12 year old Daughter witn emotional issues

[starbits]

Your story sounds very familiar to me. I have a 13 year old daughter who is:

1. Very intelligent.
2. Defiant
3. "She doesn't do her homework and lies and tells us she has none."
4. Is failing one class and doing poorly in others.
5. Is in continual on/off relationships mostly with other girls because sombody "dissed" her. Has a number of male friends, all of whom come from broken homes, and most of whom Mom and Dad aren't thrilled with. Her "boyfriend" just got grounded for disappearing in the middle of the night. Parents noticed he was gone at 4:30am, no note etc.
6. Heated up a bic lighter and burned her arm with it to make a scar. She said it was an accident, Dad knows better.
7. Has her own page in Myspace and loves to message back and forth with her friends.
8. Does not do drugs.

Pretty familiar huh? I am sure you had done many of the things we have. Losing priviledges, no horseback riding, no phone calls on school nights for any reason except getting homework assignments, no messaging on school nights. Rewarding her for good grades, loosened privelidges not monitary, and coming down hard for not doing homework. She has been told she will repeat the grade if she fails her courses, no matter what the school says about promotion. She knows I am serious about this and is finally getting the message.
You can't win all the fights so you have to pick the ones that are important to you and then never back down. For me one of the fights was earrings. I agreed to one piercing for an earring and no more of any kind anywhere until she turns 18 and is out of my house. She challenged that by getting a second earring hole. I confiscated all her earrings and banned her from wearing earrings of any kind for two months. "But all my friends have more than one" To which I replied that this was a fight I picked to win, there will be no compromise, I will win, live with it. And she has. Other issues, makeup, haircolor, certain friends I have deemed battles I am willing to compromise on. Pick your battles.
The suggestions of others to relate more is good, but sometimes her crappy mood gets in the way. Something I do, which both my daughters hate, is to tell them "Don't smile. Don't smile, I can see a smile starting. Don't do it." This works even in the middle of a heated argument. If you are persistent you will always get a smile. It stops arguments and helps break up bad moods. It is not a cure-all, but it breaks the mood so a discussion can begin.

My daughter was adopted as a special needs child. Her birth mother is a diagnosed schizophrenic, which can be genitic and passed on to the child. So that is something we have considered in her blowups. So far though she is a heathy, normal, combative, sometimes maladjusted, kid.
Having said all this the one sentence in your message that stood out with big bold ALERT!! ALERT!! signs was this one.

"She has started mantioning how she should just be dead and no one loves her, etc."

This is a statement that can't be ignored. Kids kill themselves all the time for reasons adults think are completely irrational. She needs to see someone immediately. If you can't afford it check with the school, or social services. Catholic social services had a psycologist we were able to take my daughter to when she was younger. We are not Catholic and the fees were minimal.

I wish you and your daughter well. It is not always easy, but there are rewards that make it worthwhile.

Eric

[galahad_187]

also make sure when you reward her you reward her /effort/ not her /results/. if you have two children and child a is brilliant and makes A's and B's with little to no effort why should child A be be rewarded more than child B who studies for hours every night, sweats every test, and makes b's and c's. Why be proud of what your given? be proud of what you work for.

that being said i find it wierd how so many people recommend constant grounding and punishment. I have a friend that was heavily punished and sheltered all the time. he hated his parents, was completely miserable, felt little love from them, and ultimatly rebelled completely the second he was able to leave home.

Punishing bad acts are important but it must be known and /shown/ that the ACT is bad and not the CHILD.
punishment should:
1)fit the crime
2)be made out to be 'her choice.' ex: she chose to lie about not having homework, so she chose to have a teacher sign something with all her homework assignments on it everyday. She also chose to show you that she completed all her homework every night and has studied for every test.
3)should be conveyed without raising your voice. Your actions speak plenty loud and yelling accoimplishes only making things more emotional. More emotion is probably the last thing a young girl needs.

She needs not only your love but your affection and attention. Counceling can't be bad advice. It may make her feel like an outsider but hell, she already does. I'd rather my child be a mentally stable outsider than an unstable conformer/socially accepted.

[daveT]

I have dated two girls that used to cut themselves. It was shocking the first time this was revealed to me and down right shuddering the second.

My mother is sort of a nut-job. As the saying goes, we all look for our mother's in life.

Now that I have blunt about myself, I would like to be blunt with you. The main similarity (hang-up) with both of these girls was that they had issues with there father's. The first one wished that he was there more, and missed him. The other was smacked around by him, but was also ignored as well. I can relate to the posts about not feeling like the ideal child. My mother wanted a girl, and told me that on several occasions. I have been to child therapists, at the time it did not help, nor did it help any other child I knew. This is because at that age I didn't understand what they were saying to me. Though I did learn a lot from them, I was too stubborn to let anything meaningful happen in my life.

The old adage about baggage is true. As much as I hate to admit it, the things that happened when I was younger still have a very strong effect on my life-style, self-esteem, and especially relationships, including passing friends and girlfriends.

The only thing that I can say is that you should spend more time with her, and tell yourself everyday that you do like her. I hope that for her sake that you start tonight.

[lil']

[ QUOTE ]
Although some of her behaviors make her seem as if she might have a severe case of ADHD, my gut instinct is that there is something even more seriously wrong with her. In fact, as difficult as this is for me to say (since I have never met her), there is a good chance that your daughter may have either a pervasive developmental disorder or a major mental illness. Given the various problems she has had throughout her life, I'm a bit surprised to not be hearing about experiences already with doctors and therapists.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am a therapist who works pretty much exclusively with adolescents and their families. Although I can't tell too much from an internet post, I'd have to agree with Chesspain's assessment.

If so many of her difficulties take place in school, there should have been some type of evaluation for her. School systems have a responsibility to ensure a proper education for their students. They should not have allowed her to go this long without providing her extra help and support.

A responsible therapist will not blame you and your wife for what is happening.

Good luck to you.

[sandycove]

JD…

What you need desperately, before counselling, is a thorough, professional assessment. There is clearly something clinical going on here. You will all need to pull together to define the problem. A diagnosis is no panacea, and might even be somewhat in error, but it will at least give you all something to get your arms around and serve a starting point for any number of therapeutic alternatives. It will also free you all from the bad girl/good girl trap.

I expect your daughter will resist at first, deny that she is “different,” and blame-game the issue.

If you’ll permit, I’d also avoid all but the mildest punishments and stick to unemotional timeouts and isolation strategies. Emotional responses just tend to up the ante and fuel the fire. This is not a statement on punishment per se; it’s just that punishment is counterproductive in many clinical situations and you don’t know what you’re facing yet.

I speak as the older brother of a brilliant 57-year-old professional woman who has coped with severe mental problems all her life, as the father of a 36-year-old son (and two older step-children), and the father (yes!) of 8-year-old twin girls.

One of my twins has Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. Many of her symptoms mirror your daughter’s. It is extremely unlikely that your daughter is an Aspie, at 12 (and most Aspies are boys), but something’s up…

Best wishes…

[blinky]

This post is quite interesting.
A few thoughts:

Your daughters symptoms signify seriousy mental instability as other posters have noted. Her symptoms remind me heavily of myself at a younger age, struggling with ADHD and misbehavior at school as well as at home.

Your daughter is very likely suffering from depression, which is a VERY serious thing. I have experience with long bouts of depression and it is seriously terrible and no one should have to continue to suffer through it.

The social inabilities of your duaghter could very well be caused by asperger's syndrome, or some other disorder. My brother has asperger's; as he only talks about whats going in his mind (sports trivia) he has difficulty making friends and other social bonds.

Lastly, this excerpt from your post is very troubling: "She has always been defiant and required lots of punishments of varying levels to keep her in line." Kids do NOT need to be kept 'in line' via lots of punishment. Punishment will only lead to mental issues later on. If the punishments are physical (spanking etc.) the child may have issues with violence later on. If the punishments are mental (scolding, grounding) the child may develop anger issues and mental instability. As a parent you mold your child's psyche, please do your best to contribute to their well-being only and not just continue to do what your parents did to keep you 'in line'.

hope shes doin better soon [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Bluffoon]

I would definitely follow chesspain's advice. Maybe she just needs a little nudge in the right direction or maybe she needs more help. Find out.

I would also suggest counseling for yourself and your wife if for nothing else than advice on how best to interact with your daughter and to help her reach her potential.

[satya]

What he said.^^

My son has some "Learning Differences". Socially he does not do well. At 14 depression/suicidal thoughts became a problem for a host of reasons.

I could see where he was heading. Right where I did at his age, drugs delinquency, the whole shabang and I didn't have the learning and social issues that he does.

This CAN be prevented. Not by controlling her and putting her in her "place" but by getting her and the rest of the family professional guidance before it goes too far.

I ended up taking my son out of public school - he hasn't improved in reading since 4th grade and was being bullied. He would come home everyday, go to his room, and I wouldn't see him again until the next day when he came home and shut himself in his misery. I couldn't see the point in keeping him in school. My child was becoming someone I didn't know. He was acting in ways that were in direct conflict with who he is and how he was raised.

A few short months later and he's doing fine.

[TomBrooks]

Your daughter doesn't have much respect for other people or other things. Not giving other people or things respect or, in other words, having contempt for them, allows a person to feel superior. There is a tendency in every person to do this to some extent.

One can create their own fantasy world where they are better able to "control" what goes on. The motivation for this is generally based on not liking the real world very much. Not liking something and not respecting it are linked, except where criticism of something is honest and deserved.

The feeling of superiority that one derives from this attitude, while satisfying on one level, is fragile and subject to being overridden by a deeper feeling of dissatisfaction, emptiness and loneliness.

For more see http://www.aestheticrealism.org/ There's a kind of high signal/noise ratio at that site, but if you dig around I think you'll find some things that are applicable and helpful.

Good luck.

[LinusKS]

I know nothing about 12 year-old girls, or psychology, but I do know something about the internet.

I'd yank her connection, if I were you.