13 year old too big for her briches!

[jessmomof4]

My oldest daughter has blown me away with her defiance. She seems to think its her way or no way! I ask her to do her homework and she tells me she doesn't know how to read! She does the opposite of everything I ask her to do. I tell her that if she doesn't do what I ask I will take away her privilages. She says to me " No you won't". Tonight I asked her to read her homework out loud because she said she didn't know how to do her home work, She said she couldn't because she wasn't really good at reading outloud. I said " How do you get good at something? Trying and practice" She is failing Math and English because of missing assignments and I recieved a letter from the school saying she might fail the 6th grade! I asked her if she wanted to be held back, if she wanted to go to summer school, she doesn't seem to care. Her dad says he will help but I don't trust his word, he isn't the most reliable. Tonight I tried to get her to do her homework to help her with the reading of the dirrections, after 2 hrs of I cann't do it and arguing the homework didn't get done. She treats me like I am her equal or she is above me. Tonight it got physical, she hit me in the back and when I turned around she took off running. I don't know what to do she has gotten so disrespectful, defiant, she even fights with me about getting up in the morning for school and taking showers! She doesn't care about being clean, school, or anybodies feeling but her own. She seems to be going down the wrong road. She doesn't have alot of friends because she does things to intentionally irritate people at school. She does it a home with her sisters too, she will pick at people until they freak out! I have taken away facebbok, the tv privilages, I have spent alone time with her, I have made a chore list, I have tried all sorts of disiplinary action, and I have given her rewards when she does well, but it seems like when she get rewarded she take a 360 and is bad again emediately! Any suggestions?

[theoneman]

How's that's going I wonder. Not too huh? You saw that Dr. Phil episode a few weeks ago about out-of-control teens:

http://drphil.burrellesluce.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=tdps%5F20110419

He has Dr. Kazdin on his show sometimes. Looks like he knows what he's doing. He writes about it:

http://www.alankazdin.com/

Might want to look into this.

I use to help my daughter with her homework in high-school. She liked that. Father-daughter thing you know. Of course Dad has to be nice about it and not get fustrated. Personally I think Dad could be a big help in this matter. Would be nice if you could get him to see that.

[Newmom!]

Maybe she is truly struggling in school. Talk with her teachers and ask if they feel she might have an undetected learning disorder that may be the root cause - her saying she can't read make me think that she may have a LD and the work is finally getting to hard for her to figure out how to work around it any more. If she is self consious and miserable and turning 13 she can easily get out of control.

Also, look into parenting approaches that use positive feedback versus punishment. Positive tends to work better, although it may take longer to see some results.