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?

OP I am painfully aware of how traumatic incidents I have been through since my children were born has affected me and in turn them.

If they ever come to hold me to account for it when they are adults, I will be listening and apologising.

I didn't mean for that to happen, and I did my best in the circumstance, but that doesn't mean it has not affected them.

What happens in childhood massively impacts how someone develops into an adult, because children are vulnerable and their brains are immature. That’s why when someone goes into therapy that’s generally the first thing they look to as trauma is cumulative, people don’t generally end up in therapy because they had a few shit experiences, it’s a culmination of many things

I have had a very similar experience. It’s really not easy but it’s vitally important that your daughter feels heard. The defensiveness is natural, you did your best in a difficult situation and her feelings don’t make you a bad mother. You have to take a step back and let her tell you how she feels. I found that once I was able to do this things did improve a lot. You can’t change the past but listening and acknowledging really helps. It’s not easy - you might find that therapy also helps you.

Took me decades to realise how batshit my DM is and she still refuses to see it

Luckily my DC see it and she's like that towards them to so I feel sort of at peace with it as it were ie not in my head

OP I would get out a photo of your daughter when she was 7 - and take yourself back to that time and imagine what a little girl of 7 would possibly be thinking or feeling - but not having the language ability or opportunity to express this or make changes to her situation.
I get you - I so do - one of the things I struggle most with being a teen mum is looking at these children in an adult body telling me they are not happy with X or I have or have not done X....and all I can think about is how I am not only doing my best but I have exhausted from trying to do my best for everyone (and apparently failing!)
I am having to acknowledge and accept that children, or even adults who are remembering childhood memories, just don't and can't understand that everyone is trying their best under different pressures. I guess the idea that as parents we have to constantly step up and be there for our kids stands true even when their childhood memories differ from our own.
My suggestion to you is find someone else other than your daughter in real life you can vent to about your frustration with your daughter - and then try and selflessly give her what she needs to put these memories in the past and move on with her adult life.

Your partner was a lifeline for you. He wasn’t for her. You mentioned that they had a difficult relationship at the start. She was a grieving kid. He was a grown adult. She then spent more time with her father (again difficult relationship). You had another child and a business. Poor kid!

I think it’s pretty amazing she wants to work on these issues with you. You should take a bit of responsibility. You put yourself, you needs and your partner ahead of her when she was a grieving kid. Of course she was damaged by this.

I am wondering if all this has come up since counselling or was she already needing help beforehand? I am asking because psychiatrists have convinced my adopted son (aged42} that he has suffered from abandonment syndrome right from the womb. He has even been convinced that we were wrong to adopt a non-white child with another culture into our white family. The latter ideas have only been poplar for the last 20 years I might add.

I could strangle this woman.

All this was to help him understand his inferiority complex both educational and social. Education, we only found out at 18, he is mildly dyslexic so a very slow reader. At school he was teased and called 'dumb' which the psy has convinced him was dire bullying. Socially, he may have be affected by the colour issue but since all my 4 kids have friends from the world over, that makes no sense. (We lived in Africa and Asia in 10 different countries.}

In all this, I come out as the monster mother, should never have adopted him in the first place, should have found him psychological help from day 1, seen the dyslexia, seen the effects of the teasing etc etc. My kind of discipline was highly damaging - I'll tell you twice but not 3 times, followed by a resounding slap but this was before the days of 'gentle parenting}.

I am telling you all this so you can see why it would be really good if you can take part in her sessions. She can only be telling her side of the story but she needs the full picture.

I am sorry to say but I was furious when my son drip-fed me all this. My only defence was that I had known no better and except for Dr Spock book, in the depths of Africa before the internet and phone calls costing ten quid a minute, my points of reference were few and far between!

All this has very little to do with your daughter, I know, it's just a rant about how a psychiatrist can get the wrong end of the stick and really screw up a whole family. Convince it would be much more useful for the psy to see you both.

Wow, this is a very poorly worded reply. Completely dismissive of the daughters perception of her childhood and saying that you are not saying the daughter is wrong doesn't make it any better.

You know what, it doesn't matter so much what exact detail happened or did not happen. The daughter has obviously stored all these old feelings in her body and they are ALWAYS VALID, no matter what anyone else thinks has happened, because she did feel them at the time and a long time afterwards. As a parent you do NOT get to decide if your child's childhood was 'good' or 'bad' or 'this or that'. Just wow.

You have to learn to accept that doing your best isn't always enough. It sounds like everything always has to be about you, maybe you always prioritised yourself over your daughter even if you didn't mean to. Your focus on the difficulties you had comes across as trying to excuse your responsibilities. Now she's trying to resolve the issues you are once again making it all about you and your feelings.

It's not her fault you had a new relationship. It's not her fault you were happy. It's not her fault you had another child. It's not her fault she felt you put your own happiness far above hers. All these things are on you - you may have meant well, you may have think you did your best, but that's not enough.

Actually all this ‘I didn’t mean for it to happen…’ is nonsense.

she prioritised the partner. She admitted the daughter ‘didn’t have a great relationship with partner in the early days’. It also seems like she was shipped off to the dad (who also didn’t have great relationship with) on the weekends.

thus happened to a grieving 7/8 yr old. Meanwhile mum had a lifeline partner and had grown close to his family. Cherry on the top was a new child.

I swear to god! Apparently we’d die for our kids…. But only insofar as they don’t get in the way of our right to a new relationship.

You said that you never intended for her to feel isolated or for her to struggle to fit into a new family. But you also say that she didn’t get on with your new partner. So you were aware that it was difficult for her and didn’t do enough for her to feel comfortable, part of the family etc.
It’s unreasonable and reductive for you to be defensive and not accept responsibility for how she felt.

All you have to be as a parent is emotionally healthy. You can make all the mistakes you like as long as you take accountability, apologise if you need to and correct your own behaviour and views of the world. It is an ongoing process for everyone. Children will NOT forever fret about parents' mistakes as long as they acknowledge and take accountability and don't dismiss their childs needs and struggles as not important.

I don't know why so many parents say 'nobody is perfect'. Children in therapy do not expect you to be perfect and have gotten it all perfectly right. All you need to say is 'I'm sorry, that was wrong. I should have known better at the time. What can I do to help repair it?' and mean it.

About 10 years ago I wanted to talk to my mum about some things which I felt had impacted me growing up. I did it for the good of our relationship, to bring things into the open and work through it. She took it badly and lashed out at me very hurtfully.

It was at that point that I realised that I couldn't speak to my mother about my true feelings and our relationship never recovered. My heart is now completely closed to her and I have never opened up again, and never will. We talk about the weather and everything superficial and that's it. The chance to repair any hurt is gone.

My own son recently lashed out at me about some things he was angry with me for. I felt very hurt inside but told him he could tell me anything and I listened to him calmly and made sure to really hear him. Afterwards he hugged me, relieved, and said 'I know I can always tell you the truth, mum'. I told him that his feelings are always safe with me, no matter what they are.

I thought you were my mum then by the title!

I spoke to my mum this week about how dreadful my childhood was and how deeply affected I am by it.

She also got defensive, shamed me and said she didn’t want to talk about it.

So now I know where I stand. I guess she doesn’t care.

Which has reinforced my believe that little to no contact with her is the way forward.

Be careful.

From the snapshot you have given, I can see that there were some difficult events and circumstances for your daughter to experience but at the same time, I would like to also think that now she is an adult, and more importantly, a mum, she can see it through a different lens? You lost your mum and having experienced this devastating loss myself, it hits so unbelievably hard. Whilst it would be useful to reflect and accept her feelings, I do think she should also work to draw a line and move on as ultimately you are clearly a loving mum and that's the most important thing in all of this, ensuring you have a positive relationship going forward.

That's what I thought.
I know where I stand. Mum's feelings are more important than mine, as I always suspected.

For many years I supressed the hurt about my childhood by telling myself "But everyone was doing their best". But that didn't change the fact that I did have an unhappy childhood, and that my feelings were valid.

You need to get away from 'blame' and 'winning' and 'losing', and tell your daughter you will listen to her honestly, not just saying "Yes but" to her feelings about her childhood.

Sorry but what are they "raising" this with you for? So you can feel guilty that you suffered a life changing accident?
They should be more concerned about their mother's life long suffering, not how it inconvenienced their lives.

Yes you are unreasonable for being defensive. This is where the problem has stemmed from, tou do not have rights over her feelings. You are.not always right just because you are older than her. If you don't bother to see from her perspective there's no saving this relationship and she will always resent you at her core.

I think you should have some proper therapy yourself (psychotherapist, not a counsellor) to reflect. Therapy is often about coming to terms with the impact we've had on others, as well as the ways in which others have damaged us. Being able to separate those two things is a critical part of repairing our relationships - to be able to say 'I know what I did affected you deeply and caused pain and damage' without trying to defend oneself or even 'put it in context' is so important.

If you can't afford any therapy you could still approach her with an apology and ask her if she will talk about it with you sometime - but practice not responding with an excuse or a mitigation, whatever she says back to you.

As a mother, she will probably have to go through the same process at some point - we all should, really. It's a long chain of impact and there's no way out of it - we just have to acknowledge what we have done, and try and look it in the eye without flinching, attacking, or running away. I promise you it feels much better that way.

I agree, we all have difficult relationships and experiences (through childhood and our whole lives!). But if there hasn't been anything she can specifically point to (e.g. being mistreated by you or step-dad, abused, etc) than I feel YANBU to defend yourself.

The events described in the dd’s childhood, I agree, sound challenging. It is a lot of change in a very young child’s life.

But none of us know for sure that the dd would have necessarily been happier if her mother had stayed single, or had been employed rather than run her own business, or had not had another child. So I don’t think it’s right to make a sweeping judgement that the op definitely put her relationship before her child.

Not everyone has the strength to cope with being a single parent. The op described her partner as a
a “lifeline” so who knows how her daughter’s life would have turned out without him? And children can experience negative impacts if exposed to extreme poverty and instability. And many only children would like a brother or sister.

I think at some point in your life as an adult, say around the age of forty, you need to make a choice. If you believe that your parent loves you, and op has described her relationship with her dd as close, then you may choose to give them the benefit of the doubt that they made the best decisions they could for the whole of the family life.

Honestly, after 20 or so years of family life, I see lots of mothers putting themselves second to their children and partners rather than the other way around.

And I loathe the way that time and time again it is the women who stayed put and managed who get it in the neck, and the men who bugger off get away without any mention!

Feelings aren't fair or unfair. They just are. We have to ignore them or face them.

Oh dear,first of all a heart felt apology is needed for lashing out. I imagine your daughter felt isolated,rejected abandoned this may need some therapy as may your relationship,you can over come this as I am attempting with my mother slowly slowly.

It is a grim realisation. I’m sorry.