frightened and stunned

[stunned]

My sixteen year old daughter- soon to be 17- was diagnosed with ODD last Thursday. The funny thing about her ODD that no one has been able to explain is why it disappears if her boyfriend (also diagnosed with ODD) is out of town?
It is as if my darling little girl has turned into a complete stranger in the last few years. Started slowly at about age 13 and has suddenly roared in with a vengeance in the last four months. I have had the police out to the house several times, especially since it seems to go hand in hand with her beginning to smoke pot. She has not yet used anything harder than pot but refuses to give up either boyfriend or pot.
She gets violent, throwing things, pushing me down, breaking stuff, screaming, swearing and refused to follow ANY rule whatsoever. The closer she gets to a date with said boyfriend, the more likely she is to blow. So scary cause if she is not going to spend a day or two with him, I have my other child back- charming, loving, hopeful positive.
I know he has physically and emotionally abused her in the past. She claims there is none of that going on now. we have been repeatedly told not to try to bust them up- does anyone know how hard that is? How terribly hard? Anyway there is no way to do it. If I tell him not to come to my house he comes anyway. If I say do not call here he will call 150 times. He has broken my windows while I was gone and they both lie about it so no way to have him arrested. If he is in my house, he will not leave when told to- I have to call the cops to get him out.

Then,,,,periods of total happiness, cause he has gone out of town. Why?

If she is really ODD, why is she ONLY ODD when he is in town?
If we take HER out of town instead, she may have one or two violent angry fits and then the rest of the week she is perfectly normal.

I cannot understand how someone's mental disorder is dependent upon the physical presence of another person.

And now she has a battery charge against her OUTSIDE the house. She was angry with her boyfriends roommate's (did I mention said boyfriend is now an adult living on his own) gilrfriend for evicting boyfriend from shared apartment due to over use of pot in apartment. Anyway, my daughter threw a half empty soda can at the other girl and hit her in the face and now off to court we go. Very scary for me.

Anyway she is supposed to start therapy here very soon, sometime in the next week. And also something called "equine therapy" where she learns to ride a horse. Supposedly learning about the horse teaches her to respect her parents. Don't understand that either.

Plus her school work just is going up in flames. don't think she will be able to salvage enough to graduate.

 

[BusynMember]

I could be wrong, but your post reeks of a teen who is a serious drug abuser. I wouldn't even focus on an ODD diagnosis, which in my opinion is probably wrong anyway. And pot doesn't make kids wild and out of control, although pot is not a good thing.
Maybe she does more drugs when the boyfriend is around? But even two rages a week is not normal. She could be using less when he's not around, but sounds like something is still going on.
My daughter started using at twelve (yes, me too...I didn't know twelve year olds used, especially not MY daughter). She quit at nineteen, but there was a lot of hell we went through in between.
I would maybe give her a surprise drug test when she is acting her worst. My daughter put holes in the wall and raged up a storm when she was taking drugs. We didn't know she was doing it though. We thought she had bipolar. She doesn't. Therapists are easy for teens to fool. Mine did.
My guess is she's taking something like speed (my daughter did) or even coke. I would try to get a handle on it now because pretty soon she'll be too old for you to do anything. At the end of the day, we had to make our daughter leave and she had to get off drugs on her own. But it wasn't until she was off of drugs that we found out how deep she'd been involved in them.
Please try to get her help, but also realize that unless she wants help, it won't do any good. (((Hugs)))

 

[maril]

I am sorry things are out of control and you are having such a hard time. Hugs to you. MidwestMom makes good points regarding getting help now, investigating substance abuse further, etc. You have every right to choose who you do and don't want in your home and to have expectations to have rules followed in your home. You should not have to live in chaos.

 

[Stella]

Welcome to the site!!

It does sound like your daughter might be taking more than pot to have such extreme behaviours but i'm no expert.

I cannot understand how someone's mental disorder is dependent upon the physical presence of another person.

This is an interesting statement and one that I wonder about myself as a lot of my own daughters behaviours are directed towards me, or happen mostly when i'm around. Sometimes I think that she just has so much pent up anger that I am the one she feels safest taking it out on as I am the one closest to her?? Maybe this is the case with your own daughter - she is displacing her anger on to you and you are being punished instead of the person who should be punished.

It's interesting that she is so drawn to her boyfriend even though he seems to have such a negative effect on her. Did she have any issues before she met boyfriend??

There are lots of lovely and very wise people on here who i'm sure will be able to advice you and guide you in the right direction. You have found a wonderful place.

((HUGS))

 

[DaisyFace]

Stunned--

Hello and Welcome!

In reading your post, it is very clear to me that you are already a pretty wise parent....you are not pleased with a throwaway diagnosis like "ODD" and are rightly suspicious of the boyfriend as a negative influence in your daughter's life.

Instead of "equine therapy"....which, no, would not be a cure-all for drug abuse, addiction and violence....is there some kind of camp or something far away from the boyfriend where your daughter might spend some real time away from him?
Like you, I can't help but feel that something is happening when they are together--drug abuse most likely--that would cause this horrendous personality change.

DaisyF

 

[artana]

stunned,

Welcome to the boards. I do not have as much experience as many of the moms here in terms of raising a child into his/her teens with issues. But, I do have the experience of having been a teenager in an abusive relationship.

I would suggest that you not jump the gun on the drugs. Yes, they could be drugs, but the actions you are talking about make me wonder. If the boyfriend was supplying drugs and she doesn't have them when he's gone, there should be signs of withdrawal and crankiness. Instead, she seems fine.

My concern would be how abusive the relationship is. A young woman who thinks of herself as very intelligent might feel a lot of shame and self-loathing for having put herself in a bad relationship. I know she shouldn't feel this way, but a lot of times that is what strengthens the co-dependence between an abusive partner and an abused one. Anyway, if she is ashamed, part of that can easily come out as anger and defensiveness every time this guy is around her. It's also hard for someone to walk out of that relationship.

I know that I haven't presented solutions. I was just trying to reassure you that if your gut instinct is not drugs, then you are probably right about the boyfriend. Emotional issues from abusive relationships can spread to most areas of someone's life. I hope that you will keep us up to date and that the therapy helps her.

 

[BusynMember]

As the mom of an ex-drug abuser, this isn't true although abusive relationships go hand-in-hand with drug abuse. These are not good kids. They may have been before drug use, but they change and are not nice to one another.
My daughter never showed me any signs of withdrawal at all. We had no idea the extent of her drug use.
Pot is a gateway drug--she has already admitted using it. Usually when kids admit pot and are acting off the wall, the pot is just to pacify the parents who grew up with pot and, while not liking it, don't normally feel it's too serious. It's to cover up more serious drug use.
Chances are that your daughter uses drugs, if she does (and I think she does) on the sneak, even when boyfriend isn't around, just not as much or maybe doesn't use as many hard drugs.
This is very serious. If you do what I did and think "it's just pot" you could be making a huge mistake. It's better to be safe then sorry and extreme behavioral changes in teens is normally drug abuse (not always, but her behavior is classic). I would make her drug test randomly, but even that doesn't always tell the story.
I found out my "pot smoking" daughter had done tons of amphetemines (these are very popular now--you get ADHD drugs, crush them in a pillcrusher and snort them either alone or with cocaine), coke, ecstacy, some OTC medications that kids use to get high, heroin twice (yup, HEROIN) and all this time we really didn't know how deep she was involved in drugs. And she didn't run away or act as wild as your daughter.
I'd get her in an Residential Treatment Center (RTC) far away from boyfriend. I think that's good advice. That doesn't mean she will necessarily stop or change, but it's the best you can do for right now.
As my daughter says about drug users, "Never trust a drug addict. They lie." She could stare me in the eys and bawl about how we were accusing her of falsely using this and that--turned out we were 100% right.
Good luck. I just didn't want you to think, "Maybe I should back down on thinking drugs" because unless you explore this, she could actually overdose and die---my daughter tells me she almost did--and I didn't know THAT either because she never went to a hospital. She was with "friends."

 

[jbrain]

My experience is similar to MWM as far as drug use goes. I knew my dtr was smoking pot but I had no idea she was doing anything stronger. I thought all of her off-the-wall behavior was due to her mental health issues. She started in with drugs at a young age too--around 12 or 13 I think. The extent of her drug use was far more than I knew and none of the "professionals" involved in her life knew either.

So sorry you are going through this with your dtr--

Jane

 

[TerryJ2]

Hi Stunned, welcome. So sorry you had to find us.
I agree, this is not a cut-and-dried ODD diagnosis.
It could be a combo of drugs and abuse. She is having major anxiety just thinking about him, and taking it out on you as the day approaches when she will see him next.
I agree, find somewhere far away for her to go.
I don't know if you're married or have a close friend or relative who can help you with-this, but I would make sure your daughter is closely supervised whenever the boyfriend is in the house. I would actually talk on the ph, do the laundry, walk in and out of the room while they are there. Don't engage in conversation, just "be" there.
Also, don't threaten her with-going away. Quietly plan something and get as far as you can financially and strategically so she doesn't undercut you.
Good luck!

 

[stunned]

Thank you everyone for your responses. What I decided to do along with the equine therapy and counseling is enroll my daughter in self defense training, (a six week course with a SWAT instructor) which teaches as well the basics of Kung Fu. Then after she completes that, she will enter Kung Fu.
If she must have abusive boyfriends, be angry, use any available object as a weapon, think I need to direct all that to actual life skills and kung fu self defense will do that.

 

[stunned]

Hi Stunned, welcome. So sorry you had to find us.
I agree, this is not a cut-and-dried ODD diagnosis.
It could be a combo of drugs and abuse. She is having major anxiety just thinking about him, and taking it out on you as the day approaches when she will see him next.
I agree, find somewhere far away for her to go.
I don't know if you're married or have a close friend or relative who can help you with-this, but I would make sure your daughter is closely supervised whenever the boyfriend is in the house. I would actually talk on the ph, do the laundry, walk in and out of the room while they are there. Don't engage in conversation, just "be" there.
Also, don't threaten her with-going away. Quietly plan something and get as far as you can financially and strategically so she doesn't undercut you.
Good luck!

I like this idea as well.

 

[busywend]

Sounds to me like he pressures her with something. She is relieved when he is away. It could be drugs or sex. Or maybe just the environment they enter when together.

But, you mentioned she started having trouble at 13 - before boyfriend. So, when boyfriend is gone do you see pre-13 difficult child or pre-boyfriend but post-13 difficult child?

 

[DDD]

Welcome. I've had a bit of experience with drug using teens and it is ugly for sure. Out of the eight kids we had one darling daughter who hooked up with a charming, wealthy, funloving, handome boy a few years older. This daughter (now a Mom to teens herself) has never told me details yet but I firmly believe that she was introduced into sexual activities that were not normal for her age (in my humble opinion, any age, if I am right). Her personality changed although she was not violent. She was different depending on whether he was around or not.

Sadly it is not unusual for older boyfriend's to use their devoted younger girls for more than just self pleasure. It took quite awhile for this relationship to end. We stayed nearby as much as possible and did our best to be nonjudgemental....on the other hand, the boyfriend was always perfectly polite to us. I do not think I could put up with one instance of direct defiance. I believe (have not been there done that) that I would have to say "This is MY family home and when I ask someone to please leave, they must leave. If not the police will be called. I will not allow anyone to intimidate me or my family." Then I would do it...over and over and over again if necessary. My personality is such that I simply could not let some punk think for a New York minute that he could control me or my home.

I'm curious. Who determined the equine program attendance? How is the school reacting to her slide? Are you a single parent or the only parent who is participating in these events? What about the siblings? Do they share with you concerns they have? Yikes these years are difficult.
Sending hugs and a prayer your way. DDD