To try to stop my adult daughter from seeing a plastic surgeon?

[Easipeelerie]

For context, she is 18 and about to go to university. She is autistic, a little immature for her age and has had anorexia. She is very pretty but is obsessed with minor imperfections in her face. There is very little reason to anyone’s eye other than her own that she would need to alter her face.
I’ve discovered that she has made an initial appt with a plastic surgeon for facial liposuction. This is about £300. I guess the treatment would be several thousands and would take all her savings given to her by her grandmother for her future.
I haven’t spoken to her yet but I’m horrified. If I do speak to her, I will show her that I understand her motivations but I will also say that I firmly believe the appointment should be cancelled, and I don’t know if she would then cancel it.
As she’s over 18, is there anything I can do to stop the surgeon seeing her? He doesn’t know about her autism and previous anorexia. Thanks

Can her grandmother withdraw the gift or put conditions on it?

Can her grandmother withdraw the gift or put conditions on it?

Do people honestly do this with adults? Take back gifts because the recipient isn't spending it how they would like? This is controlling.

I thought the point of a gift was so the recipient uses it how they want....

Fair enough.

I think teens can vary so much in maturity levels though. Generally if you thought someone was scamming or harming your eighteen year old in some way, wouldn’t you want to protect them from that (hypothetical question)?

I don’t see that to being much different to when a teen or young adult wants to do something unwise or harmful to themselves?

I don’t understand why parental advice and guidance has to completely cease at eighteen. Eighteen is an arbitrary number that society has deemed to indicate adulthood. Does that mean that many eighteen year olds don’t behave in ways that are unwise? No it does not! .

Each to their own but I think parents still have a duty to step in when they see their teens or adult dc harming themselves when they may be blinkered in some way by their inexperience of life or perhaps non-objective thinkin or if they are ND ?

I am not a helicopter parent either and I totally agree with you that adult dc need to make their own decisions. But what if the decisions they make are crap? In this instance, unnecessary surgery?

I agree you can’t do anything to stop it if they are determined but I would definitely try in ways that are appropriate for that particular situation.

Nobody can withdraw a gift.
They can ask for it back, but they'd need a jolly good reason to avoid upsetting and annoying the recipient. Trying to stop her spending it as she wants is not a good reason.

I am not a helicopter parent either and I totally agree with you that adult dc need to make their own decisions. But what if the decisions they make are crap? In this instance, unnecessary surgery?

Yeah, that's the point of life, for all of us, we make our own way and our own choices from 18 upwards. It's all on us.
People can offer us advice but we don't need to take it.

If it were me I would contact his secretary and give the information that she is autistic and anorexic.

But she may just keep going round doctors until she finds one unethical enough to treat her.

I don’t want to derail the thread so will leave it here but I generally think that young people can benefit from some guidance from older people who want the best for them and have seen more of the world. It’s universal common sense.

I would pass on this information too. All doctors are terrified of litigation, and this has “future disaster” written all over it. Performing surgery to slim down someone who has a history of anorexia is a legal minefield, and any half decent plastic surgeon would run a mile.

I would also make it clear that I wouldn’t be supporting her financially through uni if she was prepared to throw her money away like this. She may be 18 but as long as she is relying on you to fund her, then you have some control. Teens can’t have it both ways. They’re either fully independent or they’re not. DS1 is at uni and if I discovered he was, for example, smoking, I’d be reducing his weekly allowance.

You’re right to be concerned about this, I would be to. Can you pay for some therapy for her to overcome the obvious self esteem she’s she has?

I agree that 18 is a semi arbitrary number, but it is the most feasible universal cut-off. At the same time, having lived on earth a couple of years more than them doesn't guarantee that you're any wiser or know better. It could just be that you have a completely different set of values than do your children. Certainly, "wanting the best for them" shouldn't be conflated with actually knowing better either. It is just so easy to say that you want the best for them.

Even if we suppose that you do know better, to what extent should you be exerting this control or imparting this knowledge? If just by being older, knowing better, and wanting the best for them, you have the "right" to influence them, do they have to succumb to your control the rest of their lives? It is so easy to go down a slippery slope. Sure, surgery is somewhat a big thing, but this kind of thinking can spiral into small things, all the way to thinking that it's not right for them to have a drink or go to bed after midnight, even well into their 40s. You might find yourself being enmeshed with their lives.

I agree that they can benefit from guidance of wiser people (not necessarily older), but it is up to them. If their lives objectively worsen due to their poor decisions, it should be them to feel the regret. If you consistently advise them/manipulate them to change their course of action, they're likely to resent you once they realise what you've been doing. This is all assuming that we can say what's an objectively good or bad way to live. It actually is difficult to assess that in the first place and it often just come down to values.

I do have to put a caveat on neurodivergence though. If they have measurable intellectual disability, then the parent may have a greater right to exert control after 18. I am not a professional so I don't know what's the best cut off age (or if there is one) in that case.

I do maintain that it doesn't matter if the decision is crap or not. That is your view, not necessarily the truth, and certainly not their view. If they regret it, that is a part of a healthy life. You can't stop all harms in life.

many are not ethical. My friend had 7 nose jobs until she barely had any nose left. She wasn’t happy at the end. Of course she wasn’t. The problem was never her nose

I'd do everything I could to stop my dd going down this route.

Obviously if she's determined there's not much you can do but it's disgusting that a surgeon would perform unnecessary surgery on a naive 18yo.

I really sympathise OP- I'd be so upset.

Given her past eating disorder, an ethical surgeon really shouldn’t do this. The likelihood is that they will, however 😕

'Let' your adult daughter go the consultation without you intervening in the manner some posters have suggested. So do not plaster pictures of Michael Jackson and Katie Price all over the place or send YouTube links.

The likely reality is that no registered plastic surgeon will touch an 18 year old with that procedure. Let her find that out herself - maybe a welcome sanity check rather than mother interfering.

However, in the unlikely event the surgeon is prepared to go ahead with the procedure, at that point, look at contacting him and mentioning her anorexia etc

Cosmetic surgery is all about money. Including 'top surgery' etc there.

When you say 'discovered,' how did you find out?

A bit sneaky but could you go on her phone and any other devices and look up cosmetic surgery disasters. Stories about the Swiss socialite they called cat woman, celebrities who regret plastic surgery. I’ve seen a few recently where celebs are trying to reverse the damage done by plastic surgery. Get her algorithms bringing up stories about why she shouldn’t be doing it.

She may not have an intellectual disability but emotionally she may be 3 years behind her peers due to having ASD. So the emotional maturity of a 15 year old. No one would say a 15 year old should be allowed to make their own decisions about plastic surgery.

It's all very well that they should do a full medical history but I'd be really worried that she won't tell them that she has ASD and has had an eating disorder (it sounds like this may be what she intends if you already know that they don't know). It also sounds like she may have body dysmorphia to me OP.

How did you find out about this OP? If you've found out through snooping on her phone/emails or whatever then I would be very careful. It may be better not to mention it and see what happens after the initial consultation. Hopefully they will tell her that it's not needed and that will probably be a much louder and clearer message coming from them than it ever could be coming from you.

If you've been snooping and you tell her you know then you really risk losing her trust and potentially making her even more secretive and even more determined to do it. So i would hang back and hope that they see she is completely unsuitable and that it isn't needed.

I would definitely read up on whatever clinic she is booked with and find out how they go about things, you might find that they want to see her medical records before they actually do the surgery.

Does she know that you know about her obsessiveness over her perceived flaws? I wonder if you'd be better coming at it through talking about body dysmorphia, the links to anorexia perhaps (depending if she is able to talk about her ED) and maybe looking at how she could get help for it. It might give you a way in that doesn't reveal your snooping (if you did).

You say she's getting ready to go to uni, is she doing her A-levels now? The stress of A-levels is probably not helping with all this if so.

I’m not sure if it will help at all, but I’d ring the plastic surgeons office ahead of time and tell them she has anorexia. I saw a TikTok of a someone the other day talking about how when she was anorexic she received notice that her PureGym access had been revoked and it turned out her mum had contacted them to express concern and they listened and banned her. Presumably because once they’d been told they didn’t want to be implicated should anything happen.

Plastic surgeons are crafty buggers. They love sponging off poor girls like your daughter, they have no qualms, as long as they write to her GP saying 'she realises the pros and cons and her concern is mainly around her confidence' - they need to lie it is about confidence, not about looks. You won't get honest assistance from a plastic surgeon.

I don't know what to suggest, apart from asking her to google any potential side effects, sending her to a psychologist and explaining to her that in attractiveness stakes youth is everything - a fat, zitty, shy 18-year old will always trump any 25 or 30-year old with a model figure and impeccable skin. Try to explain it to her that youth passes quickly and she should enjoy it, every zit and every bit of fat on her face - tell her those 30-year olds have fillers to make their faces plump, making themselves into younger versions of themselves.

If this does not work, ask her to google 'revision surgery' - how many times patients are dissatisfied with the outcome and demand revision. Also, ask her to google the faces of plastic surgeons - they are all available - and ask her why are they all look like they never went near a knife? And then google side effects.

Tell her if she is not happy with herself, she should work on bettering herself, not her looks - do a meaningful degree or a meaningful apprenticeship, become useful to the society, help people. But be pro-active, don't be shy about voicing your disapproval - she is a child and a stupid one at that.

Having anorexia is a massive issue here, however.

I agree with your 'point of life' statement. But apart from point of life, there is also a point of parents - what is the point of parents if not to prevent their offspring from harming themselves?

I saw a post on here a while back, it stuck in my mind. A woman was writing about 2 of her cousins, both male. One was allowed to make his decisions in life from the age of 18, he is a kitchen porter now, at 65. The parents were non-judgy, liberal. He is on a minim wage, has a hernia, divorced and can't even afford a decent present when he sees his grandchildren. The other cousin is an interventionalist radiologist on the NHS. Rolling in it, easy life, happy marriage, happy children, happy grandparents - all because his parents never let him take one independent decision in his teens and twenties - otherwise he would have taken the route of the kitchen porter cousins - travel the world, temping here, waitering there, driving trucks in the US, etc. His parents decided which subjects he chooses to progress into medicine, which university he strategically applies to, and which speciality he applies afterwards. Same intelligence as the kitchen porter when they were little - and the outcome was totally to one set of parents 'letting him do what he wants' and always supporting and praising him, and the other set of parents making all the right decisions for the other one.

"explaining to her that in attractiveness stakes youth is everything - a fat, zitty, shy 18-year old will always trump any 25 or 30-year old with a model figure and impeccable skin"

But that's just not true - a 30 year old stunner will still outrank a fat zitty plain 18 year old (and DD will know that)!

Then I would either contact the surgeon or her GP and alert them. If they choose to ignore this because of privacy rules then that's up to them.you will have done what you could. Especially if she is going to lie on the forms.

Yes, what a bizarre and obviously completely untrue comment!

A 50 year old stunner will still outrank a fat, zitty, plain 18 year old!