Dd24 just went to hit me

[P0loGirl]

Apparently we’re the worst family and I should “be a real mother”. She has the most loving family both on my side and her father’s. But I couldn’t remember her favourite song and I don’t call her every day and add a glass of wine into that and she’s trying to physically attack me.

To give a background - her father and I split when she was two. All she’s known is secure family units on both sides. I don’t even know what to write. She’s had the most privileged upbringing, upwards of a quarter of a million has been spent on her education, she’s always known the comforts of family life.

But we’ve come away for a few days, she gets drunk and suddenly I’m the worst person in the world because I don’t know what floor her flat is on. The flat in London that her father bought her outright in Putney. She’s a property owner at 24.

None of that matters emotionally and I honestly believe that her father and I have given her all the support she needs. But yet tonight she was yelling at me and went to hit me. Her friend had to restrain her.

I don’t believe the parenting relationship is anything like a couples relationship. We potentially forgive much more from our children than we ever would / should from our partners. The dynamic is not the same. Not that I’m saying hitting is ok. But, if my partner hit me I’d leave and never speak to him again. If my child did, I’d spend time and energy trying to solve the problems in the relationship and hope that they could be solved. I’m sure many parents would feel the same. We don’t write our kids off that easily.

Indeed.
But we aren't talking about a boyfriend and girlfriend.

This made me laugh 🤣

What about OP not calling her daughter every day? Tar and feather? 🤣

Violence is violence. The DD is an adult, not a three year old

There’s never any excuse for violence, and if she’s in danger the OP should remove yourself.

There may be truth in what the DD is saying. The OP does focus quite a bit on money, even if it’s not all she says. And there also might be a lot of things that the OP doesn’t know about. My DM for example didn’t know that my F was sexually abusing my DSis and me. I’m obviously not saying it’s anything like that in the OP’s DD’s case, but my DM also thought we’d had a wonderful childhood, which made this thread ring a bell for me. (I don’t blame her for not knowing, my DSis and I repressed the memories ourselves.)

There are clearly unresolved issues from the past, but not when there’s wine involved and the DD is drunk. It needs to be discussed in a controlled environment, after the holiday is over.

So for now, it would be better for the OP to go home and leave the DD with her friend. Apart from anything else, it’s hardly fair on the friend to be placed in this position.

Exactly this.

Well I can see why so many families end up estranged.

I would make it clear to my child that violence was unacceptable but I would also see my role as parent was to try and understand what was going on in their life to make them behave this way, and offer to try and help them with it. Whether that's stress or alcohol misuse or whatever. (This is assuming this behaviour was out of character for ops daughter)

If she writes that in her post asking for support with previous few other details then then surely it would raise questions? Provocation is a mitigation in UK law, it does get you a lower sentence.

And a follow on answer, there's also a world of difference between financing a household where there are two adults to agree the financial split and mentioning your child's school fees, over which they had no control, as a reason why they shouldn't be an angry adult.

I wouldn't write my kids off either. But nearly all the posts on this thread appear to be justifying the daughter's rage, when we have no reason to assume that OP 'deserved' that behaviour. There's been virtually no empathy for a very distressed mother.

As always MN posters turn themselves inside out to justify crap/obnoxious/violent behaviour from a young woman, if the complainant is an older woman.

They invent or extrapolate all sorts of BS scenarios in her defence.

It'd be funny reading them if it wasn't all so depressing

It's simply not true that nearly all the posts are justifying the daughter's rage. The OP has had support/empathy and no one has said the OP 'deserved' to have her daughter physically threaten her, even those caught up by the financial stuff. Hopefully everyone is fully sobered up now, apologies have been made and they are talking properly. Explaining behaviour is not justifying behaviour.

The majority of posters have very much blamed the victim. As far as I can tell, simply because she mentioned money.

Excuse after excuse has been made for the daughter's behaviour (absent the hitting) and OP has been assumed to have deserved her ire.

it's not "justifying". It's understanding. That doesn't make the behaviour ok or justify it.
But I see the role as parent as requiring a different response to that in other relationships
We can make it clear we won't tolerate violent behaviour from children while also wanting to help them address what lies behind it

Completely agree.
If I didn't have a full time job and a dog, I'd have a mind to note the user names of all the posters defending the daughter, then check for their responses on any posts about a man attacking his mum/sister/partner.
Absolutely disgusting.

The thing here is that the DD isn’t trying to break contact with her mum, which is what these threads are usually about. This is a daughter who wants her mum to ring her every day, and be a ‘proper mother’ to her.

This strikes me as a young woman who resents having been sent to boarding school growing up and is young for her age emotionally.

Newsflash: the parent child relationship is an entirely different one

She mentions ‘mum’, meaning that she’s including a mother-son relationship, which genuinely is the male equivalent! It would probably have been clearer if she hadn’t included sister/partner.

Nevertheless, there does appear to be the mindset on here that a difficult parent-child relationship must needs be the fault of the parent and not the child. Real life does have more nuance than that.

Yeah, too quick to defend to read properly!

I have a job and a dog. I still managed to find the time to explore the AS function before commenting. As noted, real life does have more nuance than a single post on MN. Hopefully everyone involved has sobered up and some productive working through is happening.