[Solved] Where did it all go wrong?

I couple of laugh out loud moments in there, keep it up 🙂

If you like reading to her, perhaps you could do an audio book for her, just a thought.

She is a little old for that sort of thing now. We did buy her one of those wonderful tapes when she was 4 full of songs about her. It suddenly disappeared when she was 14 and it found its way into the cassette player at a party.

Unfortunately she does have a wicked sense of humour, when someone asked why I looked sad she told them my left hand had found out the right hand was cheating on him.

I'm glad you enjoyed reading the post. Future posts will hopefully share more laughs, though one or two will be much darker.

Creating a well rounded human being

Or How to help her survive being my child.

There seems to be a few parenting topics which instantly polarise parents into two camps, breast or bottle and to smack or not to smack. The latter I seem to upset both camps as I do not believe in smacking but would defend the right for a parent to discipline their child as they see fit as long as they cause no harm. While I do believe that smacking has a limited use and shelf live it is not a method I have ever favoured.

This argument, in my opinion, has caused children more misery than many others. I have seen too many parents wanting to raise their children without smacking them but lacking the role models, teaching or support to implement an alternative way of raising children. So often raise their children swinging between trying to cope and then lashing out in frustration.

For me the idea has always been a simple one. As a parent I have always seen my obligation as being to raise my daughter so at the age of 18 she had choices about what she wanted to do with her life. For some reason I always thought this would include leaving home ending my fatherly obligations towards her as she became an independent adult.

For this to work two things needed to happen:

She would need to develop self discipline and
She would need to learn to accept responsibility for her own actions

To achieve these children need love, structure, boundaries and importantly the chance to make mistakes to learn from. See simples :silly:

From the age of 4 if she started an excuse with anything that did not start with her I would reject it. At this age I would articulate her excuse in a way that was acceptable to me. For example instead of you were being naughty so I smacked you, I smacked you because you were being naughty and making me feel bad. Once she learned how to express her feelings we were in a better position to help her learn other ways of dealing with things. t

Yes, its true. while we did not smack her she seemed to have no trouble smacking us when we were naughty. Well... mainly me.

When she was six we started letting her go out to play on her own. The rules were simple, she was not to go where we could not see her. It was also made clear to her that in letting her out she had to build our trust in her so later on we could trust her and give her more freedom. If she broke that trust we would reduce her freedom and she would have to start again. By this time there was no doubt we would do what we said. So when her friends decided to do something she thought she would get into trouble for she would come home.

Of course that didn't mean she didn't get into things we rather she didn't. Like the day she came home and asked if she could have some bread, took a slice and went happily back out. After doing this the fourth time I followed her to see what she was doing. She dipped the bread into drain hole and when it came back out something had taken a bite. She was trying to encourage a rat to come out so she could play with it.

We hit a snag when she was 12 and we could not agree together what was an acceptable volume for her music. So when the opportunity came at a community event we sat down with the local anti social behaviour team and agreed what was acceptable. At the end I jokingly said I was dad so I could change the rules when I wanted to. The officer gave my daughter her card and told her if I changed the rules my daughter could call her and I would be taken to prison.

The rules became a bit more blurred as she got older. When she was 15 she went to see a band with a friend. They strolled in at 2am, and I was furious. I asked if they had a good time and when they said yes I told them to get to bed. In the morning I asked her what happened. Her friend wanted to get some autographs so they waited. A while later one of the security staff told them they had left and had gone to a local pub. Her friend had decided to go looking for them, so in the middle of the night the two had gone pub crawling in the middle of the night looking for men! I asked my daughter if she knew how incredibly stupid they had been. Yes, but if she ha d left her friend alone her friend would have been much more vulnerable and if something had happened to her it would have been her fault.

In the end I did not punish her for this, I could not fault her reasoning or loyalty to her friend. I did punish her for deliberately leaving her phone off so we could not contact her, and she was not allowed to go to the next concert she had tickets for. When her friend woke up I told her to get some breakfast and then go home, I had spoken to her mother and she was waiting for an explanation. I got a call from her mum apologising for her daughter's behaviour, but was surprised she had decided to tell her what had happened. I can be a mean git when upset.

One thing my daughter did learn early on was once something had been dealt with it was over as far as I was concerned and once she calmed down we would hug and that would be the end of it.

Remember I mentioned consistency? I used to tell her she could date when she was 18. When she was 14 she seemed to be getting too near that age for me to deal with boy friends and one day changed it to 30. She got very upset with me and told her mum if I could not make my mind up she was not going to listen to me and get a boyfriend when she was ready! Maybe not so simples after all and not the last time my simple plan did not work out.

🙂

Hi There,
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Great blog and I can relate to a lot of it, keep writting
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GTTS

Thank you GTTS. It is good to hear people are enjoying reading what I write.

I didn't think things through too well when I decided to blog about our experiences together as father and daughter, so I decided to blog on themes, not wanting to give everything away straight away but missing out some things which I will probably go back over again later on to capture.

Like the day she was having far too much fun taking the mickey out of me. In the end I told her if she did not behave I would return her to the orphanage. She ran to her mum and told her what I said and asked if it was true. Mum was furious but I couldn't stop laughing when I heard my daughter say '[censored] I knew he was lying to me!' Followed by her standing there encouraging her mum as she was telling me off and then saying she should smack me or send me to bed for being naughty.

Nooo, she didn't know you were lying at all 😀

Haha.
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I had a similar conversation with my stepson last week, telling him he was adopted, though he is old enough to know it was just a joke.
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We often go into silly conversations, where I take the mick out of him and he does the same, he's just turned 13, last week he told me I smelt and had no friends, so I told him, he didn't have any friends either only people at school that hung around with him out of pity.......he then told me that his mum (my wife) was his friend, and that she didn't really like me, to which I told him that couldn't be true as my wife had a choice whether she was with me and that actually she didn't have a choice whether she was around him, it was just part of the job of being a mum, and also that she choose me where as he was just who she was stuck with.
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It sounds mean when written down but it's all in good fun.
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GTTS

LOL it does sound bad.

I remember telling her that her granddad once told me that you had not done your job properly until your name appeared in graffiti on the toilet wall. I got all excited because someone had written something about me on the toilet wall at last. 'OddFather you are a " but didn't have the imagination to finish it. So she finished it for me and kept on finishing it for about a week. I think my favourite was 'OddFather you are a scab upon Satan's puss filled [censored]' before realising we were on a bus full of people the reaction on their faces were hilarious from shock to utter amusement.

How I truly messed up 
Or how I went from being a parent to becoming a father.

Originally, I was going to leave this part of our story until I had painted a better picture of our relationship both before and after the events I am about to share. I do not apologise for this post, it was part of our father daughter journey and went on to shape our relationship.

When my daughter was three we got our first clue something was not right. We took her to a local shopping centre and mum had promised her she could have a go on a ride there. The ride was broke when we got there. My daughter totally lost it and mum decided to walk off, thinking she would reluctantly follow. Eventually I told her either she could hold my hand and walk or I would carry her all the way home. After carrying her all the way home for 20 minutes my face was bloodied from her scratches and one hip was a massive bruise where she kicked me all the way. I sent her to her room while I took care of my face. After a few hours, she calmed down and came back down to the front room. She took a long look at my face horrified and asked what happened, she had no memory of doing it. She was shocked and started crying so I cuddled her and said it was okay. Fortunately, it was the only time she was violent but we became more aware of some of her odd behaviour.
Over the next seven years our concerns grew, but the professionals always dismissed our concerns.

When she was nine I was involved in a road traffic accident. My only memory was starting to go over the handlebars and then waking up in hospital. After the accident I had changed so I spoke to the doctor and it was suspected I was having fits like petite maal – minor epilepsy fits. The tests were negative, but we was told this was not unusual. I was prescribed pills to control the fits. As these worked and I thought things were back to normal my wife kept quiet about her concerns on some of my behaviour.

It was shortly after this that problems between myself and my daughter started to go seriously wrong. We would have a good day and suddenly she would announce I was scaring her, but did not know how to explain why. Here body language was very extreme as if she was taking the [censored] out of me. Soon things would escalate and I would lose control and start screaming at her right in her face.

It got to the stage where I would get into a rage and found it harder and harder to control myself. My biggest fear was that one day I would start hitting her and would not when to stop. I went to the doctor and told him of my fears, but my concerns were dismissed.

Three things happened in quick succession which would result in me turning things round. First the school called us in for a chat. Short version they had spoken to the Education Psychologist who said she may have Asperger’s, but to tell us that there may be communication problems. Fortunately, as we had a very good relationship with the school they ignored this advice. The type of issues they mentioned was she was by far the brightest in her year and they were optimistic for her SATS. Yet, if her usual seat was taken she could not cope even if every other seat was empty.

At first when I researched Asperger’s it seemed to fit me more than my daughter. After a lot of research, I discovered it presented differently in girls and with hind sight many of the issues we were concerned about over the years were typical for Asperger’s. I also realise where her exaggerated body language was coming from. She could not read normal body language and was learning it from cartoons. This was the first thing to happen.

The second was when I was tidying her bedroom and found five pieces of A4 paper with writing on both sides. In short it expressed her hatred for me and how she wished she could get rid of me but keep the money I brought in. I knew a few parents who had found similar things and had over reacted about it. For me, despite what it said, it was huge break through. At last we had found a way my daughter was confident enough to express what was going on and how she truly felt about it. That evening when I picked her up I asked to speak to the SENCO and told her what I had discovered and suggested the next time something happened they ask her to write down what was wrong.

The last thing happened a couple of days later, when we were invited to come in and see the SENCO and Headmistress. Something had happened and they took my advice. They passed me several pieces of paper and asked us to read them. What they revealed was the living [censored] school was for her and some of the incidents she wrote about were horrendous. Like a boy pushing her down the stairs after beating him in a pop quiz. The disconnect between her intelligence and immature behaviour meant he could not accept the result and even protested to the teacher she must have cheated. Even before getting halfway through the pages the SENCO passed us tissues and explained all the adults who had read it had at least tears in their eyes if not openly crying.

What was missing from that document was my own part in adding to the [censored] my daughter was going through, but I had no illusions that I was responsible for making the one place she should be safe, home, an extension to [censored] she was going through.

That night I decided my daughter and wife would be better off without me and packed some clothes with the intention of leaving. I waited until they were both asleep and stepped into my daughters’ room for one last look before disappearing. Remembering all the good times we had had and how I had let things go wrong or even to protect her I felt an utter failure as a person, man and most of all as a parent. As I looked at her sleeping I wondered at how she got up each morning got ready and cheerfully went to school, or how we would laugh and make up rhymes, stories, and bad jokes. In a moment, I realised that if she could face those trials daily, as well as what I put her through she deserved a much better father than one who decided to quit and walk away. I left her room and unpacked. No idea how I would change things around but decided to become the father she wanted.

The next day I spoke to my wife about it and she finally mentioned she thought the pills I was on was partly responsible. Irresponsibly I decided to stop taking them there and then. The next week was awful but I soon returned to the person I was. Her cartoonish behaviour stopped being aggravating and I realised it was part of who she was and found it cute.

Initially one thing which held me back was the huge sense of guilt for what I had allowed to happen. I soon realised though that unless I drew a line under that time I would never be the person she needed in her life. So, I forgave myself for being human and prone to failure.

She finally got her diagnosis for Asperger’s when she was twelve. The doctor who did the testing and gave her the diagnosis did mention my daughter was a very happy child who felt very much loved and supported by her family. As depression is not unusual in autistic children she mentioned she could not to see any evidence of this. I think that was when I realised I had made the right decision that night.

Since then she got twelve GCSE between A* and C, most A or A*. She went onto 6th form college and gained three good A levels and onto University and got a first in creative writing. Amazingly she works in a busy London store and deals effectively with very awkward customers, but is outstanding with customers who are different and often shunned by other colleagues.

If you have gotten this far thank you for reading all the way through. I make no apology or excuse for how bad things got, life is not neat and things get messy from time to time. The mention of Asperger’s changed our lives, I discovered who my daughter was and she got the father she deserved.

Thank you so much for sharing that - perhaps it's the same for you that yuo can share more easily in writing it down. It sounds like you hit rock bottom just as you were about to leave, and it's been a recovery for your whole family from that moment on. I hope you have a good Christmas with your family, I think you certainly deserve it.