And you have to be able to put aside the fear that you’ll run your fist into a stud and break every finger. I guess I can be grateful in this respect for having a tendency to bottle up my anger. If I felt like punching a hole in a wall, I’d remind myself that I might hit a stud, and my plate is too full right now without adding a broken finger to the mix.
You and your wife by now have probably looked at every possible explanation or diagnosis, I probably don’t need to mention this. But have you or any of the doctors considered that she might have ADD? Not uncommonly, substance abuse, particularly of stimulant drugs, but also alcohol and marijuana, is a form of self-medication. Apart from alcohol, what kind of drugs has she been caught with, or admitted using? Cocaine and the amphetamines, some of which are used today to treat ADD might be a strong indication, if that’s what she’s using.
Jesus, if my step-dad, who didn’t raise me from infancy, and my mother, who “let me” be injured as a toddler and THEN took me away from a woman I loved a lot who gave me everything I wanted to bring me into a home where I wasn’t allowed to use the phone or television or whatever, and then all I get are berating lectures on how I’m a total screwup, when it’s obvious that it’s THEM that are screwed up - I get along with my foster families just fine, so why the FUCK do they keep dragging me back here where nobody likes me…
I’m not saying any of this is objectively true, of course. But just reading this thread, I can totally see what she might be thinking, and it’s not all that crazy.
Why don’t they just leave her in a foster home, if she’s doing okay there?
I think WhyNot is onto something here. Maybe it would be best for everyone if she just stayed with the foster mom if she’s doing well there and happy there. The violence and upheaval in your household when she’s there is not good for anyone - especially not for her younger siblings who are probably being traumatized by all the fighting and could be at risk if she ever does actually try to hurt someone.
I am not an expert in child development, but to me this kid sounds like she’s very frustrated and is acting out because she hasn’t matured enough yet to be able to express her frustrations in a healthy way.
Even though it seems counter-intuitive, I think your attempts to discipline her and set rules may very well be part of the problem, considering that you aren’t her bio dad. To her, you probably just represent another random asshole that Mom brought into her life to torment her (much like the first asshole who originally injured her as a baby) and so of course she really resents it when you try to tell her what to do.
I don’t know much about what outcomes are usually like with these bootcamp things, but I suspect that even if she does learn to behave there she’ll resent you and her mom for sending her there in the first place.
If she’s behaving well at the foster mom’s place, without having to take such extreme measures, maybe that’s really where she belongs.
I work at a locked, inpatient facility for children from age 8 to 17. We’ve had an 8 year old put holes in walls, a 14 year old tear a door off its hinges, and (more than one) 12 year olds that require 6 adults to hold them down until they calm. Also kids who, when they can’t get an answer right, will ‘punish’ themselves by punching themselves in the face, hard enough to draw blood.
FoieGras, I don’t have time right now to read this whole post as I am already late to get out the door. But I just wanted to say my heart goes out to you. It really does. My now 21 year old starting acting out when he was 14. It was a heartwrenching ordeal. In my case, my son decided to join the Army, where he could attend the first half of boot the summer between his junior and senior year of high school. I think it’s called deferred enlistment or something like that. When he came back, he was (temporarily) a changed young man. He thrives on routine and known parameters, so he did really well, as tough as it was for him (it was a summer of peace for me).
Good luck to you. I will follow this thread. If you ever want encouragement, please pm me.
Just to add something to the actual OP, I should add that my (step)brother was sent to a residential school for “bad kids”* when he was 14. He says he made a lot of great drug contacts there and when he graduated, had a pimp all lined up to whore him out for crack in NYC.
So, obviously, YMMV.
*My impression on it (as a younger kid) was that it was sort of a quasi-military prep school, so I don’t know if it was actually “boot camp”. Whatever it was, it got him out of our parents’ hair, and moved his illegal behavior to a more sheltered place (at least during the school year - he still managed to hurt me a whole lot during the summers), but it didn’t fix him. Only time and maturity and whatever internal process he needed to go through did that.
I’m sorry for what you’re going through, and doubly sorry that the counseling you’ve received to date hasn’t given you results.
My sister used to work with teenagers just like your step-daughter, at an in-patient facility in Illinois. She decided there were easier ways of making a living.
I agree with your concerns about her peer group. It sounds like she needs a new group of friends, fast.
But I also agree with WhyNot - this situation didn’t blow up out of nowhere. Usually, what my sister saw was a whole family dynamic that resulted in an out-of-control teen. You laying down this law or that isn’t enough – it’s the system that’s broken, usually. All of you are part of this.
Or maybe it’s all just genetic, y’know? I was reading Freakonomics, he makes some pretty strong arguments that who you are dictates who your kids will be, “parenting techniques” or not. If your step-daughter is following in her mother’s footsteps, who can blame her? She’s got proof right in front of her face that it “worked”. Pretty hard to overcome empirical reality with words.
If she’s fine in foster care and with your MIL, maybe the best option is to get her out of this unsuccessful environment and back into a successful one. It might give you all enough of a break for her to grow up and you and your other children to live safe and normal lives. As you said, obviously she’s capable, but equally obviously, there is something very, very wrong about the current situation that makes it feel intolerable to her. It wasn’t very long ago that I was doing some of the same things she is and though thankfully none of my many poor choices came back to bite me in the ass as an adult, I could have easily ended up in a very different place.
If she’s successful and happy somewhere else, why would you force her into crappier and crappier situations just for the sake of making her act how you want her to act? I think at some point you have to say to her “look, we love you very, very, very much, and we want to have you in our lives. We don’t keep you here because we hate you and want you to be a prisoner who also makes our lives difficult with her behavior, we brought you here because we love you and wanted you to live with us… but if you are happy somewhere else and on a path to a good future somewhere else, then maybe somewhere else is where you should live.” Fourteen is old enough to have some autonomy and also the exact right age for a nutcase* of a teenager to make some really stupid decisions in the pursuit of autonomy. If you can move her to a place where she’s inclined to make good decisions for herself and let her set her up to succeed, then I think putting her in that situation is healthier and happier for all involved then sending her to a ‘break her spirit’ camp.
But, you know, my brother is the kind of kid that needed structure and discipline and to be taught that sometimes, you just fucking have to do arbitrary shit because someone told you to, and he did very well in the military. I would not.
*in my considered opinion, all teenagers are nutcases to one degree or another. All those friggen’ hormones make you completely mental for at least a good chunk of adolescence.
One word of caution from someone who has been there / done that / bears the scars - find out from the court who exactly is going to pay for this “service”. They sent me a bill for $35k for my step son having been ordered into one of these programs & I almost lost my house.
I think you’ve misread the situation. No, I didn’t raise Suzie from infancy, but I’ve been around her for nine years, and I immediately recognized that she was spoiled when I first met her when her Mom and I started dating.
Second, her Mom didn’t “let her” get injured…that’s pretty insulting of you to suggest that, quotes notwithstanding. Mom was 17-18, had moved to Texas from Indiana to be with a guy whom promisd to take care of her and Suzie, and then he refused to get a job, so somebody had to work to pay rent, so she did. This loser Chris did what he did to Suzie while Mom, trusting her boyfriend to care for Suzie, was at work because loser Chris wouldn’t work.
My wife was charged with child endangerment, and the lovely state of texas saw fit to sentence her to 10 years probation, during which she was not to have custody of Suzie, so my MIL took over for her.
MIL loves Suzie, no question, but she’s also a raging alcoholic and older, mostly just wants to be left to her beer and TV, so a culture developed where Suzie learned to whine and cry for attention and things she wanted, and mamaw never denied her anything.
Along comes Mom a year later and Suzie is three and Mom reinforces this spoiling by also caving in to Suzie, likely as a means of “making up for lost time”, and for the guilt she felt over what had happened to Suzie.
During this period I slowly enter the picture, appalled by Suzie’s bratty behavior, and Mom and I shack up and even though Mom doesn’t have legal custody over her, Mamaw agrees to let Suzie live with us. So, Suzie continues to exhibit behavior issues, I attempt discipline and Suzie doesn’t like it, complains to mamaw, and loving mamaw takes her back for a few days until Suzie drives mamaw nuts, and she comes back with us. Rinse, repeat for a few years.
I never was in favor of her being allowed to bounce back and forth between the two homes, I kept insisting that Suzie stay with us and unlearn her bad habits, but…it’s not my child and Mom and I aren’t married at this point but we do have our oldest son Andrew.
Toss in some competition for attention from a baby and Suzie gets progressively worse. Then we get married and have another baby, Jacob.
meanwhile, we finally purchase our first home and we insist that Suzie is no longer able to play Mom and Mamaw against each other and she moves in with us.
The moral of this abbreviated version of this sordid tale is that I understand your POV…and that her behavior isn’t entirely her fault because of her torrid upbringing.
But, she’s 14 now, and she knows right from wrong, and she patently refuses to obey household rules that eveyone else in the home has to live by.
The fact that she can behave very well and function in a structured environment like her foster home proves to me that she can do it here as well…she just won’t, and that’s not acceptable for anyone in our family.
She used to have generally unfettered phone access, computer use, time with friends, etc after we first moved in here because she was promising us the moon with her schoolwork, which all turned out to be lies, as she was failing all her classes, even PE.
So, once this whole process began with her escalating violence and bad behavior and attitude because we started taking things away from her due to all of the above, she rebelled further to the point where police, DCS, counselling, etc got involved, and here we are.
And leave her in foster care? The goal here is reunification, but she has to take the initiative to act her age and abide the rules of the household. It’s not asking her to jump through rings of fire. Her phone time, etc is as restricted in foster care as it is here. She has to learn that certain things in life are privledges, not rights, and that she has an end of the bargain to uphold, which is obeying household rules (no hitting, yelling, obeying bedtimes) and doing well in school. That’s pretty much it.
A glimmer of hope: she’s been really good today (I think reality is finally sinking in). helped pull weeds in the yard, helped out with her brothers, etc…her reward?
Dad took her out to an empty parking lot and taught her some basic driving. She was thrilled, but a part of me is thinking “great, now she will not only sneak out, but steal your car!”.
She definetely cannot control her anger. It’s a huge issue with her and we have been getting her counselling and working with her to let her know that it’s OK to be upset and angry, but it’s not OK to act the way she does when she is.
I have been in her life for nine years and her Mom and I are married. hardly “some random asshole”.
We aren’t sending her anywhere, she’s now a ward of the state. Ultimately the judge decides her fate based on her progress, and until pretty much today, it ain’t much.
We aren’t imposing anything on her that she doesn’t have to observe at her foster Mom’s. The rules are the same.
I think people are attempting to describe how things might look from her point of view–not that your wife literally let her get hurt, but that Suzie might feel that on some level, it’s true.
She’s been drug tested twice, and has a professed hatred for drugs and alcohol, calling them and people who do them “stupid” (which of course is the lowest of the low in her eyes).
She’s also been to a psychologist whom administered a battery of tests to her and concluded that she has mild ADD and a definite anger control issue, and he tied it into ther upbringing, adn her trauma as an infant. I forget what he called this condition, though.
But that’s just it: she is not mature enough to place most of the blame for her beahvior where it belongs, which of course is on herself. She blames us for her behavior. We cannot make her choices for her.
She’s successful in foster care because she knows she has to be, and well, it’s not US she’s dealing with. That’s always been her MO…sweet as can be at a friend’s house to her parents, an angel at the residential facility, no problems in foster care…it’s just here.
And her stay at MIL’s was detrimental, because Suzie dominated her mamaw, whom is too old and often to consumed with alcohol and yelling at GWB on the TV to pay much attention to Suze, other than to let her do whatever she wanted.
And mamaw has since moved to West Virginia, so…that’s thankfully no longer an option.
No, I don’t think I have. I think *Suzie *may be misreading the situation. As **NajaNivea **says, I was attempting to write what Suzie might be thinking, twisted though it may be.
Doesn’t matter. My stepmother was in my life before I was born, and when she pissed me off, she was “that bitch of an evil stepmother.” Don’t underestimate the power of “not my REAL parent” to a young person. It’s an automatic Get Out Of Jail Free card. Thanks, Disney.
I understand that the reality is as you say it is. I apologize for the perceived insult. Again, I was trying to put myself in Suzie’s shoes and speculate on what she might be thinking but can’t articulate to you. I may have done poorly, of course - I don’t know Suzie at all.
And, again, what kid wouldn’t love that? At least, what kid wouldn’t prefer that to a home with rules and expectations and everything. I agree that she’s got to learn how to live with rules, but I can see why she’d prefer not to.
So you didn’t enter the picture until the pattern of “spoiled” was firmly established. You came in a made rules. Great. Except it’s easy to see how she could cast you in the role of Bad Guy, isn’t it?
No, that’s actually not my POV at all. I don’t know what messed her up. I’m just trying to articulate what she *may *be feeling but can’t tell you.
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Don’t you have people in your life - an ex-girlfriend, maybe, or a boss - who just make you see red? I know I do. There are certainly people I couldn’t live with, even though I can get along quite well with others.
Why? Why is the goal reunification? Whose goal is it? Is it Suzie’s goal? Or is it your goal or her mother’s goal or the State’s goal? If it’s not Suzie’s goal, it won’t happen. She’s quite capable of sabotaging all your efforts and good intentions if her goal is in fact to get out from under your influence, good though it may be.
I dunno man. I feel like your situation is far beyond anything I have experience with, and I really feel for you.
At the same time, it seems like you are drawing a lot of lines in the sand just to draw them. Making lots of limits not to prevent bad stuff from happening, but to prove that you are the one in charge. You seem so desperate to have her follow any rule that you keep making rules about smaller and smaller stuff just to get her to accept at least one of them.
And this becomes not a story about why you shouldn’t rack up $1,000 in phone charges, but a story about two people in a battle of wills. And you will lose here- there is no end to how bad she can be, but there is an end to how much you can punish her. Once she has no privileges, what are you going to take away?
The truth is that to some degree you are making rules that you know will hit her the hardest. And in return, she is being a bitch in the way she knows will hit you the hardest. And everyone is wrapped up waaaay to personally in this.
You gotta stop, think what is really important for her future (talking on the phone too long…no. Staying in school…yes) and also about the alternatives that may seem worse to you, but could work (taking the GED and going to Junior College can be a good solution for kids who bristle at the “I need to raise my hand to go to the bathroom” aspect of high school, etc.) And then you need to think about how you can help her make good choices about this. You need to help her OWN her choices and their consequences, not just trust that you know better than her.
Once again, this is just my impressions off a message board and I know I don’t know half of it. And I really really sympathize with you. Please don’t take this as an attack in any way. Good luck, man.
Your mage has found Quote of Truth; place in inventory to receive +1 bonus to truth.
When the situation’s as far gone as the one you’re describing, it really doesn’t matter how the family arrangement should be or whose fault it really is: just from an empirical standpoint, very bad things happen when she is at your home, and encouraging things happen when she is in foster care. I would say that you and your wife need to have a very big serious discussion about when and where to draw the line. Another crazy violent relapse and she’s out of the house for the good of everyone involved.
