Worried about DD who is NC

Wow. You are massively minimising and victim-blaming.

It is not the daughter that needs to 'grow up and have forgiveness'. The OP needs to grow up and accept she majorly neglected her daughter, and show genuine remorse. She doesn't even deserve forgiveness, she can only hope for it. With the way she dismisses the anorexia and says she 'went out of her way' (what a nasty piece of work OP is!), when she clearly didn't, I don't see the OP truly showing 100% genuine remorse. And that is what is needed for forgiveness. As I said, even now her language she uses is very dismissive and insulting.

I think as others have said you have to apologise unequivocally, and say you love her and are there for her now, if she ever needs you.

You chose to continue with the pregnancy though. You had a choice not to.

I agree with others, you should have used contraception instead of keep getting pregnant after your third. That was very irresponsible. Although since your son went and saw her and she speaks with her other siblings it doesn't sound like they have that serious disabilities (ie non-verbal etc) so I don't see an excuse to neglect her. But you did, you did neglect her. She was an easy child? Easy for you to ignore, more like it. She was trying to get your attention with anorexia. She needed her mum. She needed you. And you kept getting pregnant after her and basically left her alone. I can understand why she is NC with you. You're a failure of a mother in her eyes. You failed her and hurt her. She may in time forgive you. But she will never, ever forget. And that is something you will have to live with for the rest of your life.

My next door neighbour died of anorexia in her 30s. At the end she was basically a walking skeleton, and her hip bones were sticking out of her clothes. It was heartbreaking. Then one day her funeral was being arranged. Gone. Just like that. Lets just hope her dad and siblings/friends can keep an eye on her.

As for contacting her? I don't know. Only if you are willing to really truly fully apologise to her - without any justification or excuses.

How is this productive or helpful?

This was my thought, I have a very disabled DC, my second child and in order to make sure I met both his and my other older DC's needs, we decided to have no more. Having disabled children can also be very hard on a marriage - I don't blame her for feeling as she does.

That's a bit unfair. We don't know how much op has agonized and made efforts to get her help in regards to anorexia. It's one post, not a life history.

You need to leave her alone.
She was under so much pressure to be perfect that all of it is coming out now. If she doesn’t want to speak to you she doesn’t have to.

i’m sorry it sounds like you have a lot - it’s interesting though that you describe her as your only ‘healthy’ child yet later say she had anorexia as a teen.

I'm NC with a family member and every birthday is ruined by a stupid card that goes straight in the bin. NC is NC or it's stalking.

@SMEHJmammy DD was NOT your only "healthy" child, she also had (and still has) chronic health conditions/disabilities and also needed your support. Are you able to see why she feels the way she does?

It's always the "oh lol perfect parents" brigade posting great screeds, and never the "I was that child" posters.

This just reads like victim blaming. She was the child, her parents were the adults. It was their responsibility to meet her needs. And she wasn't a "little neglected", she was massively neglected. Even now her mum is downplaying the anorexia her daughter suffered. Apparently she was the "healthy" child despite having an illness with the highest mortality rate amongst psychiatric disorders. The mortality rate is 5-10 percent within 10 years. It's pretty dismissive to say the daughter needs to mature given she had to grow up before her time and barely had a childhood.

Neglect is abuse. She had her own complex needs, yet was sidelined throughout her childhood. That ‘it was unavoidable’ doesn’t negate the damage that treatment did to her, and nor does it require her to think kindly of, or forgive, her mother.

That she left at 17/18 and hasn’t looked back, and won’t even entertain conversation about being in contact with her mother, would suggest that she wants is to be left the hell alone by her. You cannot assume that she secretly wants to be contacted by her, any more than she would secretly want to be contacted by a persistent ex. That’s straight out of the Stalker’s Handbook, frankly. When people say no, respect that.

I don’t think it sounds like she was a ‘mlittle neglected’, if OP even admits that she overlooked her daughter you know it must have been bad. She also left home at 18 having already decided to go NC and hasn’t been in contact for 4 years.

Being neglected is cruel and abusive. It doesn’t matter if her parents were stretched, they had 5 children. They may be able to justify it because they had a lot going on but that doesn’t mean that their DD needs to accept being neglected as a child.

I wouldn’t minimise what has happened to her. She speaks to her dad and not her mum so she’s made it very clear, and receiving messages sporadically from someone who caused you so much harm would be very disruptive and upsetting.

Maybe send a one off letter with a sincere apology and making it clear you have your door open, but don’t continue to main contact as it’s clearly not wanted, but do not make it about any concerns you have about how she’s living

I don't know what your reasons for being NC are but I presume that you have compelling reasons for it. But with respect, you have no more idea than I do about how this particular DD might feel about her mum trying to make amends. Perhaps if OP didn't make much effort, it would cause even more hurt for her DD ("Mum just gave up on me when I was 22 and stopped trying to contact me...clearly, she never loved me")

OP's DD hasn't been abused or cruelly treated. She was a little neglected, but that seems to have been unavoidable under the circumstances. Hopefully, with maturity, she'll have a little more understanding of her family circumstances, and more forgiveness for her parents.

Student Finance, loans, scholarships, grants, charities, employment, a combination of all of these.

Not everyone has their parents fund their education, I paid for all of my own without a penny from my parents.

I'm NC with a family member and 100% do not want to hear from them. They know this as they know I'm NC and why. If they sent me WhatsApps, photos, cards, books, etc I'd report them to the police for harassment as it's been made clear to them that I want no contact.

OP's DD is an adult and has made it clear she wants no contact and why. As difficult as it is for the OP, her DD has her own agency and that includes rejecting a relationship with the OP.

Surely it's obvious that the disabilities didn't necessarily become apparent until the children were all born? There are eight years between the oldest child and the youngest child. Many health conditions are not obvious or not diagnosed until after the age of eight, and it would have been too late to keep the family to a more manageable size by then - all the children would have been born.

Five children is a large family, but it's not that unusual.

This is very sad to read. But you even said she was the “easy child” but suffered from anorexia.

I too am struggling to understand why you had so many children when you already had children with chronic health conditions \ disabilities. Why?

How did she pay for a Masters if she was NC with both parents?

You're getting some very harsh responses from all the perfect parents here, OP!

I think some posters are forgetting how little was known about ADHD in girls when your DD was growing up. Many, many girls and women slipped through the net. It isn't your fault that you didn't somehow acquire today's understanding of ADHD ten years early. And also, many disabilities are not apparent at birth. Unfortunately there is no crystal ball that allows us to see into the future!

It's really hard to see your DC exhibiting risky and unhealthy behaviours, but this sort of thing is pretty common and most young people mature and come out safely the other side, so try not to worry too much about this.

With regard to her being no contact with you, I suspect that she does in fact want to hear from you, but she also wants to leave you in no doubt how she feels and "punish" you a little for when you (understandably) fell short sometimes during her childhood. Try to contact her from time to time, even if she doesn't initially respond, so she knows you're thinking of her. Perhaps send her a copy of a new book by a favourite author, or if you have her phone number you could sometimes WhatsApp her photos of family pets, if you have any. If these seem to be favourably received (or at least not rejected) you could try a card or letter saying you're sorry you had so little time to spare for her as a child, that you wish that you'd done things differently (although I do appreciate that it might not have been possible to do so), and that you love her and miss her and would love to see her. And after that, maybe suggest doing something together that she would enjoy - a theatre trip or
a film perhaps.

Don't contact her so often that it becomes annoying, but don't give up either. With maturity, she may come around and understand that nobody is perfect and that you had a lot to deal with too.

*if she ever wants to. For her, the relationship may be dead, and something she will remain utterly uninterested in resurrecting.

was also told recently that she received a formal ADHD diagnosis, but this was never something anyone was concerned about when she was a child.

Its worth doing some reading about how ADHD presents in girls & women, because it does so very differently to boys & men. In girls, it often goes undetected until adulthood- or has often gone, this is changing as the difference in presentation is recognised. Its why there's been an explosion in diagnoses, both in adult women and in girls at school.

A few points about adhd in girls & women...

• can experience feelings more intensely than neurotypicals
• can experience rejection sensitivity (doesn't mean that a sense of rejection is unjustified however)
• can have a strong sense of justice & fairness
• masking: they spend their lives trying to fit in, win approval, cover up their difficulties, be socially appealing and "easy"
• adhd often won't be identified in girls until a change in life stage: moving up to the next school (primary to secondary, secondary to college/univeristy) or starting work.

At these points they can start to struggle desperately, the wheels can come off

This could be whats happened with your daughter and if she's used to internalising and not relying on her parents, she will shut you out.
This isn't to dismiss or belittle her experiences of growing up emotionally neglected at all - they are very much central to her cutting contact but I think learning about female adhd could be instrumental in helping you rebuild a relationship with her, when she's ready. A great resource is the ADDitude website.

It might also help to read about how emotional neglect impacts a child.

This is so sad. She's the "normal" one in a family of disabled and neurodiverse children. Two before her and two after. It must have been difficult for her growing up with her siblings' needs and you admit you were stretched as parents.

But to dismiss her ADHD diagnosis as simply as "we never saw that". Did you ever see her? She could easily have been struggling in ways you never "saw" but that came through in other ways, like her anorexia. It's very easy to see, as an outsider, why she chooses to be NC with you.

A question: upon your death, who will care for your 4 disabled children, if they cannot care for themselves?

Was it ever expected that your daughter, who appears neurotypical, will be doing that?

Another good reason for children going NC with parents is being expected to provide permanent care for siblings with disabilities after the parents' death. I don't know the extent of your childrens' disabilities, I'm not saying this is the case. But it is a common thing. Worth saying that it is not any sibling's responsibility to care for their disabled sibling, although many kindly do. The parents must provide for that care.