Confusion about youth psych team advice to NOT deny electronics to teenager

Sadly I think is what many are assuming, including members of her family but I know and see and hear differently. I'll support them both as best I can. You've all been so much help.

Has her mom reassured her that she loves her no matter what? That no matter how much they fight, she's still there for her? That she loves her no matter what mental health issues she has? That she hates that she's struggling and wants to do whatever she can to help her daughter to feel better? Even if she thinks she's doing this, she needs to spend more time on making sure her daughter feels loved for who she is (not in spite of her issues) and supported.

Note: This comes partly from my own experience as a kid/teen with anxiety and OCD who didn't feel that support from her mom. (Even though my mom probably thought she was being supportive). And a bit from general parenting advice (I have a 5-year-old with special needs) that we've received from our marriage counselor, who specializes in working with troubled teens. Kids need that sort of reassurance all throughout their lives, but especially when they're acting out like that.

I hope mum knows that she doesn't have to be perfect. Attempts to know everything, do everything, and be everything can be more destructive as knowing, doing, and being nothing. I'm not a parenting expert, here, but I reflect on my own teen years and my mom just flat-out ignored A LOT. Self-injury, drug use, sex...And while I'm not advocating that level of...well, neglect, I will tell you this: we never fought. We are the only mother/teen daughter pair I know of that just didn't fight. Sometimes I'd try to start a fight and she just wouldn't take up the bait.

Maybe that's what the health professionals were getting at when they talked about just dropping the whole cell-phone discipline thing: deescalation. Backing away. Attempting to do less, not more.

Thirteen is an age where you're well into and still working on differentiating yourself from your family unit. You don't need mum to be everything and do everything anymore, not like you did when you were a little kid. You have a constellation of people providing you with what you want and need: peers, adults at school, people in your clubs and teams and after-school activities. Plenty of people with **** parents muddle through somehow, usually with the help of other people in the support system.

I don't blame mum. I think, like most people, she's doing the best she knows how to. I think she cares. I don't know that it's the case that she's driving herself crazy trying to do too much, but if she is, that might be what's driving her daughter crazy by proxy.

I wasnt saying the mum is negligent. I said she was fighting about the wrong thing.

Our society is setup for these rifts between parent and child, and many times there is no avoiding them with certain kids no matter what the parent does to repair it. A child has free agency, more so as a teen.

"This was told to me several times: Behaviors are messages given in code. It is a parent's (therapist too), job to decipher the code, respond to the message, and not react to the behavior."

This is not easy to do. Most times I was wrong, yet I did continue to try. I'm pulling for all of you.

I see exactly where you are going here and tend to agree. I think would not being discouraged from use of personal electronics encourage the teenager to actually communicate person to person? Does the use of personal electronics give them the ability to further withdraw?

But I see one reason for this. It gives them a way of reaching out and getting an instant response - which is more desirable than closing themselves off all together.

Thus, the answer to me is to also limit the use to certain times and situations. I believe that no student should be allowed to use their devices at school in the first place. At home, I agree with the suggestion that use of the devices only be in family areas of the home and limited to certain time frames.

My kids went to schools that required each child to own his/her own lap top. It's now headed that way in public school, but they give them to the kids. They have started pushing laptops under the guise of evening the playing field in poorer districts, to elementary kids no less.

It is hard for a parent to figure out what is work or play.

Yep. That's happening here too. I just hope that the schools enable only a few sites and apps for the students to access (enough to give them the technological education they need but without the distraction and temptation of social media). That's what happened in a large company I used to work for but that was back in the 90s. Vastly different from now. Re laptops.....I don't see why each classroom isn't equipped with enough machines. PCs are far less easily damaged than laptops and can be upgraded. I'm feeling very old fashioned and I'm only 42. :/

You call her deceitful and dishonest. Nowhere in your posts do I find worry or care or concern for her side of it. You obviously don't like her. You think she is dramatic and acting up for no good reason.
All I hear is "We must get 'young madam' (which sounds really snotty and sarcastic, because either madam is for polite people, which you're implying this girl isn't, or you're predicting she'll end up running a brothel) to obey. The phone is the only thing the enjoys, so you have to remove it. Well, if she got into sports or cubs, she'd probably be grounded from it. So she steals, and cuts, and smokes, and does boob stuff. Why? Because that's the way she can hang out with kids.
And as a young adult, if my mother's friend had access to my facebook, I'd create a new one too. It's an immense invasion of her privacy to change her password and delete her friends, and to have control over her social media.
I'd beware. You and her mother are pushing her away by imposing rules and telling her she is unacceptable (teens read behavior as themselves. If you say your actions are bad, they hear you are bad.) Do you really want to destroy any relationship with her?

I'm very sad to read that you feel all of that. How you have interpreted my post and my replies is not correct in the slightest.
I do wish that I had the time and energy to list for you and reassure you how differently each accusation you've made actually went down.
I do wish I had that energy and time. As she is now with ME for the next week of the holidays , all of that time and energy is now being focused on our young "madam" - a term of endearment that harks back to when I met her when she was an almost 8 year old, also know by other affectionate nicknames, none of which I can say on this forum as it would be a breach of privacy and take away the anonymity.
I am delighting in hearing her talking and enthusing about everything that is new, old, painful, thrilling, confusing and everything in between in her life right now.
Everything I have done and spoken about is BECAUSE I love and care for her. I'm sad that you are unable to see that but that isn't something that will change how I care for this amazingly intelligent, feisty, big-hearted but equally self absorbed, beautiful, talented young girl who will one day be so much more as a grown woman. She needs guidance. We ALL need guidance. I'm learning how to "tweak" how we guide her through these next few tumultuous years.

Chimney, I do see your care and worry in your post. I think most of us here can. Parents most of all. Wishing you well though this tougher teenage time in this day and age. Thank you for caring enough to take her into your life.

I appreciate that, nammu.

I PMd you Chimney

I'm not saying he doesn't care about her; I'm just saying if you ground a teen from everything, they'll find their own method of entertainment, with or without your stamp of approval.
The posts I see are complaints about the child's behavior and resentment about it. OP never answered to root cause questions. From my POV, OP is/was concerned with the behavior the 13 year old is expressing rather than the personality behind her.
All I see is 'she can't cut, she can't hang out with (certain friends), she can't be on her phone, etc.' What can she do?
Give the kid some space. If you back her into a corner, defense mechanisms will come out.

I agree with indanthrenegecko. There must be a "root" cause here that is being missed. The reason teenS usually act out is because they are feeling misunderstood, unloved, like they don't fit in, they have low self esteem, or they have experienced some kind of abuse or mistreatment by adults or peers. Taking away her phone or asking her to follow specific rules is going to have absolutely zero effect unless you figure out what the "root" cause of her behavior is. Clearly, she isn't happy. Something is upsetting her. If you try to talk with her and figure out how she is feeling and why, you would probably have much more success.

I agree. And we do have really good talks most days. As I mentioned earlier she feels like her mum doesn't love her which isn't true but that doesn't change how our 13 yr old interprets it. She also feels really hard done by that we don't want her doing all the things that she thinks she should be allowed doing at the tender and impressionable age of 13. No it's NOT OK to be drinking vodka cruisers.....and yes it is the body's way of saying its had too much when you have a hangover in the morning. (Seriously this is the latest from just this last semester at school - shades of my big sister all those decades ago). So some education needed and learning how to drink. .... Very concerned about talk of parents providing alcohol for OTHER PEOPLE'S kids. Fine for their own. My dad allowed me to slowly have a little bit more when we had meals. But no way would I ever consider giving ANY alcohol to someone else's 13,14,15 or 16 year old. Above that I would consult their parents for consent or lack of.

Of course, even considering taking a device away for this kind of behaviour wouldn't cross my mind should she do something like this under my care. The kind of consequence I would dish out would be something like setting a ridiculously early curfew for the very first "next" time out that she wanted to go to. .... so she gain that trust back. ...and I'd keep working on that slowly with each time. I'd also encourage her friends to come back to our place instead so I can let them have fun but WITHOUT alcohol.

Her own feelings are not true. WOW. And you seriously wonder why she's acting out?

Yeah, parents can love kids. But if there's a three-year-old at home and mom is busy with work and such, the daughter might be lonely. Love does not equate to adequate attention and nurturing. So, she gets attention and affection from her friends and alcohol.

Crikey indanthrenegeck, if you read the full sentence and not just the bits that you seem to latch onto, I said she doesn't feel loved. ...which isn't true as she is. ....but then went on to say that the way she PERCEIVES is that she isn't loved. I did NOT say that how she feels is not true.

Yes I do believe she gets lonely at home, and hugely frustrated with her little brother. And yes friends are crucially important. However NONE of that even slightly justifies the drinking of alcohol at 13. None. It justifies the FEELINGS but absolutely not the doing. There are other ways with friends to have fun, fit in, laugh, and generally be themselves.

And yes the heart of this is to find a way for a tempestuous mum and daughter to communicate and talk more openly without hostility on both sides. THAT is what is being worked on this year with as much support around them as possible, from both professionals and just us regular people who care about them.

I DO respect your comments as you clearly feel passionately about what you say. What I would really appreciate is some suggestions.

I"ll Post it again:

"Behaviors are messages given in code. It is a parent's (therapist too,even for us adults), job to decipher the code, respond to the message, and not react to the behavior."

BUT, as a parent you can talk till your blue in the face and even just listen, and not get an understanding. How many of you adults are dodging being honest about what's driving all the emotions and feelings? How many of you don't know? If you as grown adults don't know or won't say what you may want to your therapist, and your therapist has to hunt and peck it out of you, and many never succeed, then how the heck are we as parents or adults who care about our kids and other people's kids able to do it continuously, and successfully. But, that doesn't mean we should shuck rules for their health and safety: No you can't be texting at three in the morning, that is sleep time, but you can... No you can't stay at a friend's house I don't know, but if you are willing to let me talk to the parents, and drive over and meet them, maybe in a couple of weeks you can do an overnight or he can sleepover our house this weekend...

I had more success with getting through to my kid's friends, than my own kid. I've gotten calls in the middle of the night from parents to come get [their] kid. I have a kid that was not willing to let anyone in, including therapist. You would be aghast at what therapist suggested to me; one that wrote a well know book. He's a good kid mind you, no dad in the house, many people wanted to mentor him, but he wanted to adult very early, and create his own rules, and find his own way.

We were all teenagers once, and many of us struggle now because no one was there to listen or we chose to close our ears to those that would listen, or we just wanted to find our own way. Please don't pretend it is that easy or that there is an answer.

I know you are young indanthrenegecko, and there may be a three-year-old at home, but mom can turn all of her attention away and place it on the teen, and she may still not get through. Please understand there are no easy answers. But, we as adults, still need to try.

Please...and for others grown adults, its time to get off the caboose until you've driven the train.

I would like to suggest to you Chimney, and others that may have issues, questions, or just need some support when it comes to dealing with children/teenagers, you might want to post on the ongoing couch thread. There are a lot of wise minds from many responders with or without children. IMHO.

Thank you. I will. Good wisdom x