well after another bout of grounding last night because of my daughters miserable personality she announces to ME that grounding isnt working for HER!!! she says very truthful to me, "Mom you're going to have to pick another punishment because this grounding isn't teaching me anything". I was blown away! i said well what should i do then? She said she didn't know! So now i'm asking you guys!
Last edited by hayley0610; 10-19-2004 at 07:42 AM.
What kind of things are important to her? The phone? TV? I used to get grounded from using the phone. I just about KILLED me!
Take away previlliges that she has and enjoys.
Make her completely book/housebound. No phone, friends, computer, tv - just the house and homework. If that still doesn't "work" for her, make it for a lengthy amount of time. Sooner or later, the walls on the house are going to start to get to her & she'll bend.
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Originally Posted by susieq0726
What kind of things are important to her? The phone? TV? I used to get grounded from using the phone. I just about KILLED me!
Take away previlliges that she has and enjoys.
I will def try what u both said, as she does have a tv and xbox and phone so those will be taken away but i dont think it will work. its almost like she cant control the way she behaves. she has behaved this way since i can remember its like she was born like this. she doesnt do usual preteen bad things at all. She just argues ALL the time with everything i have to say and wants answers to everything i tell her not to do, thats very frustrating!! ill give u an ex. of what she did last night. All 4 of the kids decided to go play int he snow last night, my youngest comes in and say "Natalia was mean to me mom i dont feel like playing. she told me i was a loser and i was useless!" those are the kinds of things she does. Its like she can not stand not being mean to everyone and she seems to get a thrill out of it!! i use to be the same way but i still dont know why, so its hard for me to know why she is.
I can hardly wait until Riley starts talking! I think I am going to go with the Dr. Phil method and strip her room down to nothing if that is what it takes. She is 22 months old and already has a TV/VCR in her room. Am I creating a monster or what?
I think I would start with the TV. & I mean NO TV at all. If the family is in the living room watching a show, then that means she can't be a part of that either. It does sound quite harsh, but she really is not leaving you with many other options. As soon as you start taking other things away from her, she will probably come right back to you and tell you that does not work either. SO who knows what you should do. I allways just got my butt beat with a belt and then sent to my room for the rest of the night. & I did not have a TV, phone, games,...any of that stuff when I was younger. I do not recomend that though.
I am not sure how you can put a stop to her being so hurtful to the family and everyone else. But you are going to have to figure something out though. That is like forcing your other children to live with a bully and basically robs them of their "safe place". Everyone should be allowed a "safe place" and for the majority of people (I would hope) is their homes. Good luck and I will rack my brain for some more ideas.
Have a good night!
Kim
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That's funny because I remember telling my mother the same thing when I was a teenager. For some reason my friends were getting grounded and my mom tried but I was defiant and it never worked. I guess I just wanted to know she cared or maybe I wanted her attention. She never made me sit down and do homework, in fact I sucked in school from lack of attention academically .....from her. I would not have cared if things were taking away...I was stronger than anything she could do to me but I despretly wanted her attention. Needless to say nothing worked and I came and went as I wanted. I never did drugs or drank or was sexually active so all in all I turned out pretty good but for some reason something lacked as far as her being a mother and disapline and I tested her on it. Maybe I wanted a stern hand or role model. My father was not in the picture. Wow maybe I need to see my shrink...hahahaha Sit down with your daughter and make her punishment spending time with you doing studies? It can't hurt to kill two birds with one stone. You both may benefit. Let us know.
thanks for ur replies. ive wanted to smack some sense into her and when i told her i was going to she said mom isnt that child abuse and child abuse is illegal??!?!?!? anyways i havent (YET!!) about the school work thing she is almost a straight a student!! which is weird as i wasnt! so no problem there. she just likes to be bossy and things her way and laughs at things the kids do that arent funny and calls them down but they dont put up with it either! im going to try the other things u guys said when i next need to but like i said i dont know if thatll work.
My brother is kind of like this. Bad attitude and disrespectful to my parents. You can ground him or threaten to do something and he says he doesn't care and for sure acts like he doesn't! There is one thing that came into his life that he cares very deeply about. His car. He values that car like nothing else! I told my mom next time he misbehaves or disobeyes take that car away! I think all kids have something they value. My brother is 17 and I wish my parents had nipped this behavior in the bud when it started!
I read an article, that daughters fight 4 times more often withtheir mothers for double the length of time. this article said that girls do this not to fight but as a way to prove maturity (as wierd as this may seem) and usually it strengthens the relationship between mother and daughter as backwards as it all sounds.
Good luck with your daughter, i am sure this will pass. But the fact that yoru daughter told you this either proves maturity or extrememly intelligent in getting out of groundings, either way you should be proud.
Good Luck
Francesca
Last edited by franstranges; 10-19-2004 at 10:04 PM.
Hi I dont know if I would totally believe her when she says that grounding doesnt worry her...I use to say that to my mother ALL the time hoping she wouldnt bother doing it, but she still did LOL and I use to HATE IT ! It definately sounds to me like there is an attention and jelousy thing with her brothers and sisters....( but thats only going by what you have written of course ) It sounds to me like she is trying to get your attention, but in a bad way...I have heard that kids sometimes think well bad attention is better than NO attention...Im certainly not accusing of you not giving your daughter attention, it would be hard to spread yourself so thin among 4 kids....and of course if she is more demanding than the average child, then that would make things very difficult...I remember when my son was a kid, it became a viscous (sp) circle....The more he misbehaved, the more I wanted him AWAY from me, so therefore I wasnt giving him anywhere near the attention he wanted and craved, so then he would play up EVEN MORE, to try and get some attention....Anyway Im sorry I cant be of any help really, just thought I would add the input about the grounding thing
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I am SO not an expert on this....... but this is my experience..... My daughter (10yo) sounds just like your daughter and it's exhausting! I finally had enough and tried the Dr. Phil way and stripped her room......... all of her privileges are gone and she has to earn them back one by one. That didn't go over so well...... but it got her attention. I also have had her in counseling, the counselor has been saying she thinks my daughter is depressed, but we're trying to work it out in therapy........ she finally sent my daughter for an evaluation with a shrink, who said that she is bipolar. We're going to try a mild medication that acts as a mood stabalizer. I'm not a big fan of kids on medication and I think dr.'s are too quick to diagnose......... but I went on a web site for kids that are bipolar and a lot started to make sense........... She still doesn't have any of her privileges, though......... Hopefully the combination will work! Good luck with your daughter!
How about an opposite approach to her disruptive behavior? Reward her when she has been good and ignore the bad stuff (unless it is physical). How does she do in school? Do you get phone calls about her behavior there or does it show up on her report card as social misbehavior?
An example of the reward system could be recognizing when she has been helpful and then take her shopping with just you so she can buy an inexpensive item. With 4 children one-on-one time becomes very important. How old is she?
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she is almost a straight a student! and we do praise her for that. she is 12 and this isnt just an age thing like i said before she has been like this since 2! last night i took her t.v away she doesnt seem to care and it never stopped anything. she had an attitude with my youngest this morning. it was cookie day at school and she gave her sister money to buy her a cookie as she is in junior high and doesnt get this at her school. when she found out that we gave the other girl money for cookies she wanted her quarter back and said forget it i dont want a cookie now!!!!! we dont know why she just decided it wasnt fair even though i give her money for little things and not the other kids! it didnt evenr eally make sense to me but its like she just saw it as unfair, her teachers have never called but when we go for interviews they say she is like a cop and takes any time she has to tell on other students. she never minds her own business and worries about her own negative behaviour instead focusing on others neg. behaviour. she isnt bad though she is just too concerned about others getting punished for their mistakes.
thanks for the replies..i can effectively punish her when she is caught in the act when im around but i want her to see that the way she treats others when im not around is wrong. ive tried some of your suggestions but still no results but i know its still early. maybe i should just resolve that this is the way she is and always going to be.
You may and she may think that she is too old for this, but when grounding doesn't work for my two teenage boys (13&15), I make them write sentences. They are not allowed to do anything until all the sentences are done. This not only helps them remember why they are being punished for(sentence usually has something to do with what they did wrong), but also helps them improve their handwriting which we all know, boys need work in that area : ). If the first 200 doesn't do the trick, then the next time it's 500. Try it, it really does work.
Good luck.
ive tried some of your suggestions but still no results but i know its still early. maybe i should just resolve that this is the way she is and always going to be.
I don't think you should decide to adapt to her bad behavior ("this is just the way she is") until you've had her evaluated by a professional. She MAY have normal pre-teen problems, but she MAY have a serious problem (like bipolar disorder, as someone else mentioned).
Untreated bipolar disease often results in abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs, risky sexual behavior, and serious problems. Untreated biploar people often end up homeless or in jail.
Treated bipolar people look, feel, and act normal.
Now ask yourself: if there's even a 1% chance that your girl has a serious problem that (if you ignore it), will result in a miserable life -- and if you discover it now, you can make sure she's well-treated and lives up to her incredible potential -- isn't that worth a trip to a psychiatrist?
Believe me -- and my neighbor, who did this with her son -- if there's a chance of a problem, you don't want to wait until she's 18 and you can't legally make her go to the doctor until you have to call the police because there's "an immediate risk of harm to self or others."
she isnt bi polar and she doesnt have any mental issues other than this. i was EXACTLY this way and was sent to therapists and meds and everything none of which worked BUT it did make me invent things in my life to blame for the way i acted ie no love, blah blah blah and to this day i can say i just GOT OFF ON IT!! i throughouly enjoyed making life miserable for those around me! in the future i think she may suffer from depression and such like i had but not severly enough to explain why we both behaved this way. also about the lines my mom used to do that to me and id laugh! nothing worked with me except getting older and seeing the truth behind my behavoir.
My mom used to spank me until I was about 10 (with her hand or a wooden spoon) Then I got grounded until I was about 15. (I'm 20 now) Honestly, I would recommend BOTH methods. In my opinion, when a child is younger, explaining to them why they should/shouldnt do things doesnt quite sink in. And timeout, that just gives them more time to think about things (Usually not what they did wrong, speaking from experience). To me, the spankings set a BIG image in my head.. EX: I made the connection that if I yelled in a restraunt i would get spanked.. PERIOD. As I got older, spanking wasnt the way to solve issues, so grounding worked well (When my friends were out, I couldnt leave my yard) (I stayed in my room usually, so grounding me to my room didnt help, lol) Then depending on what I did wrong, my mom would take away the phone also, or tv or even my radio (I loved my radio, lol). Also, depending on the situation, she wouldnt ground me at all... and instead we would talk. And trust me, at 16, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to my mom, lol. But it worked! We would talk about the situation that occured, she would listen to my explaination to doing what I did, then she would give other examples of what I could have done differntly. She also helped me understand a lot of the situations I was in, and helped me come to better conclusions as to how I should handle things (like ignoring comments, keeping comments to myself, etc). She was able to learn how I viewed things (and also found out a lot of pent up emotion that I was hiding, which caused a lot of the things I did) and I was able to learn new ways of handling emotions, outburts, anger, etc. So I guess, what I am trying to say is... spank them when thier young, ground them/take things away when they get too old for small spankings, then talk with them (openly, not so much harshly condensending). And of course, depending on the situation, still find ways to ground them.. that always works (to a point). At least it did with me.
Am I creating a monster or what? 
