Wrecking my kids

Okay, so I already feel guilty about the divorce and everything. Now I have to wonder if I'm messing them up in other ways.

We have a serious problem with time: Samantha is unable to detect it passing. She attempts to do everything on her own schedule, without regard for anyone else’s priorities.

So, let her be late or miss her activities, you say -- she'll get the idea.
No, actually, she won't. I let her be late for things, and her conclusion is
a) someone made me late;
b) the universe conspired against me; or
c) i made myself late, i'm a loser, i suck, i don't deserve to live.
Nowhere in her thought pattern is the part where she says "Gosh, I better adjust my habits/behaviour/approach so I wont' be late next time." It’s always “Someone else, something else, something else, not my fault, oh, I’m horrible I suck and I’ll always be a loser.”

She is almost impossible to get to go to bed. (At 15, I thought I'd be out of this business by now -- her 13-yr-old brother puts himself to bed before 10pm when he knows he has to be up the next morning).

If I let her, she'll stay up drawing or organizing her paper clips or playing a video game till somewhere between 1-3am every night, then have to get up at 6:15 for school, then maybe take a nap in the afternoon when she should be doing her homework, then stay up again from 8pm to 2:15am, etc.

As I believe I may have mentioned, rewards & punishments have no meaning for Samantha. So to make her go to bed, I have to follow her around chirping “Go to bed now. Go to bed now. Go to bed now.” for about a half an hour. Being her dad, I have to give her privacy to shower, change, etc – so at those times I have to bang on the door every two minutes or she drifts off into some other activity.

She is impossible to move when we're trying to go somewhere. I'm constantly waiting for her in the car as she putters around finding the things she should have been wearing 10 minutes ago. In the morning, she's tired (naturally), so getting her to school is a chore, involving much nagging and reminding.

Again, letting her fail isn’t an option since she’d happily stay home for the day. I’m not wild about making her walk to school, since it’s 4 miles away and dangerous from traffic (or if you go the back way, from getting kidnapped). We let her fail the entire school year last year because it caused too much strife to try to get her to do her homework. Failure does not motivate her to succeed; it only makes her feel worse about herself.

So this morning, she dilly-dallies around until it’s almost time for the bus; as she leaves the bathroom, I remind her she hasn’t brushed her teeth. (These teeth have cost me several thousands of dollars in fillings and braces.) She says she doesn’t have time. I make her do it. I watch her just make a token effort on the tops and the front. Finally in frustration, I demonstrate with my fist and a hairbrush how to brush one’s teeth. She hurries through it – I let it slide – and rushes out the door, to miss the bus by 30 seconds.

I’m already back in bed (I was up late working) when she comes back in. She yells “Dad, I need a ride!” about 6 times from the bottom of the stairs. I make her walk up the stairs and address me in a calm voice. I make her stop demanding a ride, and ask for one. I make her say “I messed up this morning. It’s my responsibility to be ready for school, to make time to brush my teeth properly. I’m sorry, and could you please give me a ride to school?” And I make her pay me $10 for the ride.

I probably should have let that be the extent of the lesson, but I have been through this so many times before. I am frustrated beyond belief, at my wits’ end.

So I get dressed, and then as she’s going out the door, I sit down and begin playing the piano. She comes back in, agitated. “What are you doing? I’m going to be late!” I say, “Oh, do you have a deadline? Somewhere to be at a certain time? Are you frustrated because someone else is messing up your schedule? Gosh, how irritating that must be.” I continue playing. She gets more and more upset. I tell her that the frustration she feels is exactly how others feel when she makes them wait for her, when she refuses to take into account the time schedule of the people around her. I draw it out for about five minutes, until she is literally screaming and crying.

I feel like complete crap – I want to cry myself, but I don’t let her see it. She has done this to me at least a hundred times; I tell myself that if this is what it takes to get the message across, I can do it, even though my precious daughter that I love so much is lying on the floor, hiccupping and crying.

Eventually, we get in the truck and head for school. On the way I tell her how much I love her, and that I'm just trying to impress on her the fact that she has to make some effort to conform to the schedule of the household and the world around her. She tells me that it just makes her more depressed, and likely to do something destructive. She says maybe she’ll cut her wrists. I tell her that there’s no need to get into a contest about who can hurt Samantha more – that she’ll always win that contest. I tell her I love her and want her to be healthy and happy. She says she just feels depressed.

When we get to the school, she is calm and rational again. I drop her off. I drive home, I go into the house, and cry.