To leave my 16yr old for a day

[Hamandeggs1]

My daughter has recently turned 16 and has recently started college. Her dad and I have been invited to an event next Saturday and then to a friends for dinner and drinks, we will be away from around 12pm to 10.30pm. We will be around 25mins away in the next town. My daughter is outraged that we will be leaving her on her own and makes me feel guilty. She has friends at college and some still at school but will rarely meet up with them outside of this although i try to encourage it, so she spends all her weekends, holidays and nights either with me or in the house.
She is confident with us at home but shy and quiet around others, especially other adults. She is desperate for a part time job but finds it difficult to speak to others.
She isn't clingy with her dad, just me and would be quite happy if it was just me and her together all the time.
I try to encourage her to join clubs etc and have even joined a few hobbies with her but she either won't do them or gives them up after a few weeks.
I take her out and spend time with her as much as I can outside of work but she is annoyed when I go to my hobby because I am not doing something with her, even although she refuses to join the hobby with me.
I will leave her dinner which she is perfectly capable of heating up herself but aibu to leave her most of the day. She will have college work to do next weekend so we wouldn't be going out that day anyway.
And how do I get her to be more independent, I feel I've tried everything.

It's really hard to tell whether she is being self centered and possessive over you and needs to be told to get a grip or whether she has real mental health issues that need professional support.

I sort of incline to think that the way forward is to treat it as if it's the latter but give her more responsibility for solving it. It is a problem that she is not as independent as she should be and it needs fixing. She needs to hear that you won't be giving up your life to be with her 24/7 but you will support her to becoming more independent. How about asking her to use some of this time to do some research into what support is available in your area?

I also think involving her dad more might help

FWIW my MIL was a SAHM, my SIL at 45 will still not be in a house alone because she never got used to it.

Honestly, OP, it has nothing to do with the fact that you worked when dd was little. I have a 17yo dd, and honestly, there is zero correlation between whether their parents worked when they were little and how happy/secure/independent they are now. @cultkid clearly has her own agenda but it isn't going to help you solve the problem.

I think you need to talk to your dd to try to find out what's going on. Why is she feeling so angry/anxious about being left? What's going on with her friends at college/school? Is there a reason she doesn't see them much socially? Try to persuade her to engage with the GP. She doesn't have to live like this.

I partly agree with @cultkid To me it sounds a lot like an Anxious Ambivalent Attachment Disorder (purely amateur psychology on my part, and in no way an informed opinion)

www.psychalive.org/understanding-ambivalent-anxious-attachment/

From what I understand it is not caused by parents working. It’s caused by complex factors, including parents repeating patterns of how they were raised and is not the parents fault

(I realise that no one said it was the parents fault, but just thought it was worth stressing the point)

It wasn't wrong at all! You did what you needed to do to provide a safe and healthy environment for your child. Raising a child is hard at any age but very very hard when you are young and financially less stable. I think you are amazing for working so hard whilst she was young.

I was affected by my parents working so much; they both came from reasonably deprived backgrounds and life wasn't so relaxing for them as children: they wanted to make sure that didn't happen to their children so they worked a lot to protect us.

It's definitely the lesser of the two evils to work hard to make sure your child has what they need.

I do think it may be a reason why she has some attachment issues though. This happened to me. I'm in awe of my parents and how hard they work and worked and how much they have accomplished, I'm very grateful for the opportunities I had because they worked tirelessly to provide for us. I'm also really over attached to people and insecure, it's just how it affects me. My sibling isn't the same as me, she feels differently I think.

I wonder if you can try to unpick things a bit with your daughter to see if it's related to that. Try to explain maybe how you did what you had to to provide and make sure she was safe. Try to help her to see from your perspective. You haven't damaged her and it isn't your fault. It's just maybe one of the reasons why she is so attached now

Sending so much love and respect I really do not mean to make you feel bad, just trying to help you find some of the causes so that you can have a more peaceful life because she is over dependent on you and making you feel guilty about going off to have time away from her. I need time away from my children too. I get very touched out

I don't think it's anything to do with working/not working.
I was like your daughter at 16, OP - though my mum was a SAHM who would never have gone out for any length of time without me. I would have hated her being away for a whole day.
I'm not autistic and didn't need 'support' - I just liked doing stuff with my mum (as did my sisters, though a bit less so). I didn't really do any extra-curricular activities, and my only social life was Saturday mornings in town with school friends (never drank or went to parties).
I still managed to go to university and had a great time, so your DD may well be the same @Hamandeggs1.
I have also seen the other side, in that my DC are all adults now and were very decidedly not clinging to me at 16 (I am also a SAHM).

This is not because you worked when she was young. Plenty of people work with young kids and they do not have this level of anxiety.

If she is 16 now she has spent the last couple of years, very formative ones, in various forms of stressful lockdown with you there all the time. I would hazard a guess that this is much more likely to have affected her and her ability to socialise as it has many children of her age. YANBU to go out at all, and you should go, but I think a poster above who said you need to stop filling the gaps and start to focus on helping her develop her own tools was spot on.

My daughter suffered from anxiety and in particular became clingy to me as a teen. She ended up having PoTS which is brought on in teenage hood and their autonomic nervous system does not manage their blood flow correctly so their flight or fright response system gets triggered to release a hormone like adrenalin to increase blood flow to heart and brain.
My suggestion to you is a) she needs to spend more time with her dad and build up this relationship so the focus is not on you b) considering asking her to invite friends to these shopping and other trips you go on. The only way to encourage independence is for her to want it and the best way I found was for my daughter to want to spend time with friends. If she says no - what I do is invite the mums of the friends over and build relationships that way and then it triggers the daughters to spend more time together outside of school.

My ds is like this.

He autistic.

He's happy at home though.

I don't worry about him not going out with friends or the fact fact he can't or won't catch a bus.

But he also does swimming and is British level so trains 21 hours a week. He also works 2 days a week.

The focus needs to be on what she needs to be happy not what you think she should be doing. You need to talk to her about this and explain that she can make her own choices but that you will also be making your own.

CBT suggested above is an excellent suggestion.

Yes, I agree that it could be an attachment issue.

I totally disagree though that it is caused by mothers working outside the home. It has been demonstrated over and over that it's perfectly possible to WOH and to have an extremely secure attachment; on the other side of the coin, there are plenty of children with SAHPs who are sadly not able to form secure attachments. As @UserNameNameNameUser says, the causes of this are complex, but can't be reduced to having a SAHP/WOHP, and anyone who suggests that it can clearly has their own axe to grind.

Sounds like she needs to work up to it.

• Going for a walk on her own for 15 mins
• Staying in the house on her own for half an hour while you go out to the shop.
• Staying in for a few hours while you're seeing friends or something similar
• Staying on her own for half a day
• - Finally staying on her own for a full day.

Having said that, when I was 16 I stayed at home alone while my mum and sister went to Scotland (I was given the choice of going with them or staying, I wanted to stay). I was fine. I also learnt a lot and found it a good experience. I did not throw any parties, I wouldn't in a million years do something like that at home when I was 16.

And this guy lives on his own at 16 - www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/29/experience-i-am-16-and-live-alone-in-the-wilderness

(including this as I love this article!).

But everyone is different.

If she's planning on going to uni there's less than two years til then... so it might be good for her to get some more independence.

I just think this kind of thing can vary from town to town though.

Where I grew up, the local high school didn't allow you into town in the first year (age 11 - 12) but in the second year (age 12 - 13) you were allowed to walk into town and go around the shops etc. It actually was brilliant for growing up and getting some independence. Don't know if they still allow that/the ages are the same. This was in the '90s.

Maybe it's just down to practise -
but then if she is managing to stay on her own for a full day already, this isn't dramatically different to that (it's less than 12 hours if I'm reading it correctly - midday to 10pm?). So you could cut out the first few steps in what I wrote above - although maybe her trying to do that WITHOUT contacting you would be a good idea - doing those things independently with no contact. Starting at 15 mins is really little, that should be manageable. I think even if she's uncomfortable with it, she shouldn't be making you feel guilty or be outraged that you're going out! That's the worst aspect for me...

Thank you for all the replies, I have to go out now, with my daughter, but will read them all when I get a bit of time alone. I haven't disappeared and appreciate everyone's input.

She's being ridiculous, my eldest rarely went out except organised activities, but I still left her alone, she didn't want to come to places with us anyway

It has sod all to do with the fact that you worked when she was younger.

Both my parents did and I then went on to work full time in a city 15 miles away at the age of 16.

Unless she has MH problems she is being absurd and selfish.

Yeah, it's that outraged/guilt trip thing that gives me some pause as well

She is being daft, I can't believe she's got to 16 and still feels this way, it will be nice for all to have some freedom.

You did fine
There is something else at play here
Get some professional input
Encourage her to get out volunteering or working on saturdays

I really don't think it's just the dd being selfish. There is clearly something else going on. The OP said that her dd is "desperate" to find a PT job but that she struggles to talk to people so has been unable to pursue this.

It sounds to me like she has crippling anxiety, or something similar, that is really holding her back. The GP would be my first port of call.

Just leave her. She's 16 not 6. And ignore her complaining about it.

The day away from you becomes irrelevant in a way- however that goes you need to start cutting the apron strings to prepare her for adult life unless you still want her living with you at 30! Therapy to get to the bottom of it, would she go if you went together?

Could you stop answering the phone to her when you are out? Meet up with friends more so she gets used to you being less available? Does she help around the house- do laundry/know how to cook etc? Could you start asking what her plans are for when she finishes school to prepare her/plant the idea that she will be an adult and you’d like her to fly the nest?

You’ve got a couple of years but good to start now so you aren’t coming back on the board in a few years to say ‘my 18 year old won’t leave and wants to do everything with me.’

On the face of it, of course you're not being unreasonable, and at 16 she should be fine with this.

However, it seems like there is a lot of anxiety on her part, and that's something i can really relate to. I had awful separation anxiety as a child/young adult. It's not something you can control, so the fact that she "should" be fine with this, doesn't magically make it so. This is something you guys need to tackle, as she needs to learn to manage her anxiety and become more confident in these situations. I would really really recommend you both read the book Dare by Barry McDonagh. I had debilitating anxiety for years, and this has been the most helpful thing i have read (it is super accessible and simple, and might help her understand how she is feeling, and feel empowered that she can tackle it, and feel more confident and okay). In terms of next weekend - I would make a plan with her of how she can fill her time, maybe get some nice treats in, help her structure the day and evening a bit, mentally, so she feels prepared and not abandoned and aimless etc. If it would help, maybe have a couple of times when you will check in with her (this isn't ideal of course, and is something you want to work on reducing, but as it's so soon, and she's feeling so uncomfortable about things, it might help provide some comfort and reduce the chance of her calling you etc).

Overall, i think you should go, but do your best to prep your daughter and help her feel safe and confident before hand. oooh and i really recommend rescue remedy for anxiety as well. Maybe it's the placebo affect, but who cares, it does really help with calming. Good luck, and i hope you have a fab day

She sounds very very immature.

And you? You enable her behaviour op

Sorry to say it but you do

She is 16.

We used to go out clubbing all evening and night at 16!
She should be able to be by herself for the day or something is fundamentally wrong

But I feel like this is her having not a lot of friends and you stepping in to be her bestie.

You are not her friend. You are her mum. And you are going to need to act like one op. To help her.
Because all you are doing now for her? Isnt helping

It is keeping her small. It is keeping her sheltered
It is bubblewrapping her and not preparing her for life.

Step up by stepping away. Gradually over the next weeks/months. Shell be better of for it

At 16 I used to stay with a friend (also 16) while her parents went away and she babysat her younger siblings. This was 45 years ago. Why not suggest your daughter have a couple of friends over to keep her company?

She's 16!

What the hell do you think is going to happen? The biggest worry should be that she's going to have a party and trash your house, not that she's going to feel lonely or a bit scared.

She's a whole life time of sometimes being alone ahead of her. She's certainly got a whole lifetime of sometimes being a bit scared. Part of being an adult is accepting and navigating that.

Unless you live somewhere very dodgy I'd go. This will do wonders for her confidence, even if she's not happy about it now.