Discipline

She is right, you cant make her write sentences. What you can do is take your family to the park while she sits under the tree with her pencil and notebook. Ride your bikes around the block while she sits in the yard with her pencil and a notebook. Watch a movie together while she sits in the doorway facing away from the room with a pencil and a notebook. Let your family have their activities and if you can choose ones she likes it might work faster, at least thats the hope. Good luck! Sounds like she is just trying to control some aspect of her life. Letting her help choose the consequenses was a great way to help her feel some control.

Taking away privileges may work better than adding consequences. If she cannot show respect, she cannot ___ (play video games, watch tv, listen to music, etc) for a set amount of time. And with this, you have control since you can physically take away the games, tv remote, radio, ipod, ride to wherever, etc.

In our house it is not a set amount of time. We don't find that schedules are usually very successful. It gives the kids the control to create their own compromise between having their stuff when they want it while still misbehaving when they want. So in our house privileges are gone "until a pattern of success is established", which means until we feel like the problem is solved. it allows us the freedom to factor in the kids' attitude towards change--willingly complying vs. complying in the most irritating, disrespectful, or lowest quality way possible. The distinction in how the child complies is huge for the outcome. The first time around privileges might be restored with in a few days. That is just a test. If it turns out the kid didn't really change their ways then privileges disappear again and now it takes much longer to convince us that things are really better.

The Love and Logic books might be helpful. It has been a long time since I read/listened to them, but I remember they said never use a consequence you can't enforce. Though they are pretty kind books toward the kids' side of things, so I'm not sure they'd even expect to consequence a kid for muttering under their breath. It actually sounds like something she might have learned from a TV show. I remember my daughter would say some rude things at that age and then eventually I watched the same kid tv shows and realized she was just imitating Raven. Also the Love and Logic books said something about normal response of children is to not use the solution they are told is best. So maybe by of telling her how to disagree respectfully you have put her psychologically in a position of not being able to use that choice. In the book they said to ask the child how they could solve their problem and if the child is willing to hear suggestions from the adult, to tell them a gosh-awful option "some kids would show they disagreed by breaking all the dishes", and then that causes the kid to come up with good solutions and feel like they own the good solution.

jeffw... Ahhh... You're right. Too many kids can easily go without if they know they are getting it back.

I’ve struggled with similar problems with my 12/13 y.o cousin. Most of the books and advise out there seems to be for younger kids or teens, and its difficult to find things that work with a tween. Even her therapist didn’t know what to do since all the normal things (reward charts, consequences) weren’t working and he didn't know what to do when kids couldn't be controlled by access to video games. Any time we’ve tried to get her to do something like write a letter of apology and then she can get a privilege back, it hasn’t worked. She refuses to write it. So, she loses a privilege until she writes the letter. But what do you do when months go by and she doesn’t care that she can’t watch tv and then do a dozen other things to lose every other privilege possible? We reached a point where there was absolutely nothing else to take away and she was making everyone as miserable as possible. As soon as we took away anything, she didn't care. The one time we took something away that she care about - visits with her mom - she went on the war path and we couldn't let her in our home any more. I’ve tried sitting next to her and trying not to leave until she wrote the letter, but she got more and more angry and start swearing at me every single obscenity she could think of. I made a tally since every swear word meant a day without electronics. It got up to over 100. She just kept going and going, my 2 year old was crying and I had no idea what I was suppose to do. Some kids care more about the power struggle than the consequences or the rewards, and getting past that is so difficult. It just turns into trying to find more and more ways to punish them, and they just dig in even further.

I would totally ignore the muttering under her breath. That'll go away on it's own eventually. I agree with the poster that said Parenting with Love and Logic. Natural consequences are often best for stubborn children. I did have to be careful with a couple kids not to use the "Well have lunch when you finish (fill in the blank)" because they would actually starve before giving in. But there were other very usable things and it cut down on the stress and arguing.

I had this same problem. I used the "trust jar" to illustrate when a pattern of behavior had been effectively established. The disrespect when they don't get their own way, needs to be called out as a temper tantrum. If they have the emotional needs of a 2 yr old, they need the structure of a 2 yr old's life. Also your response could be several things:Tell her "I'm sure you feel that way"Tell her "I believe you"Ask her if throwing this tantrum is working out for her?Tell her if she's gonna call you names, you prefer "poo poo head", "monkey-butt", "carrot-face" (or some equally juvenile sounding ridiculous name)Tell her "You can throw a better tantrum than that"Tell her you hope she votes because you're running for World's Worst Mother 2013Show her what a real tween tantrum looks likePull out the camera to videotape her defiancePretend to be her and react the proper way "Gee mom, I'm upset by your decision, but I don't want to act like a spoiled brat, so I'll just let you know I'm disappointed and do something else instead"Reward yourself each time she does it, celebrate in a HUGE vocal way, but be sincere.Play Bad BEhavior Bingo--write a card of all the nasty horrible things she says and when you she says it, make a big show of marking off the squares each time. Then be sure to give every one in the family a card to play along...first to bingo gets (xyz some treat or benefit).You'll know what will work for her, when you realize what she hopes to achieve by this poor behavior, then counter it. If she wants to make you mad, let it make you happy. If she wants to hurt your feelings, tell her better ways to do it. If she wants attention like a 2 yr old, give her attention like a 2 yr old.After a week/month of this discuss with her what she's hoping to achieve by this behavior, and ask her if it's working out the way she hoped it would. Discuss better ways to accomplish her objectives. Show her the tapes of her behaving horribly. Let her see what it looks like. Help her find better ways to express herself.

OMGosh!!!!! I LOVE THIS! I wish our DD called us names, this would be TOO much fun! It would totally work for her too! When she's in her super RAD-modes, my husband and I have a competition to see who can get the most hassle chores (her usual consequence for disrespect). I said to her last week- "Listen, I'm gonna need some attitude, or a curse word, or you to steal something from me tonight! You owe your dad 5 hassle chores and I only have ONE! I need to catch up!!" She ended up having a GREAT evening, :)

These methods can be a lot of fun and they can be really effective at changing patterns. The trouble is, though, they don't help the child feel safe in the home. They'll put a check on their behavior until they find new ways to fight back. Only use these methods short term to turn a corner on the behavior, then back off and go back to empathy and nurture as soon as possible.

I agree, These are behavior interrupters. You definitely need a multi directional approach to be permanently effective.You need to illustrate the lack of success in an exaggerated way.You need to identify the need she's trying to fill.You need to replace the old awful tools with new healthy ones.Eventually you need to teach empathy and boundaries as the new reason to change behavior.

Will she act out the scene again but with respect? Can you get her to re-enact the scene where she plays the parent and tells you what to do and you walk off in a huff with disrespect? Then you do the scene again and have her walk off with respect? It sounds weird. I read about someone else doing that. So I tried it with my daughter (mostly as a last resort). The strangest part of it was not the fact that we were pretending the whole "fight sequence" again, but rather: we both were laughing at the end of it. I actually felt better and the seeds of anger dissipated quickly. After we act it out a couple of times, I ask her if we can "do it for real but with respect this time" and it goes over much better.

This works really well with my almost 8 year old. She can become very rigid very quickly (which looks oppositional), so I try to use strategies that allow her to practice using her executive functioning skills - so that she will be able to respond well under stress. We do "re-dos" with behavior after she is calm and able to think. In this situation, I would probably give her positive feedback for the actual part she did well - "you really disagreed with what I said, but you listened, you understood me and that's great." Then I would share the additional behavior I want. "Next time, I bet you could even do it and say "okay, mom," that's what I want to see. That's a harder skill...but I think you are totally ready." Then, we might actually reenact what happened, or we might be very silly and come up with a scenario to act out. We might exchange parts and I'd mumble under my breath etc. For dd, it's worked. It's fun, it frames it as a developmental skill to learn (she's not being disrespectful, she just doesn't yet have the skill to actively dislike something and stay quiet until she's out of earshot), and we usually laugh and have a good time. It can take reminders after that and maybe more practice, but it's been great at teaching new behaviors.