15 year old DD lying in bed refusing to get up go to school or even speak to me

[felttippens]

Arghhhhh I'm ready to pop
What the Hell are you supposed to do???

That's a very philosophical position to take, Zinkies. I disagree though, because the quantitative distance between throwing water over somebody (assault), and confiscating a privilege (generally considered acceptable parenting), is so vast that it constitutes a qualitative difference.

I don't think you'll find many parenting manuals written from a consciously Hegelian perspective, but it's generally not necessary, because most people can see that chucking cold water over a recalcitrant teenager is FUCKING CRACKERS, and nothing like taking the phone you're probably paying for off them temporarily.

I don't think it's quite as black and white as "let your child choose, obviously they'll choose not to because they are lazy" or "make them go by force or blackmail".

There are a million reasons why a 15 year old might not want to go to school and most of them are serious enough that a parent shouldn't be trying to override them with force. It's not a five year old who has decided they'd rather play colouring all day.

We have a very highly strung 15 year old; it takes very little to push her over the edge. The only thing that has any effect is some full on love bombing.

To be honest, I suspect it is the spectacle of Lady Stoneheart Tinkly attempting sweet and fluffy Mummy that terrifies her into compliance.

I've just written a reply that has vanished

I went back in calmer and gave her the opportunity to earn charger back by tidying her room ive gone pretty easy on her today so that I can get her in to school in the morning for the meeting ive arranged with form tutor and head of year

She has a school avoiding boyfriend which doesn't help

I went out for a while earlier and came home to her doing homework on the pc i helped her out a bit

Feeling like a terrible failure today I'm good at parenting the birth to 12 bit but lost at sea in this new territory

Did you see the book links? They might be really handy. We can only do our best- don't be too hard on yourself.

Ive ordered how to talk and get out of my life x

Treading feeling your pain. I was like Moominmamma when mine were littlies. I am utterly crap with teens. They are much too much like hard work, totally unappreciative and I suspect my controlling tendencies do not help either.

Keep plugging away; DS reverted to being my lovely boy when he got to 18, you don't have long to go.

This thread might have some useful tips too- it made Classics anyway!

I have a charming 18 year old doing well at A level who went through this phase . Exhorting, pleading, doing my best to open dialogue about reasons, contacting school etc etc had little effect.

However, once I decided enough was enough and said school or no phone contract, she stopped sharpish.

Most 15 yos are invested enough in the status quo that they certainly do choose to go to school. Again, who are these teenagers people have who are devoid of complexity, inner motivation and judgement? As Bertie points out, the reasons a 15yo suddenly refuses to go to school are highly unlikely to be as one-dimensional as 'I can't be arsed', and the idea that a bucket of water will fix the issue is, as bof points out (and I couldn't have put it better myself), fucking crackers. Personally I don't think phone confiscation is likely to help much either, but its hardly in the same league, and personally if I was paying for my kids phones, I'd reserve the right to withdraw the privilege whether or not my reasons stood up to scrutiny.

Op I'm miles away from the horrors of dealing with teenagers, but cut yourself some slack, if there were easy answers you'd have found them by now. Good luck, and as im sure you would tell somebody else going through this, you are allowed to make mistakes without calling yourself a failure as a parent.

I agree with you, zoemaguire, that confiscating the phone probably wasn't a great move in this instance, but I'm certainly not going to put it in the same category as chucking water, nor say that it's never a reasonable response.

No me neither - I was agreeing with you :) Taking a phone away would be a perfectly reasonable response to quite a number of teen transgressions!

Thumbwitch - Understanding that something was going on even if she didn't know what it was, letting me have the odd day off in the hope that I would talk to her, which I sometimes did. Sometimes I needed the space to think and would bounce back the next day.

I am an introvert though and I feel overwhelmed occasionally and need to recharge. When she gave me space but I knew she was there with tea and toast I picked up.

On other occasions she was very harsh with me and her despair at what to do made me think.

No one size fits all bug I just remember being so overwhelmed by loneliness and bit understanding the new confusing adult world I was in. The responsibility was too much. Everything was too much

Ok, thanks for answering Cheese. :)

Really, coercion is the only way?

Mist teenagers I know are difficult, inconsistent and barely rational. But at the emd of the day, they ARE rational and can be negotiated with IF they believe their perdpective is being taken seriously. This teenager seems to find Mondayys in school ate unbareable. Her solution is to avoid going. You work with her to find another solution - by tackling with her what is unbareable - because routinely skipping school is not an option. But you have to accept that to her, going to school seems unbareable right now. Making home life worse than the alternative is seriously not going to help her or do anything for her relationship with her mum, or her sense of herself as someone whose emotional state should be respected.

There's a reason.

Find the reason (with love and caring) and then you can work on a solution.

OutsSelf - agree completely

The thing is, it's quite clear there is an underlying reason why she is doing this, and of course the priority is to get to the bottom of it.

She may or may not be ready to engage with that conversation.

But in the meantime, she is not free to choose to stay in bed all day, even from a legal standpoint. In my view, a phone is a privilege . I don't cooperate and pay for privileges for people who don't work with me too. In the case off DD , I told her I was reserving the money against possible fines.

It doesn't have to be done with spite or anger. It's a simple matter of reasonable consequences.

treadingwater you didn't fail as a parent because you realised your first approach wasn't working and changed it. You got her out of bed and doing her homework with the more gentle, calm approach- so bloody well done.(having had 2 teenage DDs, Ive learnt this approach works best 99% of the time)

I hope today's meeting went well.

Clear consequences and making sure you stick to them is the only way to deal with this. This is normal teenage behaviour and another way of testing the boundaries. I agree with op that throwing of water is not acceptable.

She still had attitude this morning but I got her to school, she started off cocky and dismissive In the meeting but broke down and was saying how sad and stressed she is and doesn't know why, keeps thinking about grandpa and grandad dying (5 and 4 months ago respectively) and some days can't see the point of anything and like she can't cope
They've put her on to the school counsellor - fingers crossed xxx

Poor kid, it's not easy dealing with grief at any age, is it?

You did really well to start getting her a bit of help with it, and she can see you care.

Ahh poor thing. It must have been hard for her (and the whole family) to lose 2 people a month apart. It's good she's been able to tell you and the school how she feels. I hope the counselling helps.