My stepdaughter is 14 and lives with me and her Dad, we have lived together with two siblings (7 and 16) for the last 2 years.
Over the last 6 months her behaviour at school has been escalating, progressing from general back chat and refusal to go into lessons, to destruction of property, abusive foul language threats and absconding. Until Feb March she had never had a single exclusion and since then she has had 1 or 2 a month minimum.
SD lies, prolifically, her Dad and I seriously don't feel like we can trust a word she says, she plays people off against each other, she complains about being bullied and we are presented with voice notes of her threatening other children. Just last week she swore to me she had attended every lesson and wasn't involved in damage to tables at school, to the point I called to make sure they had the right child, they said they had CCTV, she said she was there but not involved, but now she has tripped herself up saying, "When I was trashing those tables last week"... etc.
When she gets in trouble at school she tries to deflect the issue by saying her dad has been hurting her (he hasn't, in the two years I have lived here I have seen him raise his voice at her once he is a very calm and collected person). She tells anyone who will listen this, so we have been referred to MASH twice in the last 2 months, both times they closed the case.
She has run away from home 3 times in the last few months, and usually returns on her own. She says she wants to live with her birth mum but she wont have her there so her mum says if she doesn't come home to us she will have to go into care, so we are getting the behaviours above.
Yesterday she absconded from school with another girl, I reported it to the police as she has gone missing before recently, and we are waiting on an urgent CAMHS referral. SD went to the shops and was shoplifting, came home and dumped her bags while we were out and went back out, at around 8pm she returned and was verbally abusing our immediate neighbour when asked to move off her front garden, asking if she "wanted a slap" and telling her to "go back inside fatty" with her two friends ganging up on her.
I called the police to update them and she returned home an hour later trying to take her school bag with her (she is on a 1.5 day suspension) and when we looked in her bag it was filled with underwear which looks to be stolen from Primark. We called the police again and asked for an urgent response as she was refusing to come inside threatening to slap her dad and smash his car up etc.
Eventually the police arrived 10 minutes after the girls left, spent an hour speaking to us and searching the house looking for her and searching her room, they then went out to find her (at her friends house) around midnight they came home and basically told us that we need to try and be more understanding to her, and explain how her behaviour is making us feel, We have both tried this and she is indifferent and basically has no empathy whatsoever, she is so absorbed with her anger and rage.
We have an urgent appointment with CAMHS on Monday but just wanted to vent or see if anyone else has had this, we have tried so hard to put boundaries in place, but because there are no boundaries at her mums she wants to be there not here and is making our lives hell. Hubby is worried he is going to end up being beaten up or worse because of the allegations she is making about him.
Most of her anger is directed towards me for "stealing her dad" as she was the only girl in the house before I moved in, but we have clear rules and boundaries and rewards set for all the children to encourage them to go to school and to tidy up etc. I think in the last 6 weeks, she has managed less than 5 days at school. For a child that had 95% attendance last year the difference is massive.
Has anyone else had issues like this? I am worried about the impact this is having not only on the children but her too,