Oh gosh, been away from this board for a couple of days. Thought the thread had died. So many new comments!
In answer to all the comments about HOW dd can read posts about herself - she comes to this board and browses. She's sharp as a bag of tacks and any posts about a young teenager being aggressive and difficult at home are going to ring a bell with her. I realise there is always the option of changing sex/age/username, but tbh, I think dd is that astute (she really is very bright, despite the bad behaviour) she would see through it to the situation itself, which you can't disguise, no matter how many details you change. I'm not sure she's actually used the search facility on this site. She has borrowed my gadgets (ipad and phone), to make calls/do a quick text, and has probably seen my browsing history on that. I am on and off the computer all day, and my gadgets, using them in a very free-range way. Some of the time there isn't conflict and we just go about our business as a family. It's hard to use mumsnet in the way I do and probably most of us do (nip in and out while doing other jobs) while rigidly policing our privacy.
In any case, the question in my head is 'who is she worrying about seeing this'? Her friends know she has hit me and physically intimidated me because she has done it in front of them, and they've told her she shouldn't treat her mother like that! Her 15 year old cousin who is her best friend didn't talk to her for two weeks while she was on holiday with us (shared a cottage with SIL and family) because she was so angry with dd for being rude and disrespectful to me and DH. When we called the police to deal with her being threatening and violent she went straight into school and told them 'my mum called the feds on me'. The school know the extent of the problems we are having because I talk to them pretty much every week. Partly because I regularly have teachers phoning me or writing to me complain about her being rude and non-compliant in class. The school and her friends know she is getting help from CAMHS. Her extended family know everything that's going on - thank fuck as I have needed their support, and they have offered it. People who know me - mums at the school gate who I am friends with, family friends, all know we're going through a very hard time with her. Really - dd's behaviour is not a secret in my community and I can't imagine anyone I know and who knows me actually bothering to take the trouble to come her and stalk me all over the boards. And if they did, they wouldn't find out anything they don't already know. Ditto dd's friends, who are no more likely to end up on mumsnet than on the fucking moon. Seriously - this is the last place on earth they would be looking for anything. Most of them won't know this site exists - UNLESS DD TELLS THEM and directs them here to read my posts, and why would she do that?
As for CAMHS - we are having family therapy and dd also sees the psychiatrist separately. I have no idea if the psychiatrist has said to her that I 'shouldn't be using mumsnet'. DD has got spectacular form for distorting and downright lying about other people's views when she is trying to persuade me or DH to do or not do something which concerns her.
The family therapy must be costing the NHS ££££ because each session involves at least 4 therapists (two or three observing and two therapists in with us). I don't know how many sessions we will have (some of which are on our own and some with dd).
Last week's session I did find useful and things have been better at home this week. I think their view is that DD is a very strong personality and that some teenagers just are more challenging when it comes to issues surrounding authority. They have said that the problems we are having are 'relational' - which I interpret as meaning that it is what's going on between mainly me and dd which is causing the escalation of her defiance and aggression. That it has become a battle of wills. I have acknowledged that the best way to deal with a teen who is refusing to comply on a whole range of fronts/being disruptive at school/not doing any school work/truanting/not lifting a finger at home/being really nasty and sometimes verbally and physically abusive to much younger siblings (one with sn) - is not to plead, nag, bribe, shout and sometimes, eventually, cry and make noises about giving up. Or to emotionally withdraw because you feel exhausted and battered by the whole experience. But you know, when reasoning and polite requests are consistently ignored for months on end and you are FEARFUL for a child's future, and at a low ebb physically and mentally yourself, you often do find yourself engaging in 'non-optimal' parenting practices, as many people with difficult teens here will know. We are none of us born with a training in handing children like this, and ironically, even those people who do (the social workers/teachers/youth workers) sometimes find to their amazement that all their training, experience and expertise counts for nothing when they are trying to deal with their own obstructive, aggressive and defiant children.
I do wish that the therapists at CAMHS would acknowledge this: that there are some basic expectations of children which it is reasonable for parents to have of neurotypical children who are not psychologically unwell (DD, according to them, is not mentally ill) - that they go to school and do schoolwork, and that they help at home. And that when these basic expectations are strongly resisted for months and years on end, this IS going to result in an emotional struggle between parents and children. I feel like we are having this conversation with the therapists with no 'grounding' in this reality. All the focus is on how we feel about dd's behaviour, and how dd feels about ours, with none of the therapists seeming to acknowledge the context in terms of reasonable expectations which IMO is at the root of everything which has gone wrong in our family.
Incidentally, what has reduced conflict in the house this week has been my attempts to reach out to dd in an effort to show her some affection and concern, and not reacting to her bad behaviour. Over the past few months things have been so awful at home I've withdrawn from her, just feeling eaten up by anger and grief and resentment, and really struggling to show much affection. I have tried harder this week to reach out to her. I have tried not to get too wound up with her being nasty and aggressive to my youngest dc, refusing to help AT ALL with housework, despite it being half term, and despite me and dh tidying her room, buying her paint to redecorate it in colours that she likes (trying for a fresh start). She just outright refuses if you ask her to do even the simplest thing - please can you empty out the dishwasher/pick your pants off the bathroom floor, put that lunchbox drink back in the cupboard because they're for errr... lunchboxes.
But it seems that this is our lot: a clever teenager who WILL fail in school, and who seems likely to spend her remaining years at home behaving in an entitled and disrespectful way, because this, sadly, is just how she is: lazy and entitled, and we CANNOT find a way of changing this that she is amenable to and that doesn't result in conflict that tears the family apart and ruins everyone's happiness.
I think I said a few months ago on this board that I was going through a grieving process about accepting the reality of my dd's future of failing in education and probably in life generally because of her inability/unwillingness to show any sort of self-discipline/work ethic. Accepting that no matter how much I love her or want things to be different, that I can't change the fact that she is basically very, very lazy.
On a brighter note, hopefully the violence which happened a few weeks ago which resulted in her being sent to my mum's for a fortnight won't be repeated. I think she realises that hitting me is beyond the pale. We have made it clear to her that violence and school refusing will result in her being made to stay at my mum's or DH's mum's house for a period of time, and she has taken this on board.
In the meantime, I have accepted that if she goes to school and is not violent at home, this is about the most I can probably expect from her at the moment, and to bury my hopes for dd down in some deep, deep hole.