Control/boundaries - the battle between an anxious parent vs defiant 14 year old

[Alvah]

I assume there is nothing that is 'normal' when it comes to teenagers, however I am struggling at the moment with a power play between being the responsible parent (setting clear boundaries) and the tornado force my of my son's mood when these boundaries squash his plans. I would really like your thoughts and opinions.

Single parent of two DS 14 & 12 and DD 10. Two youngest go to their dad at weekends, but DS 14 is refusing to go to dad for last 3 months. So I am now having to deal with weekend negotiations for the first time.

I am quite an anxious person by nature (as well as relatively quiet, introspective, calm and patient). I want to please and I like to avoid conflicts as much as possible. With a lively, sociable, streetwise, clever (defiant, angry, moody, 'I'll find a way to get what I want') 14 year old son, this is causing my nerves to completely fray.

He considers me very strict, I won't allow him to go for sleep overs (unless I know them and his friends parent phones me to tell me he is there). This is too embarrassing and leads to endless arguments (although I don't like arguments, I will not let him do whatever he wants). So he has had years of having to leave his friends who are going to sleepovers, and come home alone. (All he has to do is get them to phone me!)

I consider myself very lenient, although with certain conditions. He is allowed out until 10.30 at weekends, but have until 11 to make it home before I freak out. He has been allowed to go out during the Easter Holidays from afternoon until late (this is new! He used to always have to come home for dinner and not allowed to be out from morning until night, although all his friends are allowed, of course). When school is on he has to be home at 9.30 but has until 10 before I freak, and has to have dinner here before he goes out, expect on Friday when he has dinner out.

Bedtime at the moment I have changed from turning off wifi at 10.30 about a year ago, to becoming 11.30 gradually, to becoming his responsibility lately. Easter Holidays he has turned day to night. I am not happy about it but am choosing not to fight about that as I am just glad he is safely in the house. So I would consider myself lenient and flexible and understanding of his needs.... am I?

Last two weeks however, we had an argument, he told me to shut up and so I logged him out of Netflix. When he came home he freaked at me and punched his walls and called be every horrible name under the sun. The next day he went out at lunchtime and announced by text he would be staying at a friends that night for a sleepover (it would be best for the both of us). Last time he threatened to do this I said I would phone the police if he didn't come home + phone round all his friends parents. He came home with his tail between his legs. This time he text me and asked for me to please trust him on this one, I said I don't even know where you are, so he eventually told me. I didn't know what to do, on the one hand he was communicating on the other he was still breaking my rules. I didn't want him to get away with it. But somehow I felt I shouldn't fight this one just now. He ended up coming home on his own accord at 10.30. I was so glad to see him I forgot to be angry.

Last night he asked if he could stay at a friends house, I know who they are but don't have contact details. I said 'if his mum texts/phones me and tells me you are there'. After lots of arguments over text I got a text on my DS' phone 'apparently' from his friends dad. I don't believe it was him for a minute. Later he said 'stop worrying mum, I can look after myself, just trust me on this one, I love you - I'll be home in the morning'.

It is now morning. I have hardly slept. I had a nightmare he and his friends had dumped a body in the river, my son saying that 'if they don't find out we'll get away with it!' My stomach has been churning and I have been in tears. I feel awful. I feel he is slipping out of my grasp, and I don't known what to do about it. Punishing him seems to make things worse. Talking to him calmly seems to work much better, but he still just pushes and pushes the boundaries. I am getting so anxious that I don't know when I am over reacting and when I need to DO something.

Sorry for it to be so long. Just needed to get this off my chest :(

"I do hope you can get a proper diagnosis of your DD's problem. I would seek a referral to a psychiatrist. You seem to be dealing with an extraordinarily tough nut to crack."

Unfortunately I think there is no diagnosis other than 'teenage rebellion' albeit an extreme form. My dd has been seen by a psychiatrist - she has no diagnosable mental illness apart from a very recent diagnosis of depression, which is being treated, and which I think is a symptom and not a cause of her rebellion.

I was looking at her primary school reports yesterday and there wasn't one which was less than exemplary: the most used descriptions 'mature', 'hard working' 'clever' 'popular', 'talented'. As a child she was hugely confident, high spirited, happy and loving. All these problems have come with adolescence. Let's hope they go as she gets older.

It's not a 'grubby' area. I did not use that word. It's gangland. Nobody goes there unless they are driving an ambulance, a paddy wagon or unfortunate enough to have to live there. Criminals own the streets.

I keep my kids away from there and there are consequences for messing around in that area -- playing chicken there in cars on summer nights or whatever other fun teens can think up. The consequences are being grounded or having some other punishment inflicted by me or possibly being shot or knifed by gangbangers or picked up by the police and asked their business. The DCs can take their pick.

That is the point of accompanying a teen to class, Claybury. Go there on your own, reliably and on time, or have mummy take you. The choice is the teen's.

(And the other people who go there are people from all over the suburbs or the city itself, looking to buy drugs or find a hooker.)

"Go there on your own, reliably and on time, or have mummy take you. The choice is the teen's."

My teen would respond to that by refusing to leave the house, as would many of the rebellious teens I know. Or deliberately and routinely leave late so you would be forced to give them a lift to school. Or routinely leave late so as to fuck up your day. And in a battle of wills they'd win, because they don't care about the knock on effects, whereas you do. As for grounding- you can't lock a child in the house when they want to leave, so for a properly defiant child, grounding is irrelevant.

I think the point I'm making Math is that unless you've had to parent a truly defiant child you really can't know just how hard it is. Your children actually sound fundamentally compliant, in that you know you can enforce rules if you need to, and they will accept them. Some of us here have children that are a million miles away from that.

Re: crime - there have been many murders in my part of London (more than Hackney, Tower Hamlets or Newham) over the past few years and there is a thriving gang culture. People openly deal drugs from cars and from barber shops. On the whole though, my children feel quite safe in this environment, as do I. I've been here for 14 years and you just get used to it.

And maybe you can understand that there is a lot of average, common or garden rebellion that is not as extreme as your particular experience. Most teenager problems fall into the category of 'normal rebellion'. My DCs are not abnormally compliant. Your DD seems to be in a league of her own, far beyond 'truly defiant' teenager. I think it is a pity that the support services you have so far consulted have not recognised that there is more than mere defiance going on.

The neighbourhood close to home that I mentioned saw, in the last month, reports of:
Violent crimes against persons (these involved weapons, either guns or knives, etc., or involved rape) --
51 robberies
40 batteries
27 assaults
4 murders
7 sexual assaults (probably the tip of the iceberg)

Property crimes --
156 thefts
24 burglaries
53 vehicle thefts
5 arson

Quality of life crimes --
96 criminal damage cases
295 narcotics incidents that were reported, or witnessed by police (the tip of the iceberg)
24 prostitution cases (tip of the iceberg)

"I think it is a pity that the support services you have so far consulted have not recognised that there is more than mere defiance going on."

Actually I'm not sure that there is more than defiance going on.

I think the defiance is at the root of all the other problems, rather than the other way around.

This board has become a haven for those of us with really difficult teenagers, and, have to be honest, it's demoralising being lectured about how to parent a really difficult teen by someone who hasn't experienced having to cope with this sort of situation themselves.

I suspect you live in a big city - maybe a m/c neighbourhood cheek by jowl with a very deprived area. I actually live IN the middle of a community with high levels of crime and deprivation, and my children mix with other children who have grown up here. That's big cities for you - people living in different worlds brushing shoulders in the street.

Nobody could be that defiant, so predictably and for so long, with the risk of losing a positive family relationship, losing out in school and jeopardising their future meaning so little to them, and so determined not to co-operate that no sanction or reward has any hope of working.

Defiance cannot be the root of the issue in other words. It is the symptom. There is something underlying that.

My children go to a school with 3,500 other students with a huge mix of backgrounds. We are not separated by some sort of wall from any of what goes on a short walk away. The price of peace here has been eternal vigilance.

I repeat - she's been assessed several times by both psychologists and psychiatrists and they have never put forward any sort of diagnosis of mental illness, AS disorders, etc and prior to adolescence never gave us a moments worry.

She just appears to be experiencing a magnified form of adolescent, umm, adolescentness.

As for the whole 'vigilance' thing - what do you do, spy on your children? How do you know who they mix with? What do you know about their family backgrounds? What would you do if your child made friends with a child whose family worried you? Tell them to drop the friendship?

To add, last night dd was out with two girls she went to nursery and then primary school with. One is the dd of a single mum of six who has never worked or lived with the father of her children. The other girl is also one of six - single parent household, never worked, mum (main care giver) repeatedly sectioned. The adult brothers who live at home have criminal records and have been electronically tagged. There have been drug raids at the house (front door has a big dent in it). What do I say to dd? You can't mix with children who you have been school friends with for twelve years? Should I judge these girls as dodgy and unsuitable when actually they're perfectly sweet kids, just not studious or career focused, and born into poverty? I don't know any m/c parents who live in the inner city who have THAT level of control over who their teenage children mix with outside school...

I don't spy on them. We have a level of trust and we talk. I do a lot of listening and I choose my words carefully.

I have made sure they mix with people that are motivated, working in school and with a positive attitude. I have managed to do this by keeping them busy with sports and activities and by keeping up a patter during their childhoods that involved remarks about going to university, what they would like to study there, conversation about their subjects in school, what a shame it was for the children that some people's parents don't seem to understand how the world works, etc. I do not judge families by appearances. Poverty doesn't bother me in the least. Not being work or career focused does bother me however. Living in the inner city doesn't mean you are left with nobody else to associate with except people who are not working towards something.

You absolutely can drop children you have been friends with for primary school. You can take a look at the behaviour and attitude of other DCs and decide if they are a good or a bad influence on your children. Changing company can be done by involving your children in activities the problem children are not involved in and by building up your own family culture to such an extent that your children can see for themselves where others are heading. If your children have experienced too much freedom to come and go as they please as children it will be difficult to rein them in as teens, or introduce the idea of studying and taking school seriously at age 12. If you have had influence over your children's choice of friends when they are young then you may not have to bother prying them loose from friends who are not going to be a positive influence on them when they are teens.

Dysfunction in families, or flawed parental attitudes that went under the radar during childhood can become glaringly obvious once children become teens. If you have been able to spot problems early on then you can start earlier to disengage your child. I can think of several examples among children my DCs went to primary school with and with whom my DCs no longer hang out because those children changed, or started getting involved with teens who were determined to drag others down to their level. Similarly there are children my DCs never had much to do with as children because you could see even then that those children were not from families with what I would call a positive culture. My DCs do not owe anyone their loyalty and if being PC about family culture is going to have a negative impact on them then forget that too. They were still left with plenty of good friends after the weeding out process.

Parents are not powerless. Children can be pushed and even pulled in the right direction.