That’s not what we’re debating. Don’t change the subject.

lmao, I love the labels. This is hilariously awesome

I can't, it's too late for that. The struggle and psychological pressure led to too many mental breakdowns, and I've embarrassed myself in public too many times to step outside anymore. I used to live independently but a series of trips to the mental hospital and a spiral of crushing debt led me squarely back into their basement where things were still turbulent for a couple years and I made a series of attempts to move out on my own again but I'm just so psychologically broken at this point that I can't pull off the most basic things.

And yeah, they definitely had that evangelical strain of conservative christianity. It's how I was raised and that did a hell of a lot of damage too, even completely aside from the constant put-downs speckled with unrealistically high expectations.

Being sheltered and homeschooled and taught the bible from a baptist perspective and going to a church youth group where I met my abuser and was told to look up to him as a leader didn't help much either. By the time I was an adult I couldn't even interact with people. I spent all those years when most people are learning how to socialize and be normal, instead I was learning the opposite. People picked up on that easily and so I was ostracized and demeaned even more, cause people love ganging up on an easy target.

By the time I started deprogramming from religion it still took me several years to complete the process, and that finally leaves me at square one, albeit without the decades of social skills that most people have cultivated by my age. And in addition I have all the baggage of every foolish thing I've said or done along the way.

There's really no path forward for me. I'm a hikikomori at this point and I'm just barely starting to accept that fate with resignation.

I usually get Taco Bell on those days.

My area is so lousy with amazing, authentic pizza places, that it's somehow insulting to myself to even consider eating chain pizza.

I will say that the price of pizza has skyrocketed over the past ten years or so, though. It's easily 2-3x as much as it used to be.

No, I can’t say that I have.

Oh god, yes. We had to teach her how to lie when she was maybe 8 because she didn't get the concept and was being too blunt and hurting her friend's feelings lol. We often wished we hadn't afterwards though, because she became like this. She would do things very similar to this, and we learned we had to be really careful with her around doctors, teachers, etc.

For instance we got a call one day asking if we were food insecure at home. Apparently she had been begging for food from her friends and the lunch lady for months telling them we had no food at home, we were poor, and she had only been having bread and water. /facepalm

So I sent them pictures of her lunch cupboard (we started having her pack her own lunches very early to force the skill and executive functioning) which was overflowing with food and snacks.

I asked her why she did it and she really didn't have an answer.

ODD is tough to throw in the mix. I remember when she was a toddler she begged for ice cream and when I finally gave it to her she screamed "NO!" she didn't want that. ODD kids are like that lol, but take much longer to grow out of it.

I have a coworker who has a kid with ODD and the best advice I have after watching (and commiserating with) her, is be mean NOW because as soon as he had a little puberty in him she lost all control and ability to get him to do anything he didn't want to do. It's better to be a monster for a few years now so you can continue helping them later, you know?

Also for compulsive lying, I hated doing it, but I highly recommend during the early years using a technology tracking software on their devices. We used Qustodio. It works on most phones and devices and allows you to set times they can use them and times they will not work. It allows you to keep tabs on what they are searching for and more.

We used it early on to control how many hours a day she was on the device, and felt especially vindicated when we learned she was on it for hours during the school day, even after her school banned phones!

What made us put it on her phone though? She left her discord open on her laptop and I happened to glance at it and saw a concerning conversation when she was 12. Mind you, we are open minded and don't give a fuck if she wanted to masturbate or have sex when she was ready. We never snooped.

What I saw though was a sexual conversation and a lot of lamenting about her parents (lamenting is normal, and we never brought it up) with a man who seemed to be much older. He seemed like a good guy, seemed supportive and wasn't reinforcing her complaints or encouraging her isolation from us. Thank god.

Upon further snooping we realise he is fucking 19 and she has told him she is 18! She was catfishing that poor boy! We sat her down and spoke with her, asked her what the fuck she was thinking. Told her that if someone besides us had found out she could have accidentally sent that boy to prison and ruined the rest of his life!

Told her that it wouldn't matter if we didn't want to press charges or she didn't want to press charges, if the wrong person found out it wouldn't have mattered, they would have arrested him, sent him to prison, and eventually charged him for being a sex offender.

We made her tell him her real age and stop talking to him. To his credit, the moment she told him how old she really was, he noped out of there, removed her, and went non-contact.

So yeah. Qustodio was a necessary evil. We never turned on the web search tracking or the message tracking, but told her that we reserved the right to check her messages any time. We did use it to prevent her from downloading weird apps constantly, and to schedule times she was allowed to be on the phone.

Like... not during school hours and not at 2 am on a school night. You know.

She was able to "get around it" by clicking menus fast, but it would still log that she was on it or doing something with it, so we would take it away after a talk when this happened. When she hit 14 we turned off everything, and just monitored, and only turned on the block as needed.

Sorry you're going through it now, I see you. I appreciate how hard it is to be the "mean parent". <3

I completely understand the toll that having to be strict all the time takes. My parents were abusive and I never wanted to be the strict parent. I wanted to be the loving hippie mom!

The pressure of knowing that we were the only ones who could raise her into a grown ass adult capable of experiencing all the good things in life are what kept us going though.

So yes, we had a glove on our iron fist. We knew we couldn't let her get away with anything but we tried to be as kind about it as possible, and any time she showed that she was accepting a punishment for screwing up, we would give her a way of "earning" her way out of some of it.

Earn an hour of screen time etc.

I agree I wish there was a silver bullet for any time we let her off the hook. Heck, any change in routine would cause a cascading effect, even something as simple as going away for the weekend as a family meant that all expectations about getting back into the routine of school and life when we returned were off the table.

School holidays? Fuck me, they were the worst for that.

Definitely make the effort if possible to get him into an after school activity at least once a week. Scouts were great for her because she also got to go camping and they often had boisterous children. The musical theatre was great because it attracted the "weird" kids who were more tolerant of her. We let her switch at the end of two terms and any term after, to any activity that wasn't unreasonably expensive to start.

Like no we aren't buying a full uniform for football or something, yes we will buy a basic leotard and shoes for dance, you know?

Feel free to pm me any time, I know it can be really lonely. My husband's parents raised 3 A types who became engineers and it wasn't until they were living with us and trying to get her to do anything themselves that they finally started to understand. No, we aren't letting her get away with stuff, yes we have expectations, no we don't want to raise an asshole. Man it's hard.

Oh yes, I wanted to touch on her "sticking with a task for 6 hours". This is because at a certain point she wasn't learning, and she was growing up so fast we knew we had to get through to her. So when she had a task like this that she refused to do, everything else stopped until it was done.

She would stand there or be in the kitchen until it was done, or it was bed time. Then she would get ready for bed, sleep, wake up and have breakfast and go to school like normal, and when she got home? Back in the kitchen. For however long it took. Forever if necessary.

There were tears, there was pleading, there was an extinction burst of both in the beginning that was just awful before she realised we weren't going to break and life just wasn't going to continue until she did it.

That's when we got to the "Will go to the kitchen and stand there but executive functioning so bad that even with constant reminders end up distracted for 6 hours trying to do a task" stage.

There were similar battles over homework, and various other life skills. The homework would just follow her, she would sit at the table until it was done, and if she tried to out will us until the weekend she had a shock on Saturday morning when she had to sit at the table again til it was done.

It was brutal and we all hated it, because it meant our evenings and weekends were spent monitoring this stuff until she thankfully learned and grew out of it. It was a punishment for us just as much as her, and we were sure to let her know this. No one is having fun right now, this is life stuff that just has to be done.