Daughter still hurt over childhood

[Gran648]

My daughter and I have a good relationship and we live close by so I see her and my 18 month old grandson most days.

A few years ago, she started going to therapy and soon after brought up how much her childhood had affected her, which I took very personally. I feel bad now but rather than listening I got very defensive and lashed out back at her.

I had my DD1 (now 35) when I was 23, her dad didn’t want to know when she was born. We lived with my mum/step dad who supported us until she was around 5/6 so they were very close and like parents to her. Sadly, my mum became ill with cancer and passed away when my daughter was 7. This had a huge impact on both me and her. A lot of grief. Around this time I had started a new business and my partner of a year or so moved in with us in a new place (now married) and a few years later we had another DD. My partner was a lifeline for me when my mum died and we all became close to his family. Around this time my DD also started seeing her dad again and she would go there every weekend. Her relationship with him hasn’t been great for various reasons. In the early years, DD1 also didn’t have a great relationship with my partner.

My DD is now saying how isolated and segregated she felt and as though she had lost her family unit when my mum passed away, and I had a new one with my partner and DD2 and also a business that I was running. She feels as though she wasn’t given enough support and it was hard for her to blend into a new family. This hurts me very deeply and something I had never intended. It seems she has carried this with her for years and now I feel as though I am the focal point for her anger. We’ve had several arguments about it.

I just wondered if anyone else has any experience of anything like this and aibu for getting defensive about it?

I wish so much that instead of getting defensive and calling me a liar, that my mum had listened. Maybe acknowledged how difficult it must have been for me, without making excuses or making it about her.

from your post your daughter seems to have gone through a lot but you are focused on you, how it makes you feel, your anger.
try to view what happened from her perspective. Her family unit was broken when your mum died, so she was a child dealing with grief from the loss of her gran and the loss of that family unit.
You then have a new man and business, both taking time away from her while she’s mired in this grief; and she just has to go along with this, she doesn’t have a choice, and doesn’t appear to have been discussed or listened to.
then her dad appears in her life, so she’s grieving her gran, the loss of her family unit, losing a lot of her mum when she needed her most. And on top of that two men have appeared in her life and she has to be around them.

that’s a lot for an adult to deal with, never mind a little girl.

Listen to your daughter, maybe see if you can both go to family therapy. After everything she was put through she deserves the present and willing to engage mum that she didn’t receive back then.

So the child that was sexually abused or physically assaulted or emotionally neglected is the origin of their own issues? Deary me.

Not to mention that OBVIOUSLY everybody’s behaviour is someone’s ‘’fault’’ as in shaped by someone else either directly or indirectly, because people and animals learn by interaction. There’s no other possible way. Whether good or bad, other people shape other people’s lives, so when you think about it @gpbs comment was completely stupid 🤣

FGS what an ignorant, old fashioned attitude, would she prefer to be aborted? Listen to yourself.

I think it is more about the timing.

A little girl, in effect, had three parents and a stable home.

THen one of those parents dies, the other two are obviously effected and then suddenly she is taken out of that stable home, the only one she has known, to live with the last parent who is busy with a new business and a new man and then wham a sibling is on the way so even less time with mum.

OP

We all experience things differently, listen to your DD.

I don’t think that’s what @Gran648 said happened. She said

We lived with my mum/step dad who supported us until she was around 5/6 so they were very close and like parents to her. Sadly, my mum became ill with cancer and passed away when my daughter was 7. This had a huge impact on both me and her. A lot of grief. Around this time I had started a new business and my partner of a year or so moved in with us in a new place (now married) and a few years later we had another DD.

To me it reads as she had a baby solo so lived with her parents till the child started school, then moved out, after a year started dating, a year later the granny died and she then went on to first live with and then have a child and marry her partner over the next few years. She started her own business like many people do.

The daughter may have felt unhappy, but I don’t think the mother behaved rashly or unkindly based on what we’ve been told. She absolutely is not responsible for daughters dad not stepping up and then reappearing after years.

@TomeTome No she isn’t responsible for the deadbeat Dad, of course not. But the timing is still pretty awful - Grandma (who has been like a parent) dying and new partner (whom child doesn’t get on with) moving in at the same time. The business is what it is, parents mostly have to work. But the Grandma dying and future stepdad moving in at the same time is not a great combination. Since it was cancer Grandma had presumably been unwell for a while, also a very stressful experience for the DD.

Average parent here, did her best but was raised by less than average parents myself.

My eldest daughter witnessed a fair bit of DV in her early life and I'd been sexually abused as a teen so was a total mess and very unprepared for parenting. I genuinely did the best I could at the time. I reached an age when she was still young, around 10 when her behaviour started really deteriorating and I raised that it was my fault. I went into intensive therapy and started to take reasonable for my actions, my choices etc and raised that yes I had done what I felt was best but my choices were made in a traumatic situation and it was still desperately inadequate. I inadvertently caused her childhood trauma. Don't get me wrong she had plenty of good times but they don't cancel the bad stuff out. I worked on myself in therapy for years and it took a lot of effort and soul searching but I got to a point where I could freely acknowledge my failings and genuinely apologise to her for my mistakes. And it's rapt helped us to repair our remains and I'm praying she gets her own therapy to prevent similar mistakes with her own children.

In short. You need to take responsibility for your own choices and accept that your adult choices likely negatively impacted her childhood and her feelings of belonging to a family unit. And then apologise and mean it. Adore her to have her very legitimate emotions and experiences instead of telling her you did your best and deflecting. Otherwise you sound very much like you are saying " but we took you to stately homes !" ( you may need to check out that thread too )

They were in their own house and he had been in the scene for sometime. OP would have been early to mid thirties by the time she had her second child and married her partner. How much time do you think she had to wait? I can’t see she’s been anything but calm and considered. She had a child with someone who left them both for years at 23, I don’t think she needed to live single for her dd to be loved and cared for.

I think it 🤔 will be beneficial for your daughter especially to go into having good therapy ,
to explore her feelings around her childhood,

I think maybe looking into family therapy could be helpful too?

Family therapy for you and your daughter..

All you need to do is really really listen and say you're sorry you hurt her and you wished she'd felt happier and you want to have a good relationship now and what would help that?
That would be very healing for her/ she just wants you to understand and own it.

That she's telling you all this rather than cutting you off shows she does want a relationship with you xxx

Personally? I would wait a couple of years at least between one of my child’s primary attachment figures dying and moving in a new partner. At least. Probably longer.

Good post @cerisepanther73. For those people saying therapy allows you to blame others, like your mother - no. This is not what good therapy does. It allows you to understand your behaviour, influences and what barriers may be in your way to living like you want to. It does not stop at blame but encourages personal responsibility. For example, if you are a people pleaser (which comes up a lot on MN) you may want to understand why, where that came from - but the responsibility to change that comes from you and you need to change what you are doing. Not talking about egregious wrong doing - being sold in exchange for drugs for example, to think of one client I worked with - blame away for that. But for the vast majority of people, any problems with parents are not as a result of abuse, but because for one reason or another, the needs of each did not mesh well for a while.

When you’re upset about something, is is the most frustrating and isolating feeling in the world to be not listened to and dismissed when you try to talk about it with the person involved. If you literally said to her ‘I’m so sorry you felt and feel that way. I was grieving my own mum, and muddling through the best I could, and it absolutely wasn’t my intention to make you feel that way- but I’m so glad you’re telling me now, and I want to listen and understand more about that. I recognise I made mistakes, and am so sorry for that.’ It would honestly make such a huge difference to how she feels, and would be the first step to improving your relationship. She may be an adult (just) but she’s still the child in your relationship dynamic, and needs you to step up and engage with empathy and understanding.

@goodkidsmaadhouse you are very brave and a good mother for facing up to the mistakes you made and saying that to your child.
I can see now in my late fifties that my mother also did the best she genuinely could within the context of a difficult childhood. But it was not always great.

Why are you argueing with her about it? Just acknowledge her feelings, reassure her she is loved and make time for her with just you and her.

And please don't cut her out of your will.

@ItsAllAboutTheDosh I think you might have meant to tag another poster… my DC are still quite young so at the stage when they think I’m the best Mum in the world… of course in time I’m sure they will come to me with a list of all the things I’ve done wrong (and I have!!) and I hope I can meet them then with the responses they want and need.

Ah sorry about that!

I understand your daughters side unfortunately although my circumstances were different. My mum had an affair when I was 7-8 in 97/98 and the only way she could see him half the time was to take me too so I knew about it but was told to keep this secret from my dad. I knew it was bad and I didn't want to keep it but I didn't want to see my dad upset either. It eventually came out and my parents are still together today but as my son started reaching a similar age as I was a few years ago I realised how innocent my son was and how he had not really any worries and I thought about what I had to deal with and the rage that I felt was so strong I couldn't believe my mum put me through that and I do think mines is probably worse than your daughters but its the way she felt when she was little and had to just get on with things it couldn't have been easy I think the best thing to do is apologise and listen to her and try and explain what you were going through at the time too. Nobody is perfect but I think taking accountability for our actions is the best way to deal with things.

Please give her a hug and tell her how much she means to you. I also spent my childhood feeling segregated from my family unit, and hadn’t had to go through the loss of someone I loved deeply. My mum divorced my dad, remarried and had another child. Still to this day he is the favourite. His kids are treated better than mine by her. I’ve never had any relationship with my bio dad. From my experience it’s a hard, lonely place to be. My mum has always dismissed me when I’ve tried to talk about it and I will always resent her for that. Even though we talk and get on there’s a wall that I’ve put there to stop it hurting. I’m now 47.
As hard as it is don’t take it personally, your daughter just needs to understand why. And if you don’t know and you didn’t mean it tell her that. Let her get it off her chest and please don’t let her end up feeling how I do.

I have had counselling as an adult and when I spoke to my parents about how I felt about my childhood, they dismissed and belittled me like they have done my whole life. I spent a long time trying to speak to them and was called over dramatic, attention seeking, etc etc. I now don’t have any relationship with them.

Another family I know very well - the adult daughter spoke to her parents about how she had found parts of her childhood very difficult and that this had carried on into adulthood. The parents in this family, apologised wholeheartedly to their daughter - explained that they had been doing their best but recognised her sadness and asked what their adult daughter needed
from them to heal. They are now as close as they have ever been.

Most of us are doing our best as parents but I apologise to my (still young) children frequently as I go and as they grow up I will always be receptive to their perception of their childhood and do everything I can to acknowledge and support them

My mother is the same, she says I can talk to her about anything but if it is slightly critical (and I'm always very diplomatic) she goes off on one. If you ask her me and my brother had the perfect childhood but we really didn't we were just expected to fit around them. Even today I'm trying to help my parents as my terminally ill brother is finely after 2 months being in hospital coming to live with them. He has a trach and is unable to make any sound. They said they would do shifts throughout the night to make sure he was okay. I did some research and found an alarm he could press if he had an issue. My mother has been very dismissive and said we'll wait until he comes home. They are in their 80s!

I do hope you have read all these replies as I see you haven't posted again.

As hard as they must be to read, there are lots of good perspectives and experience to reflect on.

Thank you all for your messages. They have helped me to see where I’ve gone wrong with the lashing out and although I had never intended for any of this to happen, it’s how my DD felt. Will be taking your advice with me when I speak to her.