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?

Attitudes like this is why I barely speak to my own mother

I think it’s totally natural to get defensive btw because, done properly, parenting is so hard and you put so much of your love, body, soul, mind, time and money in to it.

No one starts a thread on Reddit saying “I am overwhelmingly grateful to my parents for enduring broken nights for a year, changing my nappy over 300 times, walking me to and from nursery and school for 12 years, doing my laundry for 14 years and providing me with 13,000 meals and spending approx £170,000 raising me over the course of my lifetime”. (Those figures are guesses btw!)

And that’s just the basics required to keep a child healthy, fed, warm and educated. Never mind the emotional input which is arguably the most important element.

People always focus on what they feel was lacking rather than what they received. And frankly it’s easier for all of us to blame others than take responsibility for ourselves. The victim mindset is everywhere.

That’s not to say that many people don’t have very good cause to complain about poor parenting - there are some vile, appalling, negligent, selfish, brutal parents out there - but the vast majority do their best in difficult circumstances.

I’d definitely try and open up the conversation with your daughter op without the defensiveness, and listen to her perspective and take it seriously. And give her more information about your struggles. Take her out to lunch in a public place so you can discuss this on neutral territory. Explain your side of it. Listen. Apologise when you genuinely feel an apology is due.

In addition I’d be a bit worried and would be trying to find out why, at the prime of her life, she is choosing to focus on this in her thirties, rather than living a fulfilling life. I’d want to know what prompted the therapy and the self reflection.

I listen to my adult dd, tell her when I remember, and apologise. I tell her nothing I ever did was with the intention of hurting her, but I know that I did hurt her and I'm sorry.

It's fine for your dd to re-live this now, and address it. It will help her.

The ops version of events as she describes in her post would be difficult for any child. If the daughter has a differing version of events we haven’t been told that. As far as we know OP doesn’t dispute the events (GM died, new partner moved in, DD wasn’t comfortable with new partner, then a new baby and DD starts being sent to a father she doesn’t really know for weekends). All of these events at the one (already vulnerable time) would be tough for almost any child. I think you’re right that she doesn’t accept her dd’s feelings about these events, and how she was affected by those events, but I don’t think we can disagree with someone about how they feel, or how they felt as a child. It’s better to listen and try to understand.

If it were me, I'd just allow your DD to speak, and listen to her. Resist responding (other than reflective responses to show you have listened). Then go away and think through what she has said.
Amongst it, there will be things about which she is unreasonable to blame you, such as the death of your mum, your work and your second child; things she may have misunderstood from that time; and things where she may be right and you could have handled it differently.
When you have sorted this out in your own mind, you can decide whether any explanations or apologies are due and make them. You can also ask her if she wants anything from you now to help her.
Try not to feel defensive or attacked. We all get it wrong in the eyes of others at times and inadvertently hurt them. The thing to do is be open to acknowledge that, make amends if appropriate and move forward in your relationship.

i did my best isn’t a get out of jail card, if you want a meaningful relationship with your daughter listen to her. You’re getting defensive because you know she’s right

It sounds as though the therapy sessions haven’t included any advice.to DD as to how to approach her mother about the issues as they surface, and the OP was clearly shocked to hear how her daughter felt. I think joint counselling should be considered so that both parties can explore the issues from their respective positions - hopefully the therapist will have suggested this, as otherwise there is no balance. Just as there is no balance from some posters on this thread who are going all out to blame the OP on minimal information.

Sometimes, if an apology feels too much like an admission of guilt, the next best thing to do is to say, 'I hear you and I will think about what you have said.'

That would be a start.

No one starts a thread on Reddit saying “I am overwhelmingly grateful to my parents for enduring broken nights for a year, changing my nappy over 300 times, walking me to and from nursery and school for 12 years, doing my laundry for 14 years and providing me with 13,000 meals and spending approx £170,000 raising me over the course of my lifetime”. (Those figures are guesses btw!)

Really? Granted they don't phrase it like you did but, IME social media is full of people posting how much they love their parents, appreciate everything said parents have done for them, and treasure every day they spend together.

And Mothers' Day, which in its current format is literally about celebrating what your mother has done for you, seems to be pretty popular :) Even if you accept that some people are gritting their teeth for the sake of keeping the peace.

What on earth are you arguing with her about? You need to listen to her, not argue with her. You'll just end up alienating her even more.

Have you considered family therapy? It could help you and her a lot. But to do that, you will need to stop being so defensive.

I’d like to know what more one can possibly do than your best?

And the “getting defensive because she’s right” argument equally applies to “getting defensive because she couldn’t be more wrong” I’m afraid.

And how do the posters on here making sweeping judgements about op putting her relationship before her dc know they are right? I think there can be huge difficulties within blended families as it happens, and some single mothers can do the job of three people and thrive, but op may have become depressed or stressed financially as a lone parent; no one knows how she would have coped? I thought it was proven that the happiness or otherwise of a mother impacts hugely on the emotional state of their dc?

"I’d want to know what prompted the therapy and the self reflection" - um ... unhappiness about her childhood and the way the OP treated her? Are you being deliberately obtuse @Hebedacious ?!

Well considering your reaction was to be defensive and argue I can see why she felt unsupported. You’re still doing it!!

And again @Hebedacious - "I thought it was proven that the happiness or otherwise of a mother impacts hugely on the emotional state of their dc?" - you do know that doesn't meant that the mother can sacrifice the child's happiness in order to achieve their own, right?

@SeulementUneFois

My kids have spoken to me about how difficult it was for them after my accident.

It was difficult for me, obviously. But there was much less - let's say time and emotional warmth available for them.

My son became quite depressed and tried to kill himself.

My daughter also became seriously ill a few years later and we weren't able to support her as well as we could have done.

To be fair a lot of this is on my then husband who was just not very good at parenting or on emotional engagement. They no longer really speak to him.

How soon after your mum passing did you move your new bf in?

Why did you not ask him out when you realised him and DD didn’t have a good relationship?

I can absolutely see why DD would feel the way she does.

It does sound like you chose your new partner over her, and worse it was at a time when she needed you the most.

Its very important that you don’t dismiss her feelings and recognise the mistakes you made.

But at the end of the day, what’s done is done and you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it.

Perhaps you could suggest going to therapy together if that’s what she’d like to do.

We all have things that we wished our parents did/didn’t do.
There is no such thing as a perfect parent.

All your daughter wanted is to have her feelings acknowledged. That's it.

It sounds like she had a lot of loss quite early in her life - she lost her dad (more or less, even when he turned up again), an important maternal figure in her life, and there was a big life upheaval with new partner, sibling, lifestyle.

That wasn't your fault per se, though maybe the moving on with a new partner and sibling might have happened in too close succession to all the other tough changes. But it will still affect her.

My dad similarly wasn't around and I lost my grandmother when I was 10 who basically took on the mothering role for me as my own mum wasn't around much due to work. It was a really tough time. It wasn't my mum's fault but it would be nice if I expressed how hard that was for me that she validated those feelings. There was quite a lot of stuff she did that caused a lot of dysfunction as well that was her fault - unstable living situation, not taking me to school when I should have gone because she couldn't be asked, poor boundaries with men that put me at risk, etc.

I would just apologise for responding defensively and for not validating her feelings. You don't have to agree with her. And you don't have to see it from her perspective or understand what she might have felt in order to say I'm sorry that was so tough for you and I'm sorry you struggled, and not have a 'but' that invalidates it.

One of the toughest things in my relationship with my mum (we are NC now, but not for anything to do with my childhood) is that she had a way of invalidating anything I expressed I felt. 'I'm sorry you felt I was minimising what I did, but I thought I was doing the right thing.' 'I'm sorry you got upset about that, but you need to be more forgiving of other people's mistakes.' 'I'm sorry I lied to you, but I knew you'd get upset about it like you are now.' Leave out the 'but'. Just listen and say sorry, even if it's just to say, I'm sorry you're feeling so hurt by this. Don't try to explain it away.

Perhaps my experience will give you some insight into what your DD may be experiencing, OP.

I went into therapy in my early 30s after a major life event that I wanted help to work out. Therapy seemed to require me to go back to my childhood and rootle around looking for bad stuff. Don't know if it was just my therapist who was like this, but I felt encouraged and almost required to find fault with my parents and childhood. I was actually quite a happy kid, but I felt under pressure to find things to be aggrieved about. My childhood was basically pretty sound: no major damage, nothing abusive. I was quite traumatised by the life event that took me into therapy and went along with all this. It soured what I felt about my early years. I became very critical and grudging to my parents: found fault, was angry with them, stepped back from them. My mum was very hurt but hung on in there. My dad died while I was still semi-estranged and I still feel bad about it.

I ended the therapy after three years, when I began to see how damaging it was. As I got older and had more life experience I began to see my mum as a woman and not my mum. She was why I was the stable, resilient, capable woman I had become. We made it up in the years before she died and I'm so glad we did. I still think about her each day. She was a good woman.

Have you seen Instagram lately? I can guarantee there are far more posts of the complaining kind! The world and his wife are all focused on trying to heal their inner child.

When in reality, if they have a phone on which to post, access to Wi Fi and a warm home and food on the table, they are doing a lot better than a large chunk of the world’s population.

Yeah I know that doesn’t negate childhood unhappiness (abuse is a separate matter) but how long do you go on blaming your parents for? Many people have utterly crap childhoods and go on and make the best of their lives.

I’m sorry I know I have gone off track there; I just find the current obsession with self very wearying indeed.

Yes of course I know that. Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Neither of you are wrong. Understanding the impact of a difficult childhood is a journey and I think anger is a stage you go through. Ultimately I had to decide whether I believed my parents were evil or whether they were two people doing their best in difficult circumstances and also what I wanted to happen next. It was interesting to reflect on those questions and also reflect on my own life and ultimately to make peace with the way things were whilst taking full agency for my health and happiness going forward. I would suggest a joint counselling session.

You don’t know that though do you? It might be something quite different that prompted her to seek therapy, like having a baby of her own or the end of a relationship or a bout of depression. People who are living fulfilled purposeful happy lives don’t usually choose to engage in expensive, prolonged self examination.

@Hebedacious what you describe is the bare minimum of parenting. Children don’t ask to be born and have no control over their lives until they are adults and move away.

My early life was very similar to @Gran648 daughter and my mother similarly was defensive when I wanted discuss the harm of moving a 4 year old in with a stepfather that didn’t like me. She also would have phrased it as ‘we didn’t have a good relationship’, when the onus was on the adults to ensure a little girls needs were being met. My father died they had a sibling together and I felt like an outsider it my supposed family. I now have a couple of zooms a year with her now and only that for the sake of my sibling.

My own child if they should ever come to me, would be met with an apology and an offer to seek counselling together to work with them to get closure and their needs met.

It's not the latest trend at all. Look through the archives of MN - people have been posting about "toxic parents", "FOG" (fear, obligation and guilt) and "going NC" for over twenty years now. All that's changed is that many long-term MNers now have grown-up children - and the tables have turned.