Oh Fiona, that just sounds so familiar! Right down to the smug, "so yeah, what you gonna do about it?" look. The one that can make parents who are against smacking feel like knocking them into next week.

With dd, in the end, we just said to her, fine, don't go to school. But you aren't sitting around inside the house watching TV all day eating our food and using the phone and internet. You can go out and look for a job. Fortunately for us her bedroom is a sleep out, so we would (this is mean) make her get her lunch in the morning with everyone else before school, and she'd be locked out of the house, with access to water, her lunch, and a toilet. This seems extreme, but really, this was the consequence of not going to school. She did end up getting a job - at Maccas. This fell through and she had a Come To Jesus moment when she realised that crap jobs like that were all she was going to get if she kept on the way she kept on.

Eventually she decided that she needed to go back to school... and she has missed one single class all year! And that was perfectly legitimate, and she was in tears over missing it, she was so proud of her attendance record.

We got lots of that abusive behaviour, too. I set some really strong boundaries around that (if I were getting abusive texts, I'd probably be confiscating the phone, for instance) and it gradually tapered off. It's so hard with smaller kids in the house, knowing that they are watching that kind of thing and kind of getting the message that mum and dad will put up with being spoken to that way. Ugh.

Oh and the way they manage to make it that it is All Your Fault and avoid any personal responsibility for their situation... it makes my blood boil!!! Parents who survive that phase deserve medals, a massage and a spa.