Don't know if any of you remember my many anguished posts on this board over the years. I had four years of increasing awfulness and sadness with dd, from 12 onwards and came here for advice often. Got brilliant help from Maryz, Flow and lots of other great posters on this board which kept me going and gave me hope for the future.
The posts I wrote were about dd's disengaging with education in a pretty massive way - truanting, constant internal exclusions at school, arguing with teachers, not working. This caused so much anxiety and stress for DH and I and I really struggled with knowing what to do to help or to manage the situation.
At home things were absolutely hideous a lot of the time. She was physically and verbally aggressive, kicking holes in doors, hitting us and her siblings, kicking holes in doors and walls. It ended up with social services involvement, her failing 6 of the 8 GCSE's she took in summer and being briefly hospitalised following suicide threats.
One of the things which brought me really low was DD completely rejecting me as a mother and as a human being- she would regularly tell me how much she despised me and what a rubbish mother I was and was consistently obstructive and aggressive towards me.
We were all in despair.
Roll on three months....
DD is now on a level three college course at a decent FE college. I pleaded with them to take her as she didn't have enough GCSE's (needed 5), and luckily they agreed.
In five weeks she's not missed a single lesson or been late once. She is spending hours doing her coursework - completing her assignments weeks ahead of deadlines to a high standard. She sent out loads of emails off her own back when she started and swiftly secured a really good work placement which she will do one day a week through the first year of her course. She is also looking at universities and identifying courses to apply to next year.
At home she is loving and chatty. We have cuddles every day and she tells me she loves me all the time. We are enjoying spending time together and for the first time in years I'm able to parent her - ie, put boundaries in place, without fearing a massive kicking off. There has been almost no shouting and crying (well, a bit, but nothing like before and much more quickly resolved).
She has shrugged off most of her old friendships with girls who were being as chaotic as her and is fast making new friends with girls on her course.
I'm loving doing things for her and with her. She's still walking all over us - getting us to fund her disgusting smoking habit, not really helping much about the house, and constantly hassling us for lifts when there is a great bus and train service 50 yards from our front door, but I don't mind because she seems so much happier and appears to be going somewhere with her life.
It's blissful being able to show affection to her and to help her with her college stuff, and to be able to fuss over her and nag her in a way she wouldn't tolerate before.
I'm not entirely convinced we're completely out of the woods but things are definitely so much better now. If I was so pass on what I've learned to parents here who are still in the thick of what I have gone through with dd it would be primarily to try not to lose the love in your relationship no matter how fucking awful they're being. Such a hard thing to do, and I didn't manage it well. If I had to do the whole thing again that is the one thing I'd focus on above all else: to keep showing love even when they're being impossible to love.
Also to keep your temper and your dignity. Two more things I failed at spectacularly!
And to remember: 'this too shall pass'. It's like the newborn phase or the toddler phase - hard and intense, but IT DOESN'T LAST FOREVER thank fuck
Oh, and grab all help with both hands. CAMHS were crap in some ways, but the last few months they've come up trumps. DD is now having CBT and it's definitely helping her. Wish she'd been offered it years ago. Social services were, in their own annoying way, actually very helpful because they made her see that the boundaries we were trying to reinforce with the right ones and that all we were trying to do was to keep her safe. We've also been incredibly lucky to have amazing family support - two aunties and grandparents who have given dd and us so much love and help. Really don't know what would have happened without this.
Hope this post is encouraging to those of you who are having a hard time with your teens at the moment. 