Scared DD will go completely off the rails

27 replies

Sohardtochooseausername · 13/03/2024 07:25

DD is 12 and has been at 3 schools. She is au adhd and very hyperactive. She finds it easy to make friends but very hard to keep them.

She has always got in trouble at school for inappropriate behaviour eg shouting out, answering back etc but she never seems to understand why she is in trouble.

At her current school she has joined a gang of girls who seem to accept her but I’m concerned they are taking advantage of her desperation to have friends.

She is away this week on a school trip and I’ve found messages on her phone which were done at sleepovers and during school time. It looks like these girls are egging her on to message kids they know with mean messages. She is sending pictures of herself to them growling and putting her fingers up.

I’m horrified and have asked the school to have a conversation asap. Not least because whatever education they’re doing on mobile etiquette hasn’t landed.

When she gets back from the trip I'm at a loss what to do. I will restrict her phone use heavily but not sure what else. As she heads into her teenage years I can only see this stuff becoming worse because she just can’t see what she is doing wrong and I’m terrified she will get into really bad trouble one day.

Has anyone got any experience of this?

OP posts:

Original poster

Sohardtochooseausername · 20/05/2024 06:54

Thanks Lilactimes, she is on the waiting list for NHS diagnosis so hopefully we will get that and the meds suit her before she starts her exams in a couple of years!

OP posts:

Aimtodobetter · 25/09/2024 19:05

Sohardtochooseausername · 15/03/2024 21:04

I haven’t deliberately raised a bully.

i have followed all the books. When we first started seeking help with her we were put on parenting courses and given books to read but for whatever reason she just doesn’t understand what her behaviour looks like to others and also what the consequences of it are.

There have been times I thought she was a narcissist / sociopath. It’s very distressing when your child just doesn’t respond or develop like other children you see posts like yours which really demonstrate the lack of understanding I have experienced from professionals and parents for a very long time. @ilovebreadsauce

Luckily this week I have discussed with other parents and the school and I feel like we’ve really made progress coming up with a plan on how to deal with our kids and phones. DD will only be able to text and call a ltd number of people until the summer and then we will review. I’ve removed WhatsApp and have full control of who her contacts are.

I can’t - I have tried over and over - I can’t get her to empathise. But I can create a community that gets what she’s like and can help her stay safe, I hope.

She's only young and teenage brains are terrible at managing true empathy in most cases. You just need to keep reinforcing appropriate boundaries, including with fair and appropriate consequences, and trying to help her understand the problems with her behavior and its impact on others. For what its worth, at 40 lots of people consider me pretty empathetic (if direct), but as a teenager I was never a bully but I know I spent very little time thinking about other people's feelings as I was just in my own ball of emotions and there are clear points in my life where I have become much more empathetic through realisations and self development, much of which was in my 20s and 30s.

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