I have been struggling with my 13 year old DD. A bit of background: she is on the waiting list to see a counsellor. She has a diagnosis from CAMHS - emetophobia & OCD.
The main problem I am having from her now, though, is angry outbursts. We are getting all the normal teenaged selfishness - like this morning, she wanted a lift to school because she had made herself late.
This in itself doesn't sound so bad but when I say it is because she threw water at her brother while he was on the computer (a big no no and she knows) and refused to clean it up, it is. It is also bad when I say she kicked the door repeatedly and then my leg til I felt it bend.
I did dig my heels in and abjectly refused the lift and she did leave very late. I was quite prepared to tell the school why.
I had another outburst last night because I didn't want to go out for a walk with her because I was too tired after work and she kept saying she needed to get out and I kept saying I needed to relax. So she hummed this song as loudly as she could for a good half hour, while knocking on the wall. It took the nerves of cast iron to let her get on with it but that I did and I didn't take her on the walk. She eventually snapped out of it and apologised and appeared to understand.
Thing is, in the past, I have given in because I don't want to be hit, have stuff broken and can't handle the disruption. If I do try to lay down the law, she is relentless in her stubbornness to conform. When she was a baby, I tried to sleep train her and gave up after 3 hours of continued crying. When I tried to toilet train her, I ended up with a CAMHS referral before and being sent to parenting classes which did not work. Normal parenting techniques work on her brother, btw.
Sometimes, I can reason with her when calm but she will go and and do it again and again and again. I do think she just sometimes tells me what I want to hear. Her behaviour is OK at school though she doesn't have that many close friends now (used to when younger) and is behind, which has always been the case. The problem she has is that you have to tell her things over and over and it takes a long time to stick. This is where we struggle with the behaviour at home.
Last time I chased CAMHS, I got a very snotty woman on the phone who said we don't deal with stuff like this and told me to try to reason with her and, if she is annoying her brother, to let them sort it out themselves.