AIBU to make teenage DD get a job

@OneZanyOpalPanda thank you so much - I really appreciate you taking the time to write that. I'm trying not to dwell on the awful things those two posters said about my parenting but it's hard. Thankfully they appear to have left the thread alone now.

Currently at GOSH waiting for her last ever infusion here. Her next one will be with the adult team at our local hospital and I will gradually be stepping back and encouraging her to manage her own care as she becomes more confident with dealing with all the different consultants and the complicated drug regime.

It's all slightly terrifying if I'm honest but I have to accept she is growing up.

@AngelsWithSilverWings Please don't take to heart what a few of the commenters are saying to you. You sound like a wonderful mother who does her absolute best to love, support and advocate for her daughter. Your daughter also sounds like a driven, resilient and capable young woman and I really hope that she goes far.

From your comments, it sounds to me like your daughter working alongside her college course is something she has chosen and wants to do and I personally think you are doing the right thing by encouraging her and supporting her in this. It is also clear to me that you are very actively engaged in understanding and helping her to manage her health conditions.

I honestly think you would be doing her a disservice to try and hold her back because of her disabilities and/or illness and the limitations it may present. But to the contrary, you are helping her to reach her potential! All the best to you and your daughter!

@Slightyamusedandsilly my old great great aunt used to patronisingly tell my mum it was nice she’d got a ‘little job’ and it was very much a put down. Mum worked bloody hard and the nasty cow used to condescend to her a lot, the phrasing was the same. To me, it’s patronising; not offended just my opinion.

Little as in few hours. A starter job. Jeez, try even harder to be offended, why don't you?

My DD is probably 2-3 years behind her peers, so I’m happy to work on that timeline. I know when to push/not to push DD. She’s only just completed 1 term of college and is managing to do lots more than she’s ever done before. I appreciate what you’re saying but it wouldn’t be a good idea to push DD to do volunteering or a job right now. Yes, I appreciate for NT teens 3 days in college and 4 days off seems ‘lazy’. But for my ND teen this is fine. For now. If DD was 30. Not fine. We’re just taking things at a slower pace. I’m a bit surprised at your comment to be honest. Surely as a ND family you understand more than most when to push and when not to? OPs teen sounds very similar to my teen. I was just trying to reassure her that sometimes it’s ok for a teen to approach life at a different pace to their peers. And actually right now, 3 days of college is a big ask. Adding in a volunteering job would be too much. I’m proud of how much my ASD DD has progressed with her life skills over the last 6 months and am sure she’ll continue to do more. I hope OPs teen does the same.

exactly. Or a choir or music group - anything really.

It's very normal where we live. All of her friends work while at school/college.

Spending a day in bed after a shift happens when she reaches the end of her 6 week treatment cycle and is due another drug infusion. This is just something she has to manage. Her next infusion is being done tomorrow.

Last night she came home from college and went straight to bed with her heat pads to watch TV. Today she has set off to college as normal and will probably use her tens machine tonight. After her infusion she will feel better again.

I don't need either of you telling me how to care for my DD and I don't remember asking you to. I have kept her safe through many a health crisis.

The thought of telling her to give up her job is laughable. What do you think she is going to do for the rest of her life if she can't work. She will be 18 soon and after her college course ends she will be entering the job market.

Her condition is being managed as best it can, her mental health is being managed through medication and therapy and she has two loving parents at home who support her plus a nice boyfriend and good friends.

You are having an attack of the vapours because a teenager with health issues works one day a week in a lovely cafe on top of a 4 day a week college course. I honestly don't know what planet you are on.

Most people with her condition work full time and have accommodations in place under the disability act to help them do that. One of the teachers at her old school had the same illness. He was amazingly supportive and showed her that you can live a normal and successful life while the medication is working as it should.

I belong to a support group for parents of children who have this disease so if you don't mind I will stick with going to them for advice and ignore the unwanted and rather rude criticism and judgment from someone on Mumsnet who clearly has no clue.

You sound like you think anyone with any long term illness or disability shouldn't work.

This attitude is all well and good but how long are you prepared to support them for?

My family are very ND - most are holding down jobs of some kind even if low paid or not traditional type of employment. One isn't and at nearly 30 is draining an elderly relatives resources and causing everyone a lot of stress. Of course he needs support for his ND (& trauma) but he also at some stage will need to live independently and is now a bit stuck.

It's about finding the right role. I say that as someone who burnt out of a PhD and messed up my own future. I wish I'd pushed through or tried harder to get a job related to my voluntary role instead of just choosing self employment which seemed a good idea at the time to hide from the stress of workplace politcis and dealing with people but it brings with it so much of it's own stress and uncertainty.

There are volunteer jobs that are only a couple of hours a week that still provide experience and skills without huge commitment. 3 days college and one morning volunteering isn't a huge ask.

If they don't ever practice facing up to and pushing through the anxiety it only gets harder and limits their life.

I think what people are telling you is that is it not normal for your DD to spend a day in bed after a shift at work. You can enjoy a job, and it still have a profound effect on you.
She will burn out later on down the line. She wont always bounce back.

I just want you to have a think about the sustainability of pushing, enabling or encouraging her that she can be a “normal” 17yr old when she has a learning difficulty, plus physical and mental disabilities.

By the way, most normal 17yr olds don’t have school and a job. So your idea of normal is already a high bar for her to live up to.

I wonder, would you accept less than your idea of normal? The fact she views a job in a cafe as more important than her own health is something taught. And you raised her…

My DD is older than yours- she is in Uni. Not working a job. May need a gap year to do nothing but rest before going back to finish.

So I dare say, I’m further down that road than you and if you don’t want my hard won wisdom on how life is a marathon not a sprint, and a teen with serious disabilities cannot LARP like they are a healthy teen for very long, then that’s fine. It’s your DD that will pay the price in the end. For her sake, I hope you will reflect a bit on what I’ve said once the defensive reactionary phase passes.

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice you do you. I can't believe anyone with a disabled child would be so rude and judgmental towards another parent.

My daughter just wants to be a normal 17 year old with a weekend job and her own money just like her friends and her siblings.

She has great friends, a social life and a lovely boyfriend. She does 4 days at college, has Fridays off to catch up on assignments if needed and works in the cafe on Saturday 10 til 3 plus the occasional Sunday only if she is needed due to a special event being on. She enjoys work. She met her boyfriend there and socialises with the other young people who work there. As I said in a previous post she tells me that working is good for her mental health and she goes into a decline if she isn't busy. You sound like you want me to lock her up and prevent her living the life she wants. I am absolutely aghast at the things you are accusing me of.

It is very hard to get a job now. Many articles have said how it's now rich kids who get a part time/summer job, as they do have the contacts. Some friends who are professionals say they had to do the applications for what would have been "easy to get" jobs in my day, and they struggled!
Businesses say how hard things have become recently, and they can hardly afford to employ anyone, so they would surely rather have an 18 year old who can do much more.
I'm sure the odd person will say they know teenagers with jobs, and I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is much harder than it was in the noughties, where you could just pop in a shop with a CV and get hired instantly. A shame, as I honestly believe having a part-time job is really good for kids.

Yes it will.

I agree. It is like telling someone with a fractured leg to try and run a marathon. Don't worry about the pain, you can rest after.

It will catch up with her later on.

I really feel for your daughter, the way you talk about ‘she rarely lets her illness get the better of her’ is an unrealistic expectation. I do wonder if her life could be less of a struggle if you had not insisted on allowing her to work 2 days a week from age 16 with her being in such poor health. I know her grades would be higher if she didn’t have to be a full time disabled student AND also work a part time job. As for ideas, I have a disabled daughter too (not adopted, that adds an element of a child trying harder to earn your approval) with a chronic, painful lifelong illness and it is never ever a good thing to push through the pain just for a job that lands you in bed in too much pain to get up for a full day afterwards. That’s time lost from her life. That’s a huge sacrifice just for a bullshit job in a cafe as a teenager. When does she get to enjoy herself?

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice I have spent the last 5 years monitoring my daughter's health and managing her treatment under advice from Great Ormand St. I check on her health daily and know when she needs to rest and when she is fine to work/attend college. I advocate for her when dealing with the four specialists she is looked after by. I am guided by her but she rarely lets her illness get the better of her. Please calm down - you clearly have no idea. She works one or two days a week in a cafe bar. I'm not sending her down the bloody mines!

True, I only know what you write, which is disturbing.

You should be helping your DD to not put so much pressure on herself instead of lauding it. She is destroying her health in front of your eyes and you’re using her to tell other parents their kid is lazy.

It’s up to you to show her how to balance health, life and work. To tell her do not push through the pain to get through the day because NO JOB is more important than her long term health.

Lauding it and enabling it, you’re just putting her on an unsustainable path to burnout and worse health.

The fact she is an adopted abandoned baby will be playing a huge part in her psyche of wanting to please you and not disappoint you so as to not be abandoned again. You need to consider the adoption trauma here as well.

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice you clearly don't know my daughter or me.

She puts this pressure on herself. She was abandoned as a baby, born addicted to heroin and then diagnosed with a lifelong incurable disease at 12 years old after nearly dying because we couldn't get her in front of a doctor due to the Covid lockdown. And yet she has always worked harder than anyone I know and has the mos amazing resilience.

As for her not reaching her academic potential. She was told she would never get any GCSEs by her state school. We moved her to private school and also paid for a specialist tutor and she then worked her socks off to get her 5 passes at level 4 and 5 ( missing a 6 in English by two marks)

We have spent £££ on therapy to support her with her mental health issues. She knows we will support her financially forever but she doesn't want that for herself. She has ambition and drive. Don't you dare tell me I'm a bad parent.

When I said she knows she can't rely on handouts I really meant that she doesn't want to and knows that a life on benefits will not give her the life she wants.

Her illness and pain fluctuate depending on her treatment cycle. She can't take strong pain killers like other people can so has to find alternative pain management and sometimes that means staying in bed all day with heat pads on a team machine.

She will push through the pain to get through a day at work because her job is so important to her.

We are aware that her life is going to be a struggle until a cure is found and we will always be there for her and she knows that.

Perhaps a sport or exercise?

Not easy getting a "little part time job" anymore. My DD is also 17 and applied to loads once she'd finished her GCSEs last summer - not even an interview. All the supermarkets and hospitality places wanted over 18s so they can do late shifts.

She's now volunteering a couple of hours each week in a charity shop. It's relatively quiet so she's not overwhelmed, and it's helping her pick up some skills and increasing confidence (she's AuDHD with a catalogue of mental health disorders). Even so, she has to be 18 before she can use the clothes steamer or the till, because of insurance.

I agree she needs to get out of her room and preferably out of the house. But that does not need to be a job.

What can be done about the jobs market though for young people? Surely the knock on affect for their future is very worrying ?

My fear for all these young people stuck in their rooms is that even if they are ND then how will they cope in the world in a few years time? I see lots of unemployed people in their mid 20s living at home with parents rent free with no incentive to work because it would cut into their lay ins or gaming time. Plenty are said to be ND and maybe they are but does that exempt them entirely from participating in society? After a few years parents start to get sick of it and ask for mental health help but it’s hard to change habits that are so ingrained and there are precious few services for adults in this position especially those unwilling to do anything to help themselves.
If a person needs 4 days alone in their room to cope with 3 days of college then what is their life going to look like? Would they not be better served to develop some coping strategies now than be facilitated in their avoidance?
I don’t exactly know what the solution is (some kind of carrot eg cat volunteering and stick eg internet goes off for periods/ allowance gets docked??) but I think OP is right to be concerned that this is an unhealthy situation and I would not just be leaving her to it.

This. PP's DD is not coping fine at all.
Having to spend a whole day in bed to recover after one shift is not healthy and is not normal. Once she is out earning alone and being responsible for bills, she is going to work herself into burnout and/or ill health.

DD is 17 in a few months, she attends college 3 days a week, Tuesday to Thursday. On her days off she literally just stays in her room for 4 days on the run in her pyjamas. She only comes out for food and will usually sleep in until at least midday. When she is in her room I usually hear her playing with her friends online or FaceTiming them, or sometimes she is just on her phone or doing stuff.

Colleges these days have a lot of independent study and work. She will be doing that while in her room as well as recharging. Perhaps that is the only space where she can focus on her studies without distraction or interruption. As for wearing pjs, who cares? Tons of people who WFH do so in their pjs.