HELP FOR PARENTS WITH STRONG-WILLED, OUT-OF-CONTROL CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Education and Counseling for Individuals Affected by Oppositional Defiant Disorder and ADHD

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16-year-old mom in a 35-year-old body...


Mark,

Thank you for your support on the children. I am one who purchased your book for my sister-in-law who has an OOCT to say the least. I have tried to support her, but avoid family feud and need some help. If I need to purchase another book/license, that will be fine with me since it is 2 users you are supporting.

My sister-in-law's daughter will be 17 in November. She’s lower on developmental and social areas and quit school 3 years ago due to nobody being able to deal with her. Her mother (R) took her out of school and stated she would Home-school her, which never happened since her daughter will just not do anything. R has to work and some of us have tried to help her out such as my other sister-in-law trying to work with her on Home school material (when it was finally purchased after a year). I enrolled her (with teens & R's agreement) in a Kumon program, and my mother-in-law has tried too. What happens? Every time it seems to start working the teen goes into a fit of how someone spoke to her, or treated her wrong, etc., and R comes to her rescue and let's the family member (or non-member) have it and creates a larges chaos and family feud, so we all just back up.

We just had another one last week. R has been reading your book and been applying it -- it seems like she was starting to have success. My daughter went to their home to borrow a movie. R had previously stated that was fine. R was not home, but her other daughter said that is fine, just find one, my daughter did and the Teen just stuck her head out from the back with the look but my daughter (who was with a friend who verified her story) just ignored it and said HI. She got the movie, came home and 5 min later the teen called, asking my husband to speak to our daughter, when she got on the phone, the Teen just went off on her, questioning which movie she got and stating she is not to get a movie when her mother was not there and on and on. My daughter tried to tell her that she had discussed it with R and that was fine, no listening to this, the teen just kept fuming and screaming and yelling at her. My daughter just finally told her she did not have to listen to her and hung up on her. My husband was there and he verified that our daughter (who was a challenge when she came to live with us 5 years ago) did not scream, yell or act inappropriately.

The next morning R (his sister) caught him in church and told him that his daughter should mind her own business, her behavior was not all that and he told her that he was right there and our daughter did not act inappropriate. R would not hear of it and just went on about our daughter's behavior and he stated again that she was not out of line so R brought up times we were not around how she acted and my husband told her that we were not discussing any other times which we have not even heard about but the previous evening's occurrence. R would not accept that and stormed out of church, stating she would take her children somewhere else to church.

R finally did come back midweek service but 1/2 way through it, when the teens were asked to come up and sing and our daughter would not sing until my husband called her on it, she waited until they were done singing and left the service. This is a normal process, things seem to go good and R will 'support her daughter' and all chaos breaks lose. What is the issue here?

I have learned over the years to keep myself from the family, R and her mother always defend the teen and lose their cool and whenever they feel like it, the may even apologize and things are to be fine again. I know this is family but what I am wondering is why would the mother jeopardize all that was going good by 'throwing a fit' as she is trying to break her teen off?

Does all that make sense? If so, could you explain this to me please.

Thank you very much,

E. I.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Hi E.,

I run into situations similar to this one when I work with families. There are some occasions when the “mother” [who I thought was an adult] is actually more like a teenager (i.e., chronologically she is, say, 35-years-old, but emotionally she is about 16-years-old).

As you may have read in my eBook, children who are over-indulged do not develop emotionally until parents set limits and issue consequences for poor choices. In the case of R., I would venture to guess that she was over-indulged as a child (e.g., had few rules, was able to bulldoze over her parent, got her way a lot, etc.) as evidence by her temper tantrums that you have described.

Thus, in dealing with her, you would do well to employ the same strategies outlined in the ebook with her (e.g., setting limits, wearing a poker face, refusing to argue, etc.).

Most likely, the harder you try to help, the worse it will get. You may be taking on too much responsibility for R.

Stay in touch,

Mark
www.MyOutOfControlTeen.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

testing by me, mark

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