Personally, I’d might tell her that this is the last time. If it happened again, I might say “No meeting since you can’t go out. Why don’t you call your sponsor instead?” and hand her the phone. Saying that though, I don’t know where it would go. It’s just what I think I might do. Remember, YMMV.
I’m assuming here that you’re currently employed as a mom and homeschooling person, and that your husband is currently employed outside the home. If these assumptions are incorrect, please of course feel free to correct me.
Having said that, does your husband’s place of work have an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) that you / he may be able to take advantage of? These are nice in that they’re usually at least partially if not completely covered by the employer, and as such charge minimal amounts (if any at all). You may want to look into that and see if you can arrange for EAP counseling for the both of you.
Many EAPs will extend “company-paid-for” counseling to not only the employee but the spouse and perhaps entire family of the employee, on the theory that whatever problems you may need help with will certainly affect him as well and therefore affect his performance at work.
Maybe you can get some help that way, for a price you can afford, or perhaps even no price at all.
Based on this statement:
I just got the impression that his girlfriends mom was now taking care of the two of them.
Not that is necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a kid might be better behaved under the supervision of someone who is not their parent. You parents HAVE to love and feed and clothe you. Anyone else can chuck you out on your ass at any time.
True, we are, sadly, in a grey area. Legally responsible for him, but unable to control him. The courts have been very sympathetic and we do have a kind of truce. He even brings the baby over to show us and we coo and make all the right noises about how cute he is. Heck, I even gave him some money and I thought I’d never do that.
Like I said, this may turn out just fine. He seems to be getting the idea that now he has responsiblities and cannot just screw around anymore.
But, I’m not the OP.
This is pretty much how we’re raising our boys. All but the underlined material. My oldest can call anytime he likes. Of course, he’s only ten, so I’m not sure how long that will last.
DogMom, you made a couple of correct assumptions, and a couple of incorrect ones; I’m about to set the record straight 
. I am, indeed, a SAHM. My husband works outside of the home, for the most part he even works out of town, which complicates things somewhat. Unfortunately, the company he works for is an upstart, with no insurance benefits or such. Fortunately, my children have coverage (very good coverage) under the Maryland Children’s Health Insurance Plan; so, my daughter’s counseling and psych meds are paid for (thank Og), as are dental visits, hospital visits, etc. including some minor surgery my 13-year-old needed last week.
Update: I laid down some new rules for her when she came home from school today; to wit, she doesn’t come home from school or stay home from school unless a significant fever/vomiting is involved. If she skips out on more than one class while she’s in school (due to not feeling well), she loses going-out privileges that evening. She has accepted these new rules with such equanimity that I’m certain she’ll argue when the time actually comes to implement them!
BMalion, I’ve got a bunch of work to do right now, since my 4-year-old is napping, but tonight or tomorrow, you will find an email that contains The Long Sad Story Of My Life ™, Pt. I.
Norinew - Is it possible for you to take her out of school for a half day as a reward for not malingering? Maybe once a semester the two of you could take a “mental health day” together, have lunch, maybe window shop or go to a movie. That way she’s being rewarded for her good behaviour as well as punished for infractions. Not too often - you don’t want her to get the idea that a person can just take off whenever they feel like it, but as a reward for work put in.
StG
StGermain, you may be on to something here. Right now, money is very tight, so until that changes I don’t see the “our to lunch” stuff. However, we may be able to figure out some reward system for her not only staying in school, but also attending classes. It’s an idea I certainly will discuss with my husband this weekend while he is home! I certainly do believe that rewarding good behavior is preferable to punishing bad behavior.
This statement kinda went over my head for some reason, the first time I read it. I do not believe that children should not suffer even the minorest inconvenience, and I don’t know what gave you the idea that I do believe that. I’m not a hardass, but my kids know what I expect of them, and they know what the consequences are when they don’t do what I expect. Somehow or another, my oldest one just doesn’t seem to give a damn. She does things she knows she’s not supposed to do, and then has a meltdown when privileges are revoked. If she feels she’s not getting enough attention from us, she claims to feel suicidal. And I’m not implying that we don’t give her sufficient attention, rather that she gets pissed off if she’s not the center of attention all the time. She’s wildly jealous of my other two kids, because they take attention away from her. She’s quite illogical, and unstable, and I don’t believe that the mistakes I’ve made in raising her are what caused the problems. (And yes, I admit I’ve made mistakes; any parent who says otherwise is kidding someone).
I can’t give any real advice on some of the other aspects of dealing with your daughter, but I have an eleven-year-old who’s been a hypochondriac since first or second grade. If I suggest by even a skeptical look that I think she’s malingering, she gets very dramatically indignant and her “symptoms” get worse, so I finally came up with an attitude that works. Whenever she tells me that her stomach hurts or that she feels feverish or that she feels like she might throw up, I offer her a generic palliative (“how about some toast?” or “do you want Tylenol?”) and some rather cheerful sympathy, but she still has to go to school (or do her homework or practice piano or whatever it is she didn’t want to do). If she protests that she really, truly feels sick, I cluck sympathetically and remind her that because she feels sick so often, she can’t possibly miss school every time; she just has to learn how to soldier on. It’s taken almost a year of dealing with the hypochondria this way, but it’s starting to work now. This way, she doesn’t have to admit she’s faking, I don’t have to confront her about her supposed ills, and she still has to fulfill her obligations. I did have to get the school nurse in on this so that my daughter couldn’t do an end run around me by going through her.
As for rewards, although I’m all for rewarding good behavior, I’d be leery of letting her skip school as a reward for staying in class. I suppose I feel it’s kind of like rewarding yourself for sticking to a diet by eating junk food - it’s better to get away from thinking of the behavior you’re trying to avoid as some kind of treat.
norinew- I’m glad she accepted your decision with such equanimity. May I add another suggestion? Put it in writing, signed by her, and slapped up on the fridge. I’ve had to do that with LilMiss in other circumstances. When she tried to quibble about it, all I had to do was point at the agreement and it was done.
If you do decide to add a reward, put that in there also so she has it in writing what you are promising each other.
Internet Legend, you make some good points about hypochondria. Of course, I don’t believe it’s true hypochondria as in: some folks just like bein’ sick; rather, it’s most often a ruse to get out of doing what she doesn’t want to do; it’s also a great way to get more attention. This, of course, may be partly my fault (although there’s nothing I can do to fix it). Whenever she’s sick or hospitalized due to her suicidal tendencies (and if she had her way, she’s be hospitalized a lot), she expects the whole family to stop and cater to her. This is likely due in part to the fact that I really am sick a lot (probably in bed at least one day a month, and in the hospital several times a year), and the family drops everything to take care of me, as well as all the stuff I usually take care of. The last time she was in a psych hospital that’s 70 miles away, she got all pissed off because we didn’t come to visit her every day. And when they released her, she had a complete melt-down because we wouldn’t take her out to eat at McDonald’s.
The difference of course, is that when I’m sick, I’m really sick (ever had a kidney stone?). She doesn’t understand why she’s treated so “unfairly”. Also, when I’m sick it really does have a bigger impact on the family because I’m the one who plans the menus, grocery shops, cooks the meals, takes care of the baby, cleans the house, does the laundry, etc. etc. She takes out the garbage. Not much of a comparison.
You also make a good point about how I reward her behavior. I fully intend to discuss the reward thing with hubbynew this weekend, and see if I can come up with something. Also, some of the other dopers are coming for a dopefest on Saturday, maybe I’ll see if they have some ideas (them dopers is a smart bunch! ).
MissTake, what a great idea to put it all in writing! I’m definitely going to do that! I’m also going to have to see who I have on my side at the school, so I can enforce the “no going out in the evening if you skip out on classes” rule.
BMalion, I know I’m several days late in that email I promised you; but I had some time this morning, and thought I’d write something up, only to find that your email addy is not in your profile. Could you drop me a line?
I agree completely about setting limits on what she can/can’t get out of school for, but I would be very, very, VERY specific. Part of the reason she likely accepted your terms so easily was because the generic idea of “vomiting” is quite simple to either lie about or induce (plus she probably knows that, as in the past, you’ll eventually cave). I know a child who can literally make themself vomit on command, and this child used that technique to full advantage when told to do something unpleasant. When growing up, my parents’ rule was “fever above 100 or projectile vomiting witnessed by someone else, preferably a nurse.” And even then the deal was I’d stay in the nurse’s office for an hour before mom (who operated her own business from the house and was readily available) would even consider picking me up, and I lived about a five minute walk from both elementary and junior high, and 1.8 miles from the high school.
Pick up a good book on behavior modification, and start implementing. Even infrequent rewarding of bad behavior is going to encourage her, especially taking her BPD into account. You need to completely extinguish her behavior, and this may mean being so completely over-the-top in the rules that it would be impossible for her to find a loophole. Were she my daughter, I would set up the following reward system:
-
She is only allowed to come home from school if the nurse calls with reports of a temperature of X degrees (my mom set it at 100 because my normal temp is so low that any kind of a fever was a Big Deal) or observed vomiting. If she vomits, she has to sit in the nurse’s office for at least half an hour to see if she’ll feel better (how many times have you thrown up and suddenly felt much better?).
-
How many visits is she currently making to the nurse’s office in an average week? Let’s say it’s 15. Set up a chart. If she can decrease the number of visits to the nurse to 10 visits in a week, on Friday she gets a reward (pick out what to cook for dinner/rent a movie/spend extra time on the phone). Next week set it to 5 visits. Next week 0 visits. Doesn’t make goal- no reward.
-
Pick a percentage of classes you want her to attend in a month. Set up a bigger reward at the end of that month if she attends the requisite percentage of classes. Start at, say, 80% difficult/70% fluff the first month. 85%/75% next month, etc. That way you can save up a little bit each week for the bigger reward at the end of the month.
-
She stays home if she comes home from school. No exceptions. I really like the “call your sponsor” thing- just make sure she’s calling her sponsor; you may even want to set this up with the person who runs the meetings.
You can use this (or a similar) system for any of her behaviors, including the suicidal ideations. I tend to be a lot harder on the teens who constantly cry wolf than a lot of my colleagues, but that comes from the places I’ve worked in the past and the overwhelming evidence that kids like this are going to absolutely drain you dry emotionally/physically/financially if you let them. So take the fun out of it… tie the suicidality in with a punishment system. “Well, gee, you’re feeling suicidal… since we all know the drill by now, having gone through multiple hospitalizations with you, I guess we’ll just have to take precautions, huh?” Go through her room, take out everything that she could use to hurt herself. Make her report to you for meds. Put up the kitchen knives, and only give her plastic silverware/dishes/cups. Take her belts and shoelaces. Tell her when she feels better, she can have them back. Obviously if she’s suicidal she doesn’t need to be going out (other than to school), or in touch with anyone but her therapist, psychiatrist, or sponsor. Leave her like that for 72 hours (which, you should know, is the standard length for an involuntary stay), then reevaluate how she’s doing. Still suicidal? Oh well… another 72 hours. Feeling better? Here’s some of your stuff back. You’ll get more in 24 hours. Keep a monitoring sheet where she won’t be able to see it, and track the number of times she complains of ideations… that’s how you’ll be able to tell if it’s working.
Remember it always gets worse before it gets better.
hi, i rarely venture out of the pit or MPSIMS, but what do you know, i happened upon this thread. this kid sounds exactly, exactly like myself at that age, almost 15 years ago. unfortunately, i have no idea what to tell you. i’m 30 now, and still suffering. i’ll try to give the little bit of insight i have.
when i used to ditch school, (hey, be glad she’s calling, i just ran from the building), i have since realized it was because i was bored. i even dropped out for a few months, returning to an alternative class, where i was allowed to work at my own pace and finised the year ahead of schedule. you say she has good grades, and this may be a factor. i have no clue how to fix it though.
as far as drugs go, i agree being in a normal high school will definatly give her access to drugs.
taking away all her stuff may be a good idea. i used to run away from home alot. then my parents took all my money. even the change jar. kinda hard to eat when you have no cash and no job.
i guess i can just tell you what my folks did, although it seems a little grim. they, just as you have mentioned, did what they had to do to keep me alive. i don’t expect this worry is completely gone from their minds even now. i didn’t get the BPD diagnoses until recently (bipolar since 14yrs old), but i am hoping that something good will come of it, as throwing drugs at me pisses me off. (BPD - borderline personality disorder, requires lifestyle changes and therapy, i think, not drugs).
the only advice i can give, although i am not sure i am qualified, is to try to find something she likes. i used to like swimming, and was really good, until i started smoking. something to be proud of. and tell her, if she makes good grades, how smart she is. it may make the difference in going to college or not. from the time my depression set in, until, well, i’ll let you know… i’ve been treated like i was doing all this on purpose, like i was a terrible person. i’d cut off my own arm if i didn’t have to be like this.
email me if you like.
I’m just “passing by” here, so I will just touch on one part.
When I tried the “I’m sick” trick, my folks had a simple answer. If you are too sick for school, you’re too sick to go out or play the rest of the day. I learned not to fake it because I just was screwing myself.
Are you attending Al-Anon, the AA counterpart for family members? If you don’t have counseling available for you this could be really valuable. Her behavior seems more like substance abuser manipulative rather than normal teenage manipulative, even if she is not currently using.
don’t forget the bipolar and BPD (borderlind personality disorder) which more times than not lead to substance abuse. substance abuse alone in teenagers i’ve had contact with will have lower grades and become unruly, but there is more than that going on here.
not that al-anon isn’t a good idea or anything.
Thannk you all for some wonderful advice, and for some good things to think over.
Harriet the Spry, I don’t currently attend Al-Anon, but I have a fairly strong 12-step background. My father got sober in AA when I was 14, and I attended Alateen until I got too old, then Al-Anon and ACOA. My biggest problem with attending meetings now is that I have a four-year-old at home and a husband that works out of town; reliable babysitting is a problem, not to mention that the meetings fall just about when I’m supposed to be putting the little one down to bed. I’m not closed to the idea of attending, though, if our circumstances stabilize a bit.
It’s my user name: bmalion @ yahoo.com
I thought it was in my profile…
(I hope it’s okay to put an email address in a post 
)
Folks do it all the time, so I’d assume it’s okay. But for some reason, it seems to make some people uncomfortable to do so. I’ll try my best to get an email off to you today!