AITAH If I make college a disciplinary incentive for my teen daughter?
My daughter is 17 at the end of her sophomore year in highschool (she was held back when she was younger).
Basically, I am at my wits end with her. I am not the perfect parent but I try to do things better than my parents did and I work very hard to be supportive of my kids. Her and I used to be extremely close she even felt comfortable enough to tell me when she was considering having sex the first time so I could get her on birth control and used to tell me everything happening in her life.
For the last few months (since my daughter’s boyfriend of one year broke up with her). She has developed a heinous attitude. She knows what things to say to hurt me and when I am trying to enforce a boundary or rule she will say whatever she can to hurt me. She knows I won’t put my hands on her and is now taking advantage of that. She will completely refuse to follow orders or rules such as when I tell her to do chores or to give me her phone because that’s one of very few effective punishments.
There have been two times when things have become physical in the past (as in me taking the phone out of her hands or moving her out of a a doorway blocking me in etc) so when those two times happened she made a massive scene and threatened to tell her school that I am physically abusive. So now I absolutely will not even attempt to take the phone out of her hands or anything like that.
Now, instead she will refuse to do chores, refuse to hand her phone or anything else over when I trying to discipline her and will stand there and say anything and everything she can think of to hurt me.
I don’t want this relationship with my daughter but I am also completely done being a punching bag she has zero respect for me.
I told her that if she doesn’t change her attitude towards me and my partner I will not sign any paperwork for her college applications, loans or FAFSA.
At the moment she doesn’t realize that this will completely derail her ability to go to college but I feel like there is no discipline I can enforce at this point.
Obviously our relationship has devolved and I want to be there for my daughter but not if she treats me like I am nothing and she is entitled to everything.
I am close to turning off her phone service but for safety reasons I don’t feel comfortable- she goes to a school choice school so the bus drops off down the road.
I am also afraid that she will start acting out worse maybe run away or make good on her threat to accuse me of physical abuse.
If things don’t change I will be counting down the days for her to turn 18 so she can go figure out how hard life really is out there.
I have been a single parent for half her life just now have a stable place to live with a decent paying job for the first time and I can only do it with the help of her step dad but I have been through hell and back to get to where I am FOR HER.
She believes she is entitled to everything- her phone/ electronics, her room and privacy, no chores, the right to speak to me as if I am nothing.
I am considering showing her exactly what she needs to go to college so she understands that unless she plans to become a teen mom she NEEDS me to go to college and then this will be the last resort discipline. Maybe create a chart and for the next 750 days I out a mark for every day she treats me with disrespect. At the end of there are more than 200 marks then I will simply not fill out or sign the FAFSA or Subsidized Loans applications and she can get out and get a minimum wage job and make it work on her own.
FYI we have been in and out of therapy individually and as a family and frankly I feel like where I live we don’t have great options (at least with the insurances we have- she is on Medicaid and I am on a HMO from work) We are on a hiatus for. Family therapy atm but when I brought up family therapy she said I am the only one that needs therapy and she has refused to see her therapist for the last month as well.