My dd (now 14) has been 'lippy' pretty much since age 8, gradually getting more defiant, and our coping/management/discipline strategies have eventually crumbled. She's very bright, and her defiance (usually at home) is usually manipulative, including lying through her teeth, and blatant talking back.
Often physically violent to her siblings and even to my hd. And she did once bully a neighbour's child of the same age by tickling him - but holding him down to tickle him while he yelled at her to stop... "But I was only tickling him!". She does the same to the 2 littler boys. We've gradually got fed up of withdrawing privileges from her (in a transparent manner, with due warnings & clear conditions), all with no effect. We ended up feeling like abusers because all we seemed to be doing was punishing (starting with no TV, etc..), and Stacey resented us for being punitive. It kept on building, and the last straw for us was stopping her going on a school trip abroad.
Two week ago she blew up a tantrum and was threatening to run away from home. I the heat of the moment I said: Fine get packed. Regretting it immediately we decided to seek help from Social Services over the phone. Report was made and they gave some advice there and then. We were then contacted two days later to discuss our problems and what was immediately obvious that we were trated like abusers. We realise that we made some mistakes by withdrawing a lot of privilages, but that's been building up for 6 years. In the meantime we started a programme where we replaced our punitive approach with a hierarchical (or is it incremental?)rewards system so that the level of privileges allowed every week depends on the number of points earned the previous week. The points also count towards one-off treats. That's been going nearly a month now, and at last we see Stacey taking part more in family life, including doing some chores, and enjoying it - and enjoying doing the chores well and knowing that they are useful to the family - which gives her a sense of usefulness and importance.
And I certainly feel closer to her than for a very long time.
However, Social Services are insisting now on scrapping this programme as they see it as unacceptable because some of the 'treats' that she earns are food related (juice and fancy breakfast on Sundays), which they understand as abusive and alienating from the rest of the family. She's NOT deprived of nutritious food instead like fruit and weetabix. They also say that it's abusive for privileges to depend on good behaviour. That instead she should have maximum privileges which we should withdraw as punishments. Been there done that, that's how we got where we are. Apart from insisting we stop what we're doing we've been given no support (they support children not parents) and our lifetime experience with our dd is being ignored as they won't listen to anything we want to say. We've told them repeatedly that we want help and we're open to ideas which will improve our family life. So has dd. But they still treat us like abusers... sorry there's no such thing as bad parents, but we're being abusive. That's really comforting to know.
We've got a meeting involving a lot of teachers from all the children's schools and Social Services on Tuesday and we're really concerned. Both of us need enhanced CRBs for work, and we're worried that everything is getting blown out of proportion and that it's entirely at the discretion of Children's Services if anything goes on the CRB database. Has anyone got any ideas? Should we get a lawyer?