I agree that it is really difficult to tease out the difference. My daughter has always been very manipulative, but I wanted to believe her so I wasn't strict enough with her in many cases. Especially after her dad died.

However I did finally learn something I can use from one of her therapists. If she can be distracted out of a meltdown, she can learn to control it. At the time Erin was crazy about horses, and was at a ranch where they had equine assisted psychotherapy. When she would start to act out her therapist learned to say "let's go see how the horses are" or something to that effect. Erin would immediately come out of it!

It still took months to convince Erin that she had the control to come out of it herself. But she did learn. She was almost 16 before she learned that lesson though and I think maturity helped a lot.


Terri
Erin is now 17 and still manipulates and lies a lot
However, she is not violent and does not rage now