Frylock, I’ll be blunt: you’re coming across online as stressed and prone to conflict. You’re telling us that you’re not like this IRL, but you’re also saying that your daughter is acting stressed and prone to conflict. It looks to some of us like she is picking up on behavioral cues from you and modeling them (in her own way).
That’s why people are thinking that perhaps your own perception of how different you are in real life may not be entirely accurate. This may indeed be uncharitable, but it’s driven by what we are reading here, and not coming from thin air. I don’t say this to take a shot at you; it’s just inescapable that it can be hard for any of us to see ourselves the way others see us.
Is this the connection you’re making between the topic of the thread and the question of whether her behavior reflects aspects of my own personality?
“She is like you in some ways. If you think about that, you may act differently toward her. If you act differently toward her, she may start acting differently.”
“The more you see yourself in her, the less you’ll judge her behavior as a character defect that defines her entire being…and the more you’ll see this aspect of her personality as just one out of many complicated parts of her. This understanding may make it easier for you to parent her.”
And also:
“The more you see yourself in her, the less you’ll judge her behavior as a character defect that defines her entire being…and the more you’ll work on changing your own responses to stress before trying to change hers.”
Perhaps the answer here is not to focus so much of your mental energy on getting her to change. I recommend you approach therapy with the mindset of “I (we) need help figuring out how to relate to our daughter, because we feel what we’ve been doing isn’t working and we don’t know why.”
The problem is, if time and time again, you keep feeling like people are misunderstanding you, you might want to stop and reconsider that the problem is on your end. Not on our’s. That’s really something you might want to stop and think about. Seriously.
I would think not getting help and enduring untreated anxiety and depression would affect her even more. Yeah, at first she might worry, “does this mean there’s something wrong with me?” But better she feel that way for a short time, and then get help for it, than not get help and feel that way for the rest of her life. Therapy IS scary at first. It may make you feel like, “Am I crazy?” But the whole point is to solve a problem, to help her learn to DEAL with whatever it is that’s bothering her.
And I’ll be blunt: telling her “it’s only a doctor’s visit” is a bad idea. Don’t lie. Say, “we think this will be a good idea. We feel that with all your anger, you need some help, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” (or something like that)
(And no, I’m not a parent. But I had ADHD as a child and I know I greatly benefitted from therapy. I’ve had similiar experiences, and I’m so grateful that I was able to get that help. And my therapist kicked ass. I remember that I missed her when I stopped seeing her. So consider MY advice from the kid’s perspective, FWIW)
** Frylock**, I wonder if it would help to think of it as counseling for better communication skills and frustration tolerance, rather than THERAPY.
In my family’s case, we found similar benefits to those that IvoryTowerDenizen describes—an expert in child development and behavior to reflect and reality test for us parents, and someone uninvolved to teach my kids coping skills. They each listened more readily to the therapist, because the therapist wasn’t someone they were mad at or frustrated with.
My son loves the in-school counselor and the group he goes to. He’s learned a metric buttload of social skills and conflict resolution skills, and he’s made friends with some of the kids in the group. No cupcakes, though.
Tell me about post 173. Do you find anything in it hard to understand? Tell me what you think I’m saying in post 173.
ETA: If I say, explicitly, blatantly, in no uncertain terms, “I am trying to do X,” and people respond “why are you trying to do Y,” and I reply by saying “you think I’m trying to do Y, but actually I am trying to do X,” and the in turn reply “Okay but why are you trying to do Y,” there is nothing I can do better than what I have already done. The problem’s not on my end in that case.
The suggested connection is more active and direct than what you’ve written. It’s not simply that she’s like you, it’s that she may be learning behaviors from you.
As far as when to seek outside help, you’ve already asked for help. The difference between all of us and a professional is that a professional is more likely to know what he or she is talking about. What’s more likely to be hard for your daughter – being told that you’re getting her some help for how she relates to the family, or stumbling across this thread?
My point still stands. (Especially since I wasn’t speaking about any particular incident) Most people, when asked, “could you clarify that?” would explain the actual reason. Like, in the example, “how was it reasonable to let your kid jump on a couch?” “Well, in this case, my OTHER kid was trying to run out the door, so I had to worry about that.”
Instead, you simply expected people to accept what you said, without any explanation, other than coming up with ridiculous scenarios, which lead people to think you just wanted to play games.
Here’s the thing: people can’t read your mind. That’s not how communication works. If someone feels you’re not being clear, they’re going to ask you to explain further. Telling them they’re being uncharitable for misunderstanding you isn’t going to help. I’ve noticed you complain about this alot. It’s nothing personal, Frylock – I’m not trying to attack you. But as I keep trying to point out, if you’re constantly feeling that people aren’t getting what you’re telling them, no, it’s not because they’re deliberately missreading your posts, or because they’re making “bad arguments”. Or that outside details are "irrelevant. Often times, they are. Telling people, “oh, but there’s much more to the story that you don’t know!” Well, like I said, we’re not mind readers. We can only comment on what you’ve told us.
As for getting your daughter help, and worrying about how she may pick up on your attitude, keep in mind that in the past, many people avoided getting treatment because of the stigma against mental illness. And because of doing so, a lot of people turned to alcohol or drugs to cope, some ended up committing suicide, etc. I am NOT saying that’ll happen to your daughter. But by avoiding getting her help now, because you’re worried she might feel that you might think she’s “crazy” or whatever, it’s only it’s best to help her get the proper skills to cope with her problem, rather than find some other, worse way. Like I said yes, in the short term, she may doubt herself. (Why am I in therapy, is there something wrong with me?) But after a few sessions, she’ll start realizing that her counselor is simply someone who’s there to listen to her, not someone there to “fix” her. And she’ll learn to deal with her anger issues, and probably won’t be as frustrated.
But what you’re talking about here isn’t a request for clarity, it’s a request for evidence. I was perfectly clear. What I refused to give was evidence.
This is something I haven’t been perfectly clear about. What I have intended to say is this: People are being uncharitable when they assume I’m a bad parent based on one sentence. They can only reach that conclusion by assuming negative things, and those assumptions are not reasonable. I’ve argued for that elsewhere.
What I have not intended to say is that people misunderstanding my point was due to a lack of charity. (I did actually basically imply that at one point, I recently noticed, but that was unintentional. That is what I mean when I say I haven’t been perfectly clear on this bit.) That is due to factors other than a lack of charity.
I criticised your ancient couch-jumping post due to what you posted. It was just a crap argument. I never said and don’t think that you’re a bad parent. You ask questions and then respond to them, which is a sign of a good parent. So overall you just seem like an average parent who once got the internet wrong.
If you have, even in ball-park-figures, costed out how much therapy would cost, then set aside that amount to do stuff with your daughter every month on a schedule.
With therapy, there’s usually a co-pay (I’m not American, so might get the terms wrong) and there’s always a cost in terms of you having to leave work. If it’s not monetary, it’s “Bob’s off work again.”
With “your time” you can schedule it when it suits you best. Just go to a diner she likes the look of and have ice-cream. Watch a movie on the cheap days and trade off who gets to choose. Choose a cheap restaurant to eat at once a month - let it be her choice. Go to a local game if you can afford the tickets and she wants to. All of that is after work so is cheaper than going to counselling. Don’t do anything expensive, that feels like a treat.
If your older kid gets annoyed then do the same for him, because this is one hour of disposable time with one parent each month we’re talking about.
And never make this part of her behaviour routine - ie, she will never lose this because she’s been BAD. She will always get this time away from daily life to be with you. You are not taking time away from work for this, or spending tons of money, you are just being with her as her parent.
And whether you like her right now or not, you are her parent. She is a very young, vulnerable person. And it would be much cheaper for you to try this for a few months than to get therapy and would feel better for you than never trying anything.
FWIW I’ve know a couple of total utter bastards when they were eight grow up to be really nice people. I’ve known kids who seemed out of control get back into control, seemingly by their own choice. Those kids were surrounded by demonstrations of love, support and interest from those around them who were not always their natural parents. I’ve also seen kids go down the wrong way when the people looking after them didn’t like them at all.
This is an excellent idea. We’ve kicked around the idea of doing something like it, I’ll bring it back up. Our kids need one-on-one parent time away from everything else. They get it with their mom already just due to how various scheduling things have fallen out. I used to do a weekly “board game night” with the kids where we went somewhere away from the house and played games but whereas my older kid loves this my daughter–though she wants to be included of course–ultimately really doesn’t like doing the actual things one does when playing a board game. She doesn’t understand how you can lose and still have fun, basically, so things get tense.
To me, a kid, or anyone, who does things for attention is feeding off the attention. I think the solution is to ignore such behavior, all the dramatics and so on. Reinforce anything she does that is good–positive reinforcement for good behavior and totally ignore all the BS behavior and dramatics. She will stop the attention seeking behavior when she realizes she isn’t getting any attention for it.
