Cold heartless daughter

I was like this. Exactly the same as her but only with my mum who has an absolute form for making a big drama about everything, playing the martyr and sympathy farming.

Absolutely this! 👏👏

God, I remember falling over taking my DD to scouts one night at that age, she was mortified and wouldn’t go and knock on our neighbour’s door when I couldn’t get up. 🙄
I had to hobble back to the house and ring my FiL to come and take her. She’s 35 now, I think it’s time to remind her 🤣

Do you make a drama out of everything? Posting that your 11 year old was embarrassed of you feels quite dramatic. Most parent just need to breath too close to their children to embarrass them at that age

I'm reading this and thinking this is why so many parents say their child is being bullied yet no one expresses concern that their child is the bully. I know this thread isn't about bullying, but a child who seems to show no empathy is more at risk of becoming a bully or an abuser. The first person to know this characteristic is a mother. But instead of advice on how to deal with this and how to help DD develop empathy, everyone on MN blames the mother for how she raised her unempathetic daughter. I've seen this before, a mother worried sick her DS was becoming a bad person and bullying and the response was similar. So the message being sent out is don't ever seek advice if you are concerned about your child's negative behaviour..yet the right advice and help could prevent another bully developing in this world. Everyone moans that they exist but no one is willing to help a concerned parent.

My DD was like this when she was young and it worried me but I read you can learn empathy and so have gone out of my way to teach her it ever since. She's now much much more caring and empathetic. Try and do some active teaching of empathy and see if she recognises other people's feelings matter.

My ds 8 laughed at me when my knee popped out of joint and I was in visible pain yesterday . I don’t know why he acted like this , he was not kind at all and I wasn’t impressed

I remember being 10 years old and my mum sitting down on the edge of the armchair next to me and sat on a big bodkin needle I'd left there, she jumped up screaming (understandably!) and I remember quite clearly just giving her a withering look and wondering why she was making a fuss. I have turned into a very kind and caring person, I just assume this is all part of normal childhood behaviour?

Why do I have The Omen theme tune in my head?
Just kidding OP!
To me, mum falling over should at least get 'are you ok mum'? Out of politeness, if nothing else.

Are you laid up with a bad sprain or broken bone? If not it does seem excessive to need two men to support you back to your house. even when my friend broke her ankle she just had one friend prop her up on the way into the hospital.

Sounds like she’s really embarrassed by any perception that people are attention seeking or being “dramatic”, some people are just like that. Sometimes one person in the family is a bit OTT and others react by going completely the opposite way. obviously I have no idea if that’s the case in your family or if she’s just being a really performatively uncaring person.

Not to be cold and heartless too but be reassured - she could see you were ok as you were right in front of her. It might have been different if someone rang up and said “your mum has fallen over”.

It’s a developmental stage which is hard wired in to the brains of pre-teens and teens to be a bit sceptical and negative as this kept them safe when they start exploring outside of their tribe for the first time to eventually seek mates and procreate. Not having a lot of empathy kept them alive.

There have been experiments done which prove how much more negatively teens interpret facial expressions and completely neutral questions or expressions than the average adult,

It’s a bit like toddlers getting very particular about their food the minute they are old enough to toddle and explore.

So please don’t take it personally op!

Does she have a dad / siblings? What are they like emotionally? I suppose I’m wondering if her dad is affectionate or the type to say crying is for wimps etc. Does she rarely cry if she’s hurt herself?

Yes ,yes and yes

Was just about to come and say this.

I don’t know any child who wouldn’t be concerned that their mum had injured herself.

I hope you’re ok and yes I’d be concerned that my child was rude and condescending.

Unfortunately I was in the same situation with my DS, the empathy gene doesn't kick in until young teens get much older, around 21, many young people don't have good social skills, and therefore don't understand which feelings are appropriate.
Is she cruel to animals? if not, then she will grow to be empathetic in time, until then, don't take it personal.

I’d also be upset op. How could you not. I’d be watching to see if she ever shows empathy for a person or animal.

A mother is a daughter's first bully.

Yes, I know. What's your point?

OP stated her daughter is 11.

I think what you are wishing for is that your daughter had more/some degree of empathy.

It's actually not at all uncommon for kids to appear really heartless about things like this. Clearly not all kids are like this, but it is more common than a lot of people think, and they usually grow out of it. A hell of a lot of kids don't really develop much in the way of empathy - especially for parents - until they're older. That self-absorption / lack of empathy is one of the reasons teenagers can be particularly difficult.

I think pretty much everyone, if they were truly honest with themselves, could remember a time when they were pretty unpleasant, callous or mean to someone when they were a child and probably also times when other kids were, in a pretty careless and thoughtless manner, similarly callous and mean to them. I'm not saying every child acts like a sociopath or that every child is a bully, but kids really can be pretty awful without really fully grasping how rotten they're being.

This and the 11 year old is OP's daughter.
OP is the parent

Maybe it's to mask how she is feeling.
She might have felt concerned and not known how to show that emotion, so she masked it the way she did.

I guess it depends on the background. DD would freak, which I don’t want , which means I tend to hide shit like this from her . It also means that if she sees me crying/hurt she knows it’s “real” so she freaks. If I cried all the time maybe she’d be less bothered, or even became exasperated by it.

Do you cry,complain etc. a lot?

Wow that's abnormal behaviour indeed, does she have no empathy for people at all?