Dd … help

[Atmywitsend71]

Hello, I’m new to mumsnet and I’m asking for help as I just don’t know what to do.

My dd is 13, almost 14, year 9. She always been a handful - didn’t sleep as a baby, terrible twos were hard going ….. Now she’s a teenager and it’s unbearable. She’s so aggressive especially with me. She ignores me, when she speaks to me it’s to tell me that she wants to put me in care home when I’m older. She’s called me a fat ugly c*nt. It is relentless. Dh and I was on verge of splitting up because I can’t take her behaviour anymore. I have a DS who is 18, he’s very bright yet she’s calls him retarded. At school, she’s delightful, clever, well behaved etc. DD, when she speaks to me, talks about her weight non stop. She sometimes won’t eat and has self harmed. I’ve taken her to the GP but there’s not much help there. She’s on the pill because of her periods and she’s had counselling with Teens in Crisis.

I have depression. I have no support network at all. My own mum died some years ago. I don’t know what I do.

I’m so sorry, it sounds really really hard. I also have a DD14 who is seriously pushing all the boundaries recently. I’ve no real advice but didn’t want your post to go unanswered. It is so incredibly hard.

Sounds awful.

can you and your husband at least agree that you will be a United front? Is she awful to him?

is it possible that the pill is making things worse and she needs to change brands?

one thing I will say is that you say nothing nice about her, and say her problems started at birth. Is it possible that you have cast her as the family scapegoat and her brother as someone she’ll never be as good as. She is certainly giving very strong signals that she doesn’t feel loved or valued.

We went through a very torrid time with DD but I would say that was more an episode and out of character. At her worst she was referred to Camhs for self harm and suicide ideation and the level of anger/hatred at me was unbelievable.

Their advice to me was the ‘put your own oxygen mask on first’ style, try to disengage a bit, do nice things for yourself and pursue your own interests.

With her I was advised to keep communication open but often by texts, even now we text ‘tea’s ready’ etc (she’s since been diagnosed with ASD and does tend to lurk in her room largely but not off the scale for a teen).

I would also send her little jokes or light-hearted news stories and memes that she might enjoy, kinda ‘saw this and thought of you’. Also made little gifts now and then, just some sweets or stuck a few quid on her card if she’d done well in a test etc.

all this seemed a bit counter-intuitive when she was so vile but it did keep the door open to her ‘coming back’, and took some of the heat out of what was a pretty fraught situation at home.

really best of luck, I know you can’t see a way through it at the mo, but the vast, vast majority of vile teens become lovely functional adults.