Has anyone tried to broach " behavior expectations " with their BPD?

[Yepanotherone]

Sitting here calmly after my BpdDD told me to go f**k myself and threw a pillow at me. This is the first time ever she has acted out like this.

Once she has calmed down, I feel I need to address that I will not tolerate being spoken to in this way

How should I word it ?

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Stela]

Just wondering what you ended up saying?  I tell my BPDs all the time that I want to be treated with respect.  He has never thrown a pillow at me, but he is very generous with the F bombs.

[Yepanotherone]

Hi Stela, she has literally just ventured out of her room and into the kitchen for food. She's still stomping around with attitude so I'm not going to get into anything too detailed with her, but I wanted to make my point clear.

In a very calm voice , I just said " just so you are aware , I will not tolerate you ever throwing anything at me or swearing like that at me again. If you do, then you will have your iPhone replaced with the old handheld text and call only handset that I still have upstairs , and you will have to make do with that for two weeks. This isn't a threat, it's a promise " .

She scowled at me , stomped around a bit more , and has since headed back up to her room.

I don't know if that was the right thing to say,  maybe I should have ignored it completely and not said anything at all. But I feel to completely ignore bad behaviour doesn't feel right either.  I'm learning as I go here. The previous me would have thrown a complete fit and I would probably have entered into a shouting match with her the second she threw the pillow!

[Stela]

Sounds to me like you did the right thing! I agree with you. That ignoring bad behavior is not the way to go... .and neither is screaming and yelling (which I have been known to resort to!)

[Herodias]

What ever you do, make sure you keep your promise. You may be tested. If she gets away with it once, she will keep doing it. Good to stay calm.

[Yepanotherone]

Oh I will Heron. I immediately went upstairs last night to find the old cell phone, just to make sure I do still have it !

I'm reading a really good book just now and it emphasizes the importance of sticking with your word and not giving in to the fear that we have as Parents of BPD kids that they will go harm themselves if they don't get their way. The book is called " parenting a teen who has intense emotions - dbt skills to help your teen navigate emotional and behavioral challenges "

[Gorges]

Hello Yepanotherone,

I did a lot of work with therapists and behavior modification.  Their recommendation was have one consequence (i.e. cell phone) tied to one behavior (i.e. cursing) and they can earn the privelege back after 48 hours of not doing the bad behavior. . They recommended not longer than 48 hours because kids lose their motivation and might even dig themselves a hole... .like cursing within the two weeks and then what do you do?  I would say that this approach did work with us to reduce the verbal abuse.  But our daughter had gotten in the habit of pretty frequent verbal abuse.  So, maybe the two weeks would work for you since this seems like the first time she has done it.

Also, the website "empowering parenting" has really good guidelines for behavioral approaches.

[Thursday]

yep- Not sure how old your daughter is but I'm guessing a youngish to mid-teen? When my SD was this age (before she learned to drive) I had a solution when she was rude to me- I was then not available for driving her to social events. And if she went off on me in a public place I often abandoned groceries, Target items, the menu and we went right home... .fun over. She was never brave enough to allow herself to be left behind.

I really just wanted her to understand that for someone to want to be nice to you, you have to put forth some sort of effort. I also worked hard to get her Dad to understand that it wasn't his role to do everything she asked of him. Somehow he had missed to bulletin that it is OK to modify your kid's behavior if need be.

We used to call that spare phone you speak of "Old Rusty" and occasionally she was stuck with that for awhile.

You are doing GOOD... .

Thursday

[lbjnltx]

Good job staying calm and stating the consequences for unacceptable behavior!

Taking a look at this brief information may help you feel more confident and develop a solid plan for setting Limits (expectations of behavior) and Boundaries (what you will tolerate).


Communicate Boundaries and Limits

[Yepanotherone]

Lbj, my thoughts exactly in regards skills vs medication. I would dearly love to see her on lower doses of medication because the sedating effect, together with all the other mental health issues she's had over the last few months has really affected her performance at school and motivation for doing activities.

I try not to talk too negatively about the medication because what I DONT want to happen is for her to suddenly decide she's not going to take it! But I do discuss with her how a longer term goal could be to consider reducing medication dosage once she has better coping skills. She's going to a therapist twice weekly just now for DBT skills training so perhaps a year or so from now, we might be in a position to revisit medication.

She seems okay over the last couple of days and hasn't mentioned the CA trip again after her outburst. In fact she gave me a hug yesterday out of nowhere , so I'm assuming that's her way of apologizing. She's focusing on the vacation to Scotland next week now.

I do feel that we are in for a stormy ride when we come back from Scotland though, and an even stormer ride when she knows her friends are heading off to CA without her! Urgh!.

The good news is that despite a few outbursts and tempers since her discharge from hospital a few weeks ago, I don't think she has self harmed . No fresh cuts on her body and no bruising on her hips (her go -to self harming behaviour when she can't cut is to punch herself on the hips until she is literally black and blue ). She asked for my help to put on some fake tan a couple of nights ago so I got a birds eye view of every part of her skin.  I had to stop myself from wincing and kept a very straight face when I was applying the fake tan over the scars on her legs and arms.  Try as i might, I just can't fathom taking a razor to yourself to cut

[lbjnltx]

It is hard to see the scars and not feel sad.  I can still see a few on my d from years ago, nothing major though still hurts a bit to see them.



lbj

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders