Not brave enough for aibu. Am i messing this up?

[bangheadhere]

My lovely previously girl has hit puberty and is being truly horrible.
Everytime she doesn't get her own way or has a bad day she launches into a vile attack of name calling towards me. Really horrid stuff.
She won't go and calm down, if I go away she follows me screaming in my face.

Her behaviour is awful and I am dealing with it. However once she realises she has gone too far and will get a consequence she will say sorry usually in a snotty voice but expect everything to instantly be normal again and will get annoyed if I then say no to her having one of my chocolates or such. Only for the behaviour to repeat a couple of days later.

So I've told her I'm not ready to accept her apology and am angry and upset at how she has behaved, she I furious at me. She says she's said sorry and i should accept it.

I'm not ready to.

What consequences for the repeated name calling, and the following you round?

Nah sorry doesn't change what she did, and it doesn't even seem like she means it.

I would explain when she's calm that if she calls you names, the consequence is x. Then when she calls you names, do x, without rising to her at all. I'd recommend changing the wifi password, or just disconnecting the internet altogether, or confiscating her phone. Put a time limit on it, like 12 hours, and follow it to the letter. If you can phrase the whole thing like its a reminder for her of how to behave, you're working together to help Her remember she must control her temper, it might take some of the sting out of it.

Once the consequence has been served, resume normal friendliness. It's crucial she feels like there is a relationship to repair, and that you're open to that.

Get Dad on board if he's around, or family members, and ask her to be present when you explain what her behaviour has been like and what you are both doing to correct it.

Be prepared for her to escalate the first few times. She will rage, you will not change your mind.

That's just my advice because I work with teenagers. They can't always self regulate, their pre-frontal lobe just isn't fully working, so they need a little encouragement.

Thank you Moo. Great advice.

Consequences are lost treats, lost phone/xbox

I've refused to top up her phone due to her horrendous behaviour in which she hit me in the face throwing her arms around in temper and told her she has to save up her own money if she wants to top up. (Grandparents give her pocket money)

Oh I've just posted about my dd. She does the exact same thing.
I've just likened it to feeling like you're in an abusive relationship.
Today she had the cheek to tell me her assembly today was about 'love is forgiveness' but wouldn't accept me saying, ' that's true but you have to actually be sorry'. What she then argued was that because she was sorry she should then be instantly forgiven and if she wasn't then obviously I don't love her. FFS!!
To her sorry is a word. I keep telling her it's actually a verb.
When I give consequences, it doesn't seem to make her change in the long run. She's 'sorry' for as long as she's lost her phone, then goes right back to being rude, ungrateful and generally unpleasant.

Sorry just read it back, realise it's not very helpful but I wanted you to know...I really feel your pain.

it is helpful to be clear that love and forgiveness are great, but there are still consequences.

So a thief may be sorry, and the judge may take that into account, but he/she still has to go to court, be tried and sentenced.

So I would say, thank you for apologising, I appreciate that, and I forgive you. The consequence still stands.

I agree with moo that it is helpful to have a simple consistent consequence.
So we have been battling with ds (13) over bedtime and phone, so the consequence is now that if he isn't in bed on time, then he hands in phone after school tomorrow (this a low level phone consequence)
If he sneaks phone upstairs after bedtime and is caught with phone upstairs, then he loses phone tomorrow all day (this is higher level phone consequence)

However nice/sorry/co-operative etc, the consequence doesn't go.
We have found this is calmer, more effective and I don't end up giving out big punishment because I am so fed up.

And real rudeness gets a phone loss.

Its helpful Mrscraig to know I'm not alone.

I've tried to have a calm chat with her this morning but she just got angry. Screamed she doesn't want to come home because I'm horrid and that she wishes she was dead while counting under her breath.

It's a nightmare when they just switch into angry mode, and by-pass communication.

There is a really interesting study about teenagers and emotion.
They compared a load of pre-teens with a load of teens. They had to look at a whole set of photos and say what the emotion was (don't know exactly how they did it) The pre-teens were pretty spot on. The teens were really bad at it, not only did they not recognise many of the emotions, but they perceived the people in the photos as being angry at them a lot of the time.

In other words, through a teenagers eyes, adults around them appear to be angry when they aren't.
This really explains a lot!
I think random hormones explain a lot too.

Mind you my 8 year old was screaming out of her bedroom window on saturday as I walked down the road 'I hate you, I will never love you again, you are the worst mummy in the world'

steppemum that sounds really interesting. I saw a bit to research that tested teens ability to see things from another persons point of view with physical objects and they found it very difficult.
banghead doesn't sound as if you're messing up at all to me. In fact you sound like you're coping really well.

Hi, a lurker here who has very similar problems with a teen dd. I am very interested by steppe mums post. anyone with experience of a teen coming out of this 'no empathy' stage and going back to how they were before? My teen has always been very strong willed, but since a toddler she has been very socially skilled and I thought very emotionally intelligent. However since hitting teendom she seems to have lost any scrap of empathy with real people in her lives, even her former friends. She interprets things I say as being patronising/angry etc when they are not and doesn't seem to care about anyone's feelings or take any interest in anyone else. She is fiercely competitive and can't bear anyone to do better than her. I find it really sad as it is such a change from how she was. Strangely she will still cry at things in films or get very worked up if she feels a random stranger is unhappy. Hopefully that is a sign there is still some empathy there somewhere!