Pre teen vent. OMG, DD is intolerable right now. Everything is unfair, everyone (actually just me) is against her, she shouldn’t have to do anything bla bla bla. I’m really struggling with it. She’s developing a view of me as against her and always on her brother’s side, but she’s so obnoxious to him and he’s so kind to her that of course it always ends up that way. How am I going to get through the next 8 years without alienating her, she’s awful! And then my dad chips in about how I should write a letter to her because that’s what he used to do when mum wouldn’t listen to him. This is a guy who has never listened to anyone in his life. Any conversation with him will be 90% him talking and 10% the other person squeezing in if they can. He can come away from an interaction with someone who had 3 hospital visits and almost died that year, and not know, but they will know all about his army days 40 years ago. I ignore it because you can’t change someone at this age, but it just seems so rich when his preferred method of communication is probably because it’s the one where the other person gets no voice at all. I don’t tell him anything about my life, I don’t engage with anything he says, because of this trait and then he has the gall to give me advice on how to get people to listen to you if they aren’t listening. Fucks sake.

I didn’t have any advice about pre-teens. I’m assuming my children will be perfect because I’ve done everything right. Is your Dad on the spectrum? My Dad’s the same with the advice and sorties. I don’t think we’ve ever had a proper conversation in my whole life - he’s just talked at me.

I’ve wondered re my dad and spectrum. I don’t think we have many ASD traits in the family, although my brother has some stuff going on. I have a feeling it’s just family patterns, insecurity and a lack of self analysis.

Ha! My dad doesn’t listen either! He’s the third born in a huge family,.so I think its his way of getting attention. He also craves validation. Have you done all the taking her out for special outing type thing? I don’t know about teenagers yet… so really got nothing…

Hopefully it settles down a bit. One of mine was quite bad pre-teen, the other 2 not so bad - but when one of those hit 15, that’s when it started with “I am 15, I am old enough to do what I want.”

CallMeAl there’s a photo of my grandma playing a board game with kids waiting in line for their turn… nobody is getting what they need in that scenario. Now i feel like understand, im more patient, but he drives me nuts 😅

Preteen vent