This might be lengthy thread, so bare with me as I tell my tale of woe....My (D)D is turning 17 on Saturday and once again, there is tension in the house, which might make it an unhappy birthday. Although this isn't the first time we have had this sort of tension in the house-the last time no-one spoke to each other for a month!
Let me start at the beginning, to give some perspective on this, she has always been a bit odd & difficult from about the age of 10. She used to take herself to primary school by herself (while I walked a little further back with her younger brother who went to the same school), but walking home she was by herself-doesn't sound like much of a problem-except one day one of the mums who lives down our road stopped me one morning on my way home and told me that my daughter had started walking into her house and sitting in her kitchen with her children, the mum said she didn't mind as y DD was a lovely girl, nice manners but just thought i would like to know. (we don't know the family). When i asked my daughter about it, she said she didn't know why she did this. I stopped letting her walk to & from school by herself. I was embarrassed & confused by her behaviour. Fast forward to age 11 when she started secondary school and a new rule came into play. We live about 10mins from both the school, so this rule seemed reasonable. School finished at 3pm, so she had to be home by 4pm or if she wanted to stay out longer, she had to come home first, let us know where she was going and we would tell her to be home by a certain time. Did she follow this rule? No she didn't. she would just go off to her friends house sometimes still not home, by 6pm-which meant I would be walking the surrounding area looking for her, we know they were local, but not addresses. Sometimes i found her, sometimes I would have to go home and wait for her. She would then come home like she hadn't done anything wrong, then we would try to explain to her that this wasn't acceptable and explain the danger she was putting herself in by not letting us know where she was. So, we would ground her, she would have to come straight home after school. She ignored this as well and would continue to do as she pleased. This sort of behavious continues on for a couple of yrs! When she was about 14/15 it got to the point, where i would have to go meet her from school. I had tried everything else to try to get her to understand that we are the parents and she was the child, and that there are rules that need to be followed to keep herself safe.
She has always seemed that she sees things differently from other kids i knew. She had a difficult birth & was starved oxygen for a little bit-but met all her milestones at the (correct) age. She was always the odd one out in groups, never got invited to parties when she was younger, she has dyslexia-which i had to pay privately to get diagnosed (her school wouldn't test her). I have had her tested for Asperger's but she doesn't rank on the Autism spectrum. Although, the testing did discover she has a problem with her memory, where she finds it difficult to grab important bits of information quickly.
Anyway, let me get to this years issues. At the end of January on a Friday, she didn't come home for 2 days! We called the police, she was officially on the missing persons list. Through looking through her phone (which we had confiscated the day before) we found some names of her friends and found out that she wanted to go shopping after college and stay at their house. (we would've let her if she asked). Anyway, it turned out that she didn't end up doing that, because the friend hadn't asked her dad if my DD could stay, so instead of coming home, we discovered the NEXT day from the police about 12.15pm that she had stayed at a boys house and the boy had sent her home on the bus (its one bus from his house to ours) she did not come home until 4.30am Sunday morning!! We were all tired , so I hugged her & told her that i'm glad she is safe and sent her to bed. We would discuss it in the morning.
In the morning (still Sunday), we asked her where she was & she wouldn't answer us. We let the police know that she was home and they sent some one round. She spoke to them-only if we weren't in the room. She told the police officer that after the boy had put her on the bus, she still didn't want to come home, because she knew that she would be in trouble (a regular excuse when she hadn't come home from school all those times before) so she just rode the buses, from the beginning to the end constantly-until she was hungry and THEN came home!! (I phoned TFL and got them to check her oyster card to see where she had been-she rode 13 buses that day!) I phoned the doctor and basically begged for help, because this type of behaviour now & previously wasn't 'normal'. I was signed off from work for 3 wks due to stress, the doctor spoke to her-again by herself (she will not open up to us) and suggested that she be referred to a psychotherapist!! She didn't say one one to anyone for a whole month!! Not one word. That can't be healthy, right? She sees the therapist for about 5 weeks and then we are referred to family therapy, where she says she wants to be treated more like an adult. To me that means treating people with respect, having manners & admitting when you have done the wrong thing and apologising for when you have upset people-especially family.
Anyway, towards the ed of our sessions, we come up with a plan of how to make HER life better. She wanted to join police cadets-we organised that for her. She wanted more independence, so we asked, what she would like to do. She said she wanted to go swimming by herself, absolutely fine. There is a swimming pool about 10 mins away. we looked up sessions and said come home straight after (as we are still trying to re-build the trust between us). She didn't come home until 2.15pm when she she should've been home by 12.30pm! (I had a job interview the same day, so already a bit stressed) when she got home, asked where she was, she said she had to go to college to hand in coursework. by the way, she would've had to pass our house to go to the bus stop to get to college. Asked her why she didn't say anything before swimming, she said it had to be handed in that day. Bit flimsy as an excuse, but at least she said something(!) I told her I would phone college and ask them if she was there (have checked up on her before) so I gave her another opportunity to tell me anything, in case she was lying. I phoned college and spoke to the person she saw, who told me that yes, she did come to college-but it wasn't to hand in coursework, it was to hand in a permission slip to go on a trip the next day! She had forged my signature!! I verbally gave my permission for her to go on this trip as this was a trip that had been postponed from before Christmas for working so hard in college to get all her coursework done. So again, all she had to do was ask me to sign the slip and i would've done it!! Instead she has to scheme & lie to get what she wants?!
We have tried, screaming, shouting, crying (she has seen the effect her behaviour has on me), compassion, understanding, talking, consequences for her actions(i.e. confiscating her phone, tv, etc. groundings) We have had therapy (she is very good at telling the professionals what they want to hear so that they say there is nothing wrong with her).
I am at my wits end mumsnet, HELP!!