slapped at her and shouted 'don't you dare try to intimidate me in my own home'. Shoved her down the hallway towards her bedroom and pulled at her hair to get her to move backwards. She weighs 10 stone and is STRONG, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
I shouldn't have done it. 
She then stormed out the house. I now know she went straight round to SIL's. DH has come back from work and is now round there to pick her up. I spent the first hour breathless and sobbing after she'd gone. Phoned parent line in between comforting my other two dc's (7 and 9). (they stuck their heads round the door and fired a nerf gun at me. I looked at the bullet and saw they'd stuck a note to it saying 'We are sorry for you' 
).
I can't go on like this. We have tried to put some basic rules in place (hand over phone at 10pm on a school night, do homework, get to school on time) and she just flouts them day in and day out. Tonight's conflict started last night. I went into her room at 9.30 last night to remind her that she needed to be in bed at 10pm, and I would be taking her phone. However, I then got caught up and ended up not going in to take her phone until 10.15. At which point she was sitting fully clothed, straightening her hair. I said she had to go to bed, and to give me her phone, at which point she looked at me and said rudely 'You'll have to wait - I need to message some people' and carried on doing her hair. My response to this was to point out that I'd come in at 9.30 to remind her and that if the phone wasn't in my hand in 1 minute she'd lose it for the next day. I walked off and eventually she came in to the sitting room and threw her phone at me, arguing with me all the time about how unreasonable I was etc. Then she came and took it back off the table and went back up to her room.
DH took the phone when he came back and told her she'd lost it for the day, which resulted in her shouting in the hallway at 7am this morning. Anyway, she came back from school at 4pm and asked for her phone. As she was being polite and had apologised I let her have it. Big mistake. As soon as she had it she asked if she could go over to a friend's this evening, and when I said 'no' the above happened.
I can't take the verbal bullying and aggression and physical intimidation. She WON'T take 'no' for an answer from me. She's defiant with DH but not nearly so much as she is to me, where it's her 'rule' to challenge everything I say, and ignore pretty much all instructions. Tonight I really thought I was going to fall to pieces - I realised I'm frightened of her, and that she knows it and is being deliberately abusive to me.
I wanted to ask if anyone here would recommend family therapy for a situation like this. Really something has gone badly wrong and I'm struggling to parent her. SIL phoned me and said she thought that DD must be being bullied at school or something, for her to be so angry and so confrontational with me. I'm not so sure. I've not seen any evidence of it. I feel that we have a terrible dynamic going on - that dd is having a tough adolescence and its manifesting itself in a total reluctance to grow up. She is constantly pushing the boundaries Can't get her to see that growing up involves more freedom AND taking more responsibility for herself, and she can't have the first if she outright refuses the second. She's so profoundly uncooperative with us - I really do think it goes beyond normal teen laziness and rebelliousness. Things are really unhappy at home, and I'm wondering how long we can go on with this daily conflict - the shouting, refusal to follow even the most simple and basic rules, the attacks on me, the contempt.
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Teenagers
Thought I was going to have a heart attack. Can't go on like this
Shagmundfreud · 08/02/2013 20:34
Hear hear flow !! Couldn't agree more re. teens bad for our health 
Shag hope small improvements are being made that will progress to BIG improvements
Shag, you sound much more positive and in control. :)
It's an especially good idea to leave all the school/studying stuff to the school to enforce. As (I think) Maryz once wisely said, our relationship with our child continues far longer than our relationship with their school, and if 'backing up the school' causes so much stress that it starts to damage our relationship with our child, then it's time to back off and leave it to them.
The only thing in your post I'd perhaps pick up on is your reluctance to take your DD out and do more with her because she's behaving badly. I know that's the received wisdom, and it might well be what I decided to do too... Buuuuut... When kids are attention-seeking, it's worth thinking about whether they're doing it because they haven't learned that other people have needs too, and theirs don't always come first; or because they really aren't getting their share of the attention. If it's the latter, then maybe give her the attention she's demanding, and see if her behaviour improves. I reckon it's probably worth a try. :)
BTW, I've been feeling shit too... Over the past few years, I've been tested for diabetes (negative), heart problems (negative), sleep apnoea (negative), brain abnormalities (negative), liver problems (negative), breast abnormalities (all clear, just fibrous), blood/immune system problems (normal), various allergies (only rabbits and meetkats, or something equally obscure 
), chronic sinusitis (yes), arthritis (yes), thyroid conditions (borderline), menopause (not yet), anaemia (yup) and vitamin deficiencies (D is low)...
Ironically, I started feeling even worse when my DS1 settled down and stopped behaving like a total dick! That made no sense to me - surely I should be feeling better because I was less stressed? - until a friend pointed out that busy, stressed people often get ill as soon as they stop for a holiday... 
I have come to the conclusion that having teenagers is very bad for your health and it would save the NHS a fortune if someone sorted out some parenting support, health-promoting massage and respite care for the parents of teenagers!
Shag you already sound so much more on top of it than in your first post
You've had a chance to regroup and think about how to approach this, your DH sounds like he's onside too as well as extended family, which is a massive help.
You'll get through this, it'll be a long haul but you WILL get there.
I was a pretty horrible teen, hated authority etc but eventually turned out ok. Once people stood up to me (was over. indulged pfb) I realised my behaviour couldn't continue.
Mind you, for someone pretty intelligent it took me a long time to work it out!!
Gosh - thanks everyone for your comments. I was working yesterday and slept all evening on and off. So exhausted. More on that later. Today I was busy with family stuff so no chance to respond properly.
Didn't talk to dd much yesterday - was up and out early for work. Later in the day she shoved past me in the kitchen hissing 'child abuser', then went into my bedroom and emptied a box from my bookshelf onto my bed, raking through it looking for something. I asked her what she was looking for and she ignored me. I said politely that she needed to leave my stuff alone and she carried on raking through it, so I went to take it back. At which point she shoved me again with her body said 'stop talking' and marched out. I was in tears by that point and said to DH he had to talk to her, that I couldn't cope with this level of obstructiveness and hostility. He told her that if she carries on like this she's going to have to temporarily move in with his mum or mine (both are willing to have her), as her behavior is damaging everyone in the family. She ignored him and hunkered down in her bedroom for most of the evening.
This morning she came into the kitchen looking very sunny and said 'I've done something and you're going to kill me. Turns out she'd pierced her ears herself last night. She'd been raking through my stuff looking for cotton wool. I suppressed the urge to go 'Oh no! Why did you have to do THAT?' and told her she'd made a good job of it. (The reason we hadn't agreed to her having them pierced prior to this is because she gets keloid scarring and we were worried she'd end up with a problem similar to DH, who's had infected keloid scarring of the ear lobes for the last 25 years!)
Then I said sorry to her for pushing her on Friday, and for pulling her hair. Didn't qualify what I'd said or add to it in any way. We had a hug and that was that. No significant conflict for the rest of the day - maybe because her mood was so good. She's DELIGHTED with her pierced ears. She even came over to my mum's with us, which she hasn't done for ages.
DH has blocked fb and taken her phone for a week. For those of you asking why we have 'draconian' rules - well we don't. Her phone is out of her room at 10 pm on school nights because before we started doing this she was pinging people and being pinged ALL NIGHT and was horrifically sleep deprived. She really needs a break from her gadgets for the sake of her physical and mental health, and she has zilch self control when it comes to these things. As far as going to her friends' houses - well no, not while she's refusing to do ANY homework at all. Which she is, has been for months. It's the root of a lot of the stress - that she refuses to do the work she's set as school. Won't write homework down. Doesn't study AT ALL for tests. Her teachers are at their wits end with her - as are we. Room tidying - we have given up on this. And asking her to do chores. She is so astonishingly non-compliant in such a rich and diverse way, that we're in a state of utter exhaustion with her.
I want her to do the school work she's been set and not be rude to her teachers. I want her to tell us where she is, and not go off with friends after school without telling us where she's going or who she's with. I'd like her to comply withe the very tiny number of rules we have (like hand over your phone at 10pm, do your homework with the tv off and without accessing facebook literally every 25 seconds) without constantly challenging us, shouting, stonewalling. Every. single. time.
I agree with everyone who is talking about the importance of showing unconditional love, giving her more of my time, making sure she feels loved and accepted.
Except I'm struggling to do it, because I am FECKING EXHAUSTED with being shouted at, shoved, insulted, challenged. Day in, day out.
What makes things really hard is that I'm not 100% well at the moment, and haven't been for some time. I don't know what's wrong. Blood tests coming back abnormal. Tired, tired, tired. To the point that some days I'm dragging myself around from the minute I get up to when I go to bed. And having to deal with an autistic child too.
I know adolescence is shit and a big part of what's going on is that DD doesn't want to grow up. In the sense that she can't take responsibility for anything. And yet she is clearly powerfully drawn to other aspects of growing up - namely having freedom to do what she wants. Freedom I can't give her while she's still insisting on behaving like a toddler.
DD is clever, robust, attractive, has friends, a great sense of humour, is liked by all the adults at her school (even if they are exasperated with her), has cousins and close family near by who care for her deeply. I know she's struggling with her identity and with growing up, but I don't think she's really depressed or especially anxious. She is very angry, and I do wonder how much of this is about her not getting the attention she always enjoyed as a little girl - she was an only grandchild for 4 years on my side and was fussed over by my family to within an inch of her life. She is certainly getting a lot of attention now, and not all of it negative. DH is fantastic with her, really great. Takes her out on her own shopping and for meals. I want to do more with her, but while she's being so selfish and uncooperative I'm loathe to.
I've got an appointment with her tutor at school on Tuesday, and will ask for her to be put back on report, so it becomes the school's responsibility rather than ours to monitor her homework diary on a daily basis. I think we're also going to tell her she can't have her BB back until she completes a week's homework. Arsebook I personally want blocked forever.
I'm going to try reducing the number of things I ask her to do by 75% (yes - not even 'can you pick your school bag up off the middle of the hall floor so people don't fall over it as they come through the front door?' or 'can you flush the toilet after you've used it?', or 'can you not eat all the cereal bars I bought for the packed lunches please?') so there is less opportunity for her to be confrontational and defiant. Then I might be able to squeeze out a bit more spontaneous affection - if I'm not in a state of constant aggravation and resentment with her complete refusal to comply with anything I ask her to do.
And I will get back to CAMHS next week re: counselling. We really do need help as two or three more years of this level of conflict will destroy my marriage, my mental and physical health, and the happiness and well being of my other two children.
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