Out of Control 14 Year Old Granddaughter - HELP!

Several points occur to me. The parents have only been seperated for a year, teenagers react very badly to family splits - they are totally self centred and won't make allowances for their parents problems, and apparently there is a new partner.

All in all a fairly volatile situation.

As there have always been problems with this girl is autism a possibility? Girls can appear much more "normal" than boys but the out of control screaming and violence does ring alarm bells?

My advice would be not to engage. A request is made and an angry reply is given. Ignore it to the point of moving out of sight (unless serious physical danger imminent.) She is getting loads of attention for poor behaviour and has power over everyone at a time when she probably feels nobody cares enough about her and she feels her life is out of control. In this case I would leave the nit comb/shampoo in her bedroom and I suspect she would do it at some point. When she does comply a hug/ smile or other acknowledgement is always important. All adults need to agree this course of action if possible and stick to it so she cannot play one off against another.
it is hard to bite your tongue when abuse is being hurled about but you have to think in the longer term! If possible, if she is getting distressed just putting a gentle hand on her back, if she will allow, is reassuring/calming and may prevent stage 2 of a flare up. Adults need to take back control..in the best way not physically or by threatening. It will be a rough ride bit not necessarily impossible. if it sounds like I know a bit about situations like this it is because I have had similar to deal with! Good luck...

Your granddaughter is not unique NudeJude and the fact that you know you handled it wrongly is half the equation but don't bristle from the answers you are getting, there is some really good advice on here and everyone seems to agree that stepping back, removing the audience, talking calmly and even letting go of the original request, are all the best way forward Easier said than done I know, but really, really necessary

To be honest your daughter SHOULD NOT have brought you into it at all... I have an extra volatile very manly built grandchild (amongst others that have their moments) and my daughter always removes him from the audience to talk to him if he refuses to go and that has happened many times then she asks us to leave them for five minutes he has in 'saner' moments cried and says he doesn't know why he s like he is Some teens have a very rough time Their bodies and hormones are telling them to take control of all situations, they are ready for war but their emotions are very childlike and still at the stamping feet stage and they all mature differently and at different times

Your granddaughter is desperately trying to gain control in a very uncontrollable life don't underestimate the middle child syndrome, the break up of mum and dad,
(you see them going from one to another as part of their temper tantrums but they are probably very confused about their loyalty) and the quickly on the scene new boyfriend and his children (I do hope he/ they havent moved in ) and he definitely shouldn't be putting his oar in that will just cause much more resentment ( I can imagine 'you're not my dad you can't tell me what to do')

You are not going to like this but it's your daughter who is the one that needs the help and retraining I notice you imply her husband took a calmer view with the children's behaviour but she didn't accept that as the right way forward, but her way isn't working and never has with any of the three kids by the sound of it A good course in conflict/resolution and parenting skills for teens would help her

Please stop seeing the girls as 'the problem' it's what's going on around them that's causing the problems and what they are reacting to

Good luck it's a toughie

I was a youth worker too and LESS IS MORE, when dealing with stroppy kids. Your situation has taken away the security those kids are entitled to and they are feeling it.

Don't row over the small stuff......you re wasting your time. Back off. If things start to escalate go out for a while and let it blow itself out many storms do.

Teenage girls don't want nits, she would have dealt with it. Get one of the little combs so she can nit pick at he leisure.

Get a game plan sorted with dad, don't play pass the parcel when they are acting out.make sure wherever they are the secure rules are in place.

Try to ignore the irritating stuff and only raise big issues with her, remember a lot of really excellent youth workers, artists, musicians etc have trouble growing up!!!

Divorce pole axes families and we assume now that it is common that it is all OK and that things can be shared out and the kids don't feel like they were hit by a Tsunami.......that, in my experience is exactly how people feel and it takes them years to recover.

No physical violence will ever help. Social services and counsellors often make things worse, much worse sometimes. They can develop the 'client' mentality from which people find it hard to escape. This is why the loss of youth work was such a terrible thing, people thought we were playing table tennis all the time or just running a bit of a disco, how wrong they were.

The ancient Greeks knew about teenagers, this is nothing new at all, it is a bumpy ride and the least damage done now (by the adults) the better.

If they are not your kids, be the kindly gran and let the parents do the parenting.......doesn't matter what size your daughter is or how much she sits and shakes after an episode. It is her problem.

My daughter was a difficult teenager. She now says that she felt angry all the time and just couldn't let it out. Since diagnosed polycystic. When dealing with difficult kids herself in a work situation she has bought them a punch ball so they can safely let go

Start by talking to social services and they will be able to guide you to whatever help is available.

Sounds awful op ?
My dd was very similar and I had NO idea how to deal with her behaviour. It sadly resulted in her going to a secure unit as I couldn't keep her safe & she wasn't keeping herself safe.
The family as a unit, including father, need to seek therapy. Everyone needs to get involved. All of the kids will be affected in different ways & if the parents are unable to sing from the same hymn sheet it won't get any better.
My experience is angry teens turn on themselves, self harm & risky behaviour.
I completely understand your actions when you slapped dgd, it doesn't sound as though it worked & it sounds like you won't do that again. It will give dgd something to use against you & the other adults involved.
My dd attacked me because I locked us in the house to prevent her running away again. I was a few weeks out of back surgery. Terrible situation & I completely feel for you all.
A trip to gp or self (or school) referral to CAHMS may be the way forward.

Good luck, be strong ?

Firstly, you and the girl's mother are completely in the right and the girl is in the wrong. In this particular case it is important to rid everyone of nits at the same time or the fleas can get a hold and spread even further so the child was wrong to resist her mother's desire to apply the nit comb. Her daughter was being selfish and antisocial.

That said, with the pernicious influence of liberal parenting and social services intervention you are on to a loser tying to make an enforced stand with an out of control teenager. If you try to quell a hysterical outburst with a slap you might well be putting yourself at risk of prosecution so for your own sake avoid it.

I have some experience in the field of raging teenagers as my son, when afflicted by hormones, was aggressive, touchy and sometimes violent. He smashed things and once, when his father was away from home, chased me around the house and attacked me. He was difficult at school and was nearly expelled on one occasion. He started smoking, ate himself five stone overweight and sometimes drank to excess.

At approaching thirty he is a completely different person. he has never been able to discuss his difficulties or behaviour or to apologise properly. But he has turned himself around and is gentle, kind, loving and generous. In addition he works in a very worthy job at a charity.

I am not completely sure how this turnaround was made but it was a long, slow business of 'two steps forward, one step back'. What I do know is that his father and I never gave up on him. We took one day at a time, tried to praise the good and make our views about the 'bad' clear without nagging. I supposed we refused to appease him and just stood back to let him see the consequences of his own actions. We were kind and loving but didn't compromise on values.

When, once, he spent his entire birthday money on hard alcohol to take to a friend's party and was thus thrown out by the boy's parents we wordlessly picked him up, let him stew and never gave him another penny to compensate for what he had thrown away on liquor. He got the message.

When he was almost thrown out of school in the very academic sixth form he attended we begged the school to keep him which they did.

We told our son he had to finish his A levels but that if he didn't want to go to university that was fine with us, he could get any job he wanted (plumber, electrician, Tesco's worker). Given that he was arrogant as well as selfish he was thrown by this as he thought he was going to be a 'boss' not a worker bee. He sat in his room for a year and then, suddenly, one day, announced he was making a late application to university.

That was the beginning of the turnaround but there were many vexatious setbacks before he became even moderately 'human'.

I know other sons and daughters who were equally awful. One not even took heroin but dealt in it too and stole from friends to pay for his antisocial lifestyle.

Time seems to sort these troubled teenagers out. They need to get out into the real world and make some comparisons with others. Often they come to see how loving and caring and patient their own parents are and then they wonder how those parents could have put up with their antics.

It seems, NudeJude, that you will have to put a little distance between yourself and this grandchild and let her mother and father deal with her until she has calmed down. I agree with the other posters on this thread who have said walk away and take others out of the room. Try to keep calm - and get all of the sharp knives out of the house as this is clearly a danger to the rest of the family.

There has been good advice and reasons as to why your Grand-children and in particular your 14 year old grand-daughter behave in this way.
I am sorry but I feel that this is not normal at all......not for anyone . The girl needs to see a therapist. If not recognised and helped she could harm herself or other people. I think she needs referral to a therapist and maybe family councelling for everyone. The situation is now out of hand, and needs professional handling.

First of all I really feel for you as we hope when our children become adults our lives will become easier sadly it sounds like your daughter needs you more than ever teenager girls can be selfish but this sounds like professional help is needed maybe the police arriving might have been a positive thing it would certainly have brought her to her senses has your daughter taken her to the GP it maybe worth a visit also not making excuses for her behaviour but pmt hormonal problems could be worsening the situation and parents splitting up and bringing new partners into the home can't be easy for her.

Easy to say keep calm, don't engage, talk quietly etc but WAY harder to actually do when you are in a situation where conflict is relentless and possibly dangerous. I knew someone who's daughter actually smashed her way through an internal door in a rage when the mother was doing all the right things. People react eventually when the pressure gets too much.
With the break up of the marriage, new partners and teenage hormones this poor child needs outside help and I believe the school is a place to start as they have access to educational psychologists, the GP might also be able to help.

radicalnan - how I do agree with you about the loss of youth workers and youth centres. I used to run arts outreach projects at youth centres and I could see that the centres were a lifeline for many troubled young people.

No hope of the government thinking in terms of prevention - if you cannot show concrete measurable results then that service is crossed off the list. The sort of benefits that accrue from youth centres are not easily measurable, so down the pan they go.

Jude - I hope that some of the ideas and suggestions on here will help your troubled family. Good luck with it all.

Rather than pour your heart out to a lot of anonymous people, who will give you "advice" across the spectrum, consult a professional psychologist regarding anger issues and how to manage them.

Many thanks to those of you who have given constructive advice, I am truly grateful, and we will definitely be looking at the ideas put forward, and thanks in particular to those who have NOT commented on the mistakes made, after all, those of you who have never made a mistake have obviously never learned anything either.

In answer to one of your questions, the boyfriend's boys don't live with the girls, they only visit every other weekend and one night mid week. They are very well behaved children and have actually been reduced to tears by the behaviour of my daughter's children. Hence her boyfriend is obviously keen to try to get this situation under control for everyone's sake.

My daughter and her new partner did make the mistake of moving in together far too soon for the children, and unfortunately we all know that this was a mistake now, but we have to try to move forward, and that's what I was hoping for help to do by requesting advice here.

The boys and neighbour's child were not in the room when it all kicked off, but of course heard it all.

In response to MargaretX - I did try hugging her as you would a smaller child, but unfortunately that didn't work either, just made her more angry.

Maybe I didn't make it clear in my first post, but the child in question has ALWAYS had these fierce temper tantrums, and I honestly don't think that the marriage breakdown has made it worse, it's just that she's been allowed to get away with it by her Father from square one. Even after it all blew up, and I'd explained to him on the phone what had happened, he turned up and treated it all like it was a big joke. He will NOT change the way that he treats the girls, and can no more handle the child than her mother, in fact when it is his weekend to have the girls the child in question often refuses to go, and I'm sad to say that the two eldest girls refused to even go out for dinner with him for his 40th birthday, he just shrugged it off, even though it must have hurt like hell.

With regard to the new man involved, he is actually very good with the children, and when they are in 'normal' mode, they all like him and want to share things with him, in fact the child in question will often tell him things that she won't tell her Mum, so he's obviously not such a great part of the problem, although as one poster said, does suffer the inevitable 'you're not my dad' syndrome.

As with toddlers, reasoning with an out of control teenager is futile in mid tantrum. PLEASE phone social services- no they won't take your g/kids away but do say neither DD nor their dad can control them and they risk being sent into care (even if you won't that triggers the help)- as they have the right teams and tools to help (I was a social worker). Being a proverbial football between parents is awful and this rejection really won't help. If SS refuse for any reason look at Banardos etc as they might do similar. Unfortunately the inconsistency of boundaries have resulted in this behaviour and now everyone is suffering. Good luck!

Very sorry Jude you find yourself in this awful situation. I had this problem with a 13 year old foster son, who would explode regularly for no apparent reason. Arguing back is not the answer ... ignoring them can calm the situation very quickly. They do it for control mostly and the more you argue back the better they like it. But if you don't respond, then there cannot be an argument. I used to say very calmly, I will speak to you when you calm down and not before, then I would leave the room. He couldn't handle that and would follow me round the house intimidating me, but what ever he did I did not respond to his behaviour and repeated that I would talk to him when he becomes calm. It worked. He wasn't getting the response he was after, so there was no further point fighting. It wasn't the desired result for him. Soon his behaviour changed and we were able to talk and the scenes lessened. Hope this helps. Good luck.

NudeJude you have been given lots of advice but none of us really know what is going on with your GD. She might benefit from some counseling (although it's hard to find these days). She might simply improve as she gets older. All I can say is keep in mind the old adage "This too shall pass".

Some good advice here, but a word of caution about seeing a therapist as a family.

Our eldest went through a very difficult phase at around 14 - 16 years old and we were advised to go to a family therapist. The therapist, who charged an arm and a leg, proceeded to ask if any of us had had counselling before, so I mentioned that I had. This gave her the excuse to blame all my son's problems on me.

I refused to go again and we had to put up with his teenage tantrums until the age of 18, when he upped the ante and made threats to kill himself when his girlfriend dumped him.

It crossed our minds that he was just being manipulative and attention-seeking but we had to take the threats seriously and found a therapist who specialised in teenagers issues. When he went to university, we arranged CBT for him which helped a lot as one of his issues was low self-esteem.

It sounds like the mother is unable to handle the daughter and the daughter knows this. The mother won't be taken seriously if she lays down boundaries and can't stick to them.

Maybe her daughter is being bullied at school or on the internet. This needs checking out and if it's just about anger management, maybe finding a therapist for the daughter to go to will help.

I'm sorry Jude and ladies (and gents?) but I haven't had time to read all the posts on your thread. I just wanted to say, and it may have been said already, have CAMHS been asked to see your Granddaughter? We have problems with mine too and she has had sessions with a lady at CAMHS. The GP referred her and I have a feeling the school had something to do with it too. I'll read the replies later on and I'm sorry if I have repeated what someone else has said.

This family seems to have many problems at the moment and the girl is reacting in the only way she knows how.

Very often families were referred to Child Guidance because of a 'problem child' but were astonished to find that in fact the parents were part of the problem too and it can be difficult for some people to acknowledge that.

It does worry me that the OP said that this child reacted positively when she was given one to one attention (helping you do your makeup, NudeJude) but when she and her mother both over-reacted to a situation (the nits) she was the one pushed out of the house, becoming increasingly hysterical and eventually was slapped. Presumably the rest of the family plus mother's new partner and his sons were all indoors in her house, thinking what a terrible, nasty girl she is.
How she must have felt rejected.

The one-to-one situation does give a glimmer of hope that what this girl needs is some attention and negative attention is better than none at all.

Someone needs to give her a chance to articulate her feelings which are coming out in the wrong way. She probably does feel angry with her mother - who was responsible for the break-up of her parents? How long have the new boyfriend and his sons been on the scene? As someone else said - are they all living together?

It is a very traumatic time for her, added to normal teenage feelings, and she needs to be dealt with sensibly and sensitively. There is so much going on with this family, so many changes to deal with, and the parents (not the new boyfriend) need to think this through and work out a calm strategy to deal with it.

There could also, as someone else pointed out, be something else going on eg bullying at school.

Oh my goodness. How frightening for all of you. My DD was very challenging all her life and still is on occassion. I learnt during her troubled teens to recognise the onset of a what could become an episode of serious aggression and developed a response of just putting my shoulders down, looking at her square on and laughing quietly at her. It always worked, sometimes she laughed too. But usually stomped off to her room. But I do think family centered counselling would be a very place to go. Good luck.

As a foster parent and ex teacher, I can sympathise. Pupils are free to shout at teachers without redress, apart from an interview with the head of department / year / school and this is absolutely no deterrent to the most difficult of them. I have had my head split open but that was really an accident though due to one of the most violent pupils. I found that the threat of a tickle was the most effective for boys who raised their fists to me - everyone around laughed and that defused the situation.

But your situation had got beyond that, I think. A hug is what is needed, she really was crying for help and needed to know that someone loved her even at her worst. The trouble is that everything becomes so emotionally charged that this is very difficult to achieve - of course you and your daughter love her but it's so difficult to sound convincing when everyone is shouting.

Warn the other members of the family to leave so there are only the two of you. You are more likely to succeed if there is no audience. Shut the door.

Hang on to all your emotional reserves, wait till she runs out of breath and then talk quietly. Repeat the process if she starts shouting again. Remain out of reach, sitting calmly if possible - these tantrums seldom result in attack if you are initially out of reach. It is a good sign that she stopped banging before breaking the glass in the door. She still has control even if it is at its limit.

If possible wait and wait, let her shout herself to exhaustion when she will collapse in tears - now is the hugging time. And only say you love her and that she has so many lovely attributes (Prepare a list now so you can muster several REAL talents - she will know if you make any up - past kindnesses, thoughtful acts, helpful advice, not school achievements.) and say you will always love her and reassure her that her problems are temporary, that she will be able to get through this difficult time and you will stand by her through the next few weeks as she adjusts. Then just listen and listen and listen - parents, sisters, school, lessons, bullying, health, nightmares, misery, depression....... When she has calmed down suggest you make a cup of tea / coffee / smoothee whatever her favourite is.

You should have a grasp of her problems by then and can provide words of wisdom and experience of crises and their resolution. Don't try to advise her before she has something in her stomach - it is calming - remember Peter Rabbit and the lettuces.

Good luck and gather your courage. Try to get your daughter to stand back and let you do this - she has been too worn down to be able to manage, I think. Tell her to take time to make herself calm (Concentrate on deep breaths OUT, they do help to remove carbon dioxide and prevent hyperventilation, calm panic and reduce anger.) and then to chaperone any audience out of the room appropriately and wait for your arrival if she is alone.

Always smile with love and say 'please' if you have a request and 'thank you' / favourite meal / etc. if there is a positive response, to avoid the charge of making 'demands' and also to give an element of choice. Meet refusal with something along the lines of 'I'm sorry, it would have been a help' and let it pass. You often find that compliance has been achieved after a delay with no comment or observation.

And hang on in there. Girls with these problems need to grow through their adolescence and I have never found a way to short cut the time. Without love and support it can be a very destructive period in their lives. Things WILL get better over time - look back in six months, not before.

I hope that helps - in spite of its length.

Good luck, I have my fingers crossed for you.

About 2o years ago my sister in law, a single parent, was having similar problems with her two sons. Her social worker suggested the boys went into care for a few weeks, to give them a short sharp shock. It worked, they were really grateful to be allowed back home after a few weeks. I don't know if the threat of this would be enough to make the granddaughter wake up to her bad behaviour?

she really was crying for help and needed to know that someone loved her even at her worst.

I think that sums it up very well indeed.

Warn the other members of the family to leave so there are only the two of you.

Yes, and that should be the mother's role.

Although I think Granny could take the opportunity of a one-to-one to ask, very casually in the middle of a conversation about makeup or whatever, if everything is OK, how are things going, without making it too intense.