Dd18 social withdrawal, don't know what else to do.

[evermineeverthine]

Sorry in advance for the length of this.

My DD is 18 and in final year of A levels , about to sit exams next month. She is a quiet girl and although actually really likes to socialise , has always struggled with friendships. I really thought college would be the answer to this but she hasn't really connected with anyone there either. She has struggled with the subjects she is studying , and it's been pretty rocky all round. DD from the beginning of college , has managed her time in college by skipping classes in a subject she is doing ok in, to study in a test/exam in a class she isn't doing ok in.

She is on her phone a lot and while she is studying hard now, has had huge periods of inertia and isn't where she should be with predicted grades. She has never been put under pressure academically by me , but she wants to do well and at least achieve C/B grades.

Because of the way she managed her time, attendance at college has been below average at best. At the moment it's terrible. We've argued for basically two years about her time management and suffice to say our home hasn't been a happy one. Not to put to fine a point on it, it's been bloody hideous. I'm a single parent and more often than not , her punching bag for every emotion she has. I get it , it's my job - but some days I feel on my knees absorbing it all.

She has one best friend from high school who is lovely but also quiet and shy like her and they don't socialise much in person.

Cut to today and although she is studying hard at home , she has been refusing to attend college for the last 6 weeks consistently and is now not going at all. She is anxious and experiencing overwhelm and panic symptoms when she has tried to go in. After much reluctance, she agreed to see a doctor and they prescribed beta blockers and signposted her for therapy services. I had already arranged reduced-cost private counselling a few months ago and a slot came up two weeks ago but she refused to take it. She believes her exams are the priority and she will not be able to get anything out of counselling until they're done. She isn't taking the beta blocker either. Her plan now is to stay at home and study and attend for exams only.

I've been in touch regularly with her college but they're pretty disinterested. I've let them know she is overwhelmed and anxious but they've never reached out or tried to offer anything in the way of support. They have a policy of no direct contact between teachers and parents.

I contacted the exam office and they've said they can offer her rest breaks and a quiet room on the day of her exams and that's it. I've accepted my daughter won't go back to college now until the exams start but here is my problem: she will not communicate with her teachers about work and has had huge meltdowns with me about communicating her problems to them as well. All the communication I've had with them has had to be agreed with her to the last letter as she doesn't want them to know the extent of her challenges. I asked her doctor to provide a letter for college outlining her challenges and asking for adjustments on exam days , but DD demanded the letter from me and won't let give it to them. I don't understand her reasoning but then I'm guessing that anxiety has robbed her of her logic. She seems highly fixated on their perception of her (but denies that this is the case)
I have of course spoken to them anyway but I've had to hide that from her. She won't communicate with her teachers directly and so to them, she just isn't turning up and they don't actually know she is working hard at home. They'll have had a message from pastoral to say she's got anxiety I'm sure , but she is not engaging with them on their student platform either so they've no other information from her on her current level of study , homework etc. Is there any chance they could withdraw my daughter from the exams at all? Is there something I need to put in place to ensure they don't?

As it stands, I don't even know if she will be able to attend on the days of the exams if she can't get in the building now, however any possibility of a discussion about this with DD is met with huge anger, screaming and rage. She is angry pretty much constantly. Her tolerance for any demands outside of her study is on the floor. She doesnt leave the house much at all and I'm seriously worried about her mental wellbeing. DD is a bright, funny and articulate girl but rigid and uptight in almost all aspects of her life and I have questioned ND for a number of years. If she doesn't make it into college on the day of her exams , I know it will destroy her.

I've done this intense parenting prior to the wheels coming off and eventually doctor's trip. I had her out of the bed every morning and she was attending college. Both of us were miserable and she was slipping college still. Sher get out of the bed and still not go in. Or only go in for some classes and not others. She has been sporadically attending for the last 6 weeks and now not at all. Nothing I did made a difference.
She is not allowed to eat her dinner in her bedroom. She does takes snacks and lunch in there. Ignores me when I say don't.

I work out of home and cannot control her movements from work.

i wonder if the best thing you could do for her would be just try to boost her general well-being - if you cook healthy meals will she eat them? Encourage 10 mins fast walk round the block or park with you - find a study somewhere that says it improves productivity and show it to her. Help make sure she drinks plenty of water. Don’t replenish the cheese or hot chocolate powder for a couple of days and get something with a bit more to it like cheese oatcakes or strawberries.

Thank you yes I will focus on this side of things more. I do ask her every day to come to the park with me as it's so pretty where we are right now , but she always says no. I think giving her some evidence might help her see the benefits! She does eat the healthy meals I cook at night , but small portions. This is because she's says she doesn't have a big appetite but I know she's full from snacking all day on bread and cheese and thinks I can't see these items disappearing within a day of the food shop 😂. There's always a fridge fill of fresh food and fruit but what I need to cut down on is the stuff she's drawn to, for sure. I just popped my head around her bedroom door before I left for a walk to ask if she'd come but she said no. She was on her phone 😭.

So you’re out of the house all day at work

op she will be in bed on her phone all day

ok so only thing you can do is stop buying any crap food at all. No hot chocolate. And if she just eats toast, then don’t buy that! If she wants bread, it’ll force her to take a car.

she sounds disrespectful ignoring your request not to eat in her room

does she at least eat dinner with you?

Does she do any chores at all? Does she ever cook dinner? Tidy up?

Yes she will usually eat meals at the table. But as for not listening to what I say about other stuff , well yeah. It's a whole other thread though. It's hard for me to know what's teen defiance anymore and what's disrespect. Our home hasn't been a happy one for a long time and this sort of stuff plays a part. I can't really think about that stuff at the minute though , I just hang onto the fact that she will grow out of it because otherwise I start to feel hopeless myself and that's no good for either of us.

She will empty the dishwasher with an argument. Nothing else, no.
I know I sound pathetic. I don't think I could describe how absolutely wearing it is to work a full day and shoulder all of the responsibility for keeping everything together , then enter a battle with a teenager over the hoovering. She just won't do it without a fight that im not always willing to have. Sometimes I'll have energy for it and sometimes I don't. For the last few years the thing I'll hang onto is the dishwasher, just for the sake of saying she does something. But as for cooking or anything else , no.

I feel for you

there’s a lot going on

You don't sound pathetic at all. Many people commenting have no idea...

is she doing maths/chemistry/biology so she can do medicine OP?
i would leave it until after her exams, see what she gets then have a gentle chat about life. If she wants a high achieveing/successful life she needs to be able to cope, and the start of that would be doing basic things like tidying up, eating well.

She needs to thing about the sort of person she is and where she can thrive. To do medicine, for example, you have to be comfortable talking to people and being outside your comfort zone. What is she good at at and what sort of life does she want?

I think some of it is usual teenage behaviour and I think teens today are younger than we were because of Covid/phones/social media. Theres still time for her to build a good life.

you sound like a great mum x

You aren't a failure if she does no chores! She is revising or trying to revise for the big exams. I can't remember mine doing any chores whatsoever at this point. It's a month to go! Pick your battles. She won't leave the house, okay, watch telly with her. Andor is very good ATM. Season 2. Mine have adored Dark too, the German series even at their surliest, with me in the same room.

Please give her some vitamin D supplements if she never goes outside. So important for mental health and energy. I give my son 2,000 iu every week in one tablet just to cover all bases or you could try sneaking in some vitamin D fortified milk.

I wonder whether she needs someone in the house to stop her feeling becalmed...is there anyone who could just be in the house with her even in a different room, whilst she is grappling with her fears. She may be subconsciously building up to fighting you when you come home just to release tension and loneliness, to communicate.

You can get vitamin D tests from the pharmacy, pinprick ones which instantly tell you if you are deficient or otherwise in vitamin D. No need for GP. If she is, you need to supplement her properly, ask GP for advice.

Thanks Hobbiest.
She's articulate , but very young emotionally. She talks like a much older adult woman, but emotionally she's only probably 3 or 4 years younger. She's often said she feels she hasn't much in common with people hw own age but deep down I knew that was not because she was so mature. It was actually the opposite.
She's not aiming for medicine no but she's chosen science subjects yes and they're not right for her. She knows this in her heart I think but won't admit it and wouldn't consider switching.

DD has some things to be rightfully angry about. Things that are not her fault. I'm often the source of every single thing that's wrong in her life though , even if I didn't cause it and it's wearing. Socially she used to he so much better , loved to party etc in high school. Now she whispers when she talks to people and comes across as rude as she doesn't always answer people when they speak. No matter how many times I try to talk to her about this, she says it's not true and so you can't ever get to the solution. I do ask her to consider my intentions when I bring this stuff to her - I'm trying to help her etc but she won't have it. It makes me worry for potential jobs because she hears it as a criticism rather than trying to help her.

Thanks for this. I've got her on a multivit and omega but vitamin D is a very good idea. I hadn't thought about the lack of sunlight. She always loved the good weather and it breaks my heart ( and frustrates me admittedly ) that she will not even sit in the garden. The telly is a good Idea though too. I'll keep trying.

She likes the house being empty. Is often disappointed I've come e home she says 😂😂😂

I think the refusal to tell school anything, go in, days spent in bed, and the refusal to take the beta blockers or engage in any kind of counselling is now warranting you being signed off with stress or even taking parental leave, regardless of whether she takes the exams or not. Reading back I think she is having some kind of breakdown and YOU cannot deal with this immense stress as you said whilst working, just at the moment

Im reading back all our back off comments and I now think yes back off with solutions but you may have to actually be in the house with her. It sounds really worrying to leave her in this state.

I was reading this earlier and thinking I couldn’t imagine this - and then I remembered there was a period in my life where I did this or near as damnit. I’d got in way over my head with work worries and some other things going on and basically I got into a TERRIBLE procrastination cycle. I could not make myself do my work but equally then because I wasn’t doing the work I couldn’t allow myself breaks/to stop at a reasonable hour. I became very weird for a while. Only some huge changes and yes fucking some things up meaning I didn’t have to do that job any more got me out of it, I needed a complete change and escape from that cycle. Looking back I think I was depressed and anxious more than anything.

I think she will eventually be ok OP but she just needs to get the bloody exams done before any other changes can happen really. There’ll be a good long time between the exams and the results where she won’t have an excuse to hide from the world and she’ll need to be tackling things more actively. Can you try and make some plans with her for post exams? Fun things I mean so she knows there is life after.

Please look into the autism aspect. So much of what you are describing was our family and child a few years ago. Our child got an autism diagnosis but only after starting uni and the most horrific and scary mental health crisis happened.

There are many things about how you describe your daughter which our child did. Like Fern Brady once said of her diagnosis “it’s all autism”. The articulacy, eating only one food and then getting sick of it, not wanting the noise of dinner being made around her, the skipping one lesson to catch up (her brain is saying “there is a rule you have to do the stuff from the lesson”) and then when it all piles up getting totally overwhelmed and starting to withdraw and shut down.

Totally get why right now before A levels isn’t the time to peruse this but please consider acting on this once they are done. In our experience (and those of others I’ve spoken to) the wheels tend to really come off undiagnosed autistic teens once they leave school - the structure is gone and many of them rely on that to function. This may well be part of why college hasn’t gone so well also.

If it is autism a diagnosis can be literally life changing in a positive way. Suddenly there is an explanation for why you feel like this, why you react the way you do and then you can work on strategies to handle change, pressure etc.

I’m currently on holiday abroad with my adult daughter (29). She has serious anxiety which was triggered at the airport during security checks. It was so chaotic and noisy she was physically shaking, her face was wet with perspiration, I was stunned by it, I’d never seen it this bad before. The airport staff were amazing, so lovely and calming, she wears a hidden disability lanyard to make everyone aware of a possible problem.

For 6 months now we have paid privately for a psychotherapist. It’s taken a long time for her to agree to see anyone, perhaps your daughter will change her mind, it’s hard work I know, and frustrating. We also paid for a psychiatrist assessment and it transpires that she has traits of ADHD, is dyslexic and didn’t do well at school. It is a really frustrating situation to be in, and you can’t rush them until they’re ready themselves. If she does mess up her A levels she can do them again, I have a friend who’s daughter did this, not ideal I know.

She doesn’t have to get the results now if she’s not coping, it’s too much for her. Perhaps her looking for a few hours work, if she can manage it? I’ve never suffered like my daughter, neither has her dad, so it’s been a shocker. Don’t get me wrong, I can get nervous, but real anxiety is life changing and you’ll have to tread gently I’m afraid. Wishing you all the best, it’s bloody awful but they’re our children still and you just don’t give up loving them and wanting the best for them 🌼

Hugs OP, I'm right by your side. Every day is a rollercoaster ride.
Have you heard of ASD related PDA - pathological demand avoidance? I was skeptical at first but the strategies do work somewhat.
You are doing a great job.
I don't think autism diagnosis is necessarily helpful, but anyway you don't need it to put in place your own way of helping your daughter. Getting her down for meals and her looking after her appearance is good solid stuff.
What is wrong with bread, cheese and hot chocolate? Sounds like a perfectly sound basic diet.
(My dd is on coffee and grapes, thank heavens she eats dinner.)

Ah thank you all so much. So many lovely comments. I appreciate them so much.
The suggestions re an autism diagnosis - I've questioned it over the years but admittedly, fleetingly. She has had so many good spells that they can easily drown out the niggling voice. Mainly I've felt it at those times when she's struggled with friendships and also with sort of black and white thinking. It's always been tricky for her to be flexible , but it was mainly only in regards to fun things she wanted to do and wouldn't be able to move on quickly if it got cancelled or we had to change plans. She'd get worked up and quite rude if for example, you said you'd take her out for tea at 5pm but had to change it to 6 because of work. When I really saw the inflexibility come into play was over her subject choices at A level. The writing was on the wall from pretty much the get go , but she wouldn't consider changing. I do get that she knows her own mind and I'm proud of this about her but at times it means she gets in the way of herself. I really feel that after this is all over , I will commit to opening up a real conversation with her about ND. I will have to brace myself for it because I know it won't go down well.

Nettles - I work for myself so getting signed off is impossible. I also genuinely don't think I could stay at home all day without getting ill myself and then I'd be no good to her. I need to be active. She is also, despite all this, not actually low of mood at home. She chats to me when she's out of her room , recently was watching telly with me from time to time , and keeps me in the loop about her (fantastical 😂) future plans. The doctor didn't think she was low in mood , he said it was anxiety. That doesn't mean you're wrong though and that she needs more supervision during the day, but even when I'm home i can't supervise adequately as if I do pop up to her room and see she's on her phone or whatever, she says she's on a break and that I'm bugging her(!)

She joins for dinner most nights. This evening was salad , rice and fajitas and she ate a good portion , so she will eat decent meals in between the crap if I provide it. She just gets very fixed on certain snacks or foods she likes and tends to want those all the time and then will go off it overnight.
Everyone who commented here today has been super helpful, and so supportive. I genuinely feel less heavy than I did this morning. Thank you ❤️

Op…. Kettle on, make her a cup of tea, go into her room and draw the curtains and open the window

Day 1!

Can your daughter work? @Snippit
does she live independently?

Bless you for sending this. Thanks Funny ❣️

OP - so much of your description of your DD sounds like ASD. My DD is fairly late diagnosed and often doubts her diagnosis as she has lots of good periods, but the signs are always there.
It's been a real blessing for her to know and understand herself better.
Regarding the food fads - don't stop her having the thing she craves at the moment, she will be getting comfort from the familiarity..

Thank you for this.
Yes I'm going to approach it when she's done. She has to get through these next few months and then rest first and then I will do it. She has dropped all her hobbies too which is so sad and one of them was competitive. I just want her to be happy.