My 12yo daughter has depression and anxiety. She is under the care of a good psych and is on anti-depressants. My question is really about how to discipline/set boundaries for kids with mental health issues. I have stopped using grounding as one of her main issues is social anxiety and I don't want her to miss out on opportunities to be with friends. I occasionally will take her phone from her but again, she does use it to seek support from friends so I limit this as a punishment.
My worry is that by not giving her consequences for behaviors I am actually setting her up to fail in real life situations. I find getting the balance right to be so difficult. School work for example - I have pretty much given up trying to enforce study time, as many people have said focus on her health, education can always wait.
Would love to hear from other parents trying to manage a similar situation.
Parenting is hard even if your children do not suffer from mental health problems. I might suggest you speak with your daughters counselor for ideas on how to effectively discipline your daughter.
I would also suggest sitting down with her and creating rules for your family that apply to everyone in your family and that everyone has input into designing the rules. Everyone has a bedtime, study time, quiet time, whatever but when and how long may be tailored to the needsand age of each child. Everyone has a designated bedtime in my house, my husband and I just have a time that is later than everyone else's so we can make sure everyone is asleep, no one is climbing out windows or sneeking to the basement to watch TV or play video games.
You might also tailor puishment for your daughter that serves both her anxiety and serves as a form of discipline. For instance, one of my sons decided he wanted to try smoking. His punishment was researching and writing 3 pages on the dangers of smoking. You might ask your daughter to write about what she was feeling when before, during and after getting in trouble, how she reacted and what would be a more appropriate reaction if it happens again. This may help both of you to discern if this is a product of depression and anxiety or a typical preteen/teen girl trying to express independence.
Lastly there are consequences for everything we do in life, good and bad. It is our responsibility to teach this to our children. There are consequences to not doing your homework or studying since we know education builds from the foundation up. Ultimately things you learned in Kindergarten you are going to be using in high school and out in the adult world. If you don't learn it when it is taught to us it makes learning harder because we don't have a good understanding or a strong foundation for learning. Lastly we are all born with freewill, meaning you can not force someone to do something that is against their will. There are always choices with both good and bad consequences depending on your circumstances.Let your child discover both of those in your home. Doing chores in a timely manner means you have more time to play or do what you want. Not doing chores in a timely manner means you don't have time to do what you want - sometimes it is that simple. As a parent there are consequences for not enforcing the rules with your children, they do what you ask of them and by showing responsibility and timeliness, they get to do other things or they don't do what you ask and you punish them with the punsihment they created when making your family rules. Often parents fall into the trap of ignoring rules and consequences (good/bad) and feel sorry for their child and then don't follow through, your consequence then becomes a child who does not respect you, manipulates situations, and do not learn about consequences and then becomes your adult child who lives with you until you die, because they can't pay their bills, can't keep a job and eventually has few friends from their childhood because they failed to move on with their life like everyone else did. Just saying!
I hope this helps, if not disregard the whole thing. It's your choice.
I would like to find a wait to connect that enables her to respond to me and understand shes going to be okay,