Worried about DD who is NC

[SMEHJmammy]

Afternoon all,
I have 5 DC, ages 18-26, my middle child is my 22 year old DD. DD and I have been no contact for almost 5 years (since she left for uni). The context of this is my other 4 children all have chronic health conditions/disabilities, DD was our only "healthy" child and as such she feels she was neglected. I feel awful about her feeling this way and miss her very much, she was never intentionally neglected but with 4 children with complicated needs she was the "easy" child. My ex husband and I definitely weren't the best parents to her, we missed parents evening, sports games etc. This was never because of a lack of love but rather being overstretched by the needs of our other children. Since the day DD left for uni, I haven't heard from her. She talks to her dad but also hasn't seen him in that time (he does insist on sending her money though) and she still talks to her siblings. She struggled with her mental health somewhat as a teen but we did go out of our way to provide her with as much support as we could, especially as some awful things external to family life happened. I was also told recently that she received a formal ADHD diagnosis, but this was never something anyone was concerned about when she was a child.
Anyway, DD has always been a very smart, responsible girl, she was head girl, straight As, she went to St Andrews and I know she graduated in the summer with a first class honours, and is now in London doing her masters.

Recently my eldest DS went to visit her, and he has come back feeling quite concerned, he said that she is drinking a lot, several week days after uni and on the weekends (out well into the early hours), she smokes weed (he said not like a "stoner" but socially), vapes, has used cocaine, seems to be just dating random men all the time. He also said she seems to be surviving on very little sleep, energy drinks and not enough food (she was anorexic as a teen).
I miss DD all the time, but I'm also feeling incredibly worried. I have tried to contact her to no avail, my ex husband says if he mentions anything about this to her she stops contacting him, and sends any money he has sent straight back. My DS doesn't know how to approach this and honestly neither do I.
So please mumsnet, what do I do?
AIBU to feel totally lost at dealing with this?

You’re excused, I guess?

I haven’t told you you’re not allowed to post, or even so much as hinted that. You seem to be confusing ‘being allowed to post’ with ‘entitled to not be replied to by anyone disagreeing with me’.

When a grown adult with agency has rebuffed all previous overtures and communicated, very very clearly I might add, that they have no interest in hearing from you, taking advice from the pages of Stalking for Dummies is a frankly terrible idea. Unless you actively want to be on the receiving end of legal action, of course.

This was my first thought. Not meaning to vilify OP, but as a parent with a child with Autism, I've not had any further children for that reason.

Also, and I genuinely don’t mean this in an accusatory manner, this is just a question: are you sure you're sharing the entire reason she's NC? It's just that there must be a reason why she speaks to your DH and not you. If it's really about her feeling ignored as a child, etc then surely she'd ignore both parents?

By games do you mean the going NC? I do know anorexia is linked to control so I suppose we can't dismiss the possibility that she is playing a game, but I'm sure that must come from a deep sense of being neglected and not really being seen. What people see as manipulation is basically a trauma response.

That said, some of the responses to @SMEHJmammy have been brutal. Yes, mistakes have been made, big ones, but the vitriol here is concerning. Basically shocked that one poster even implied that OP should have gotten a termination. That's a glib response to a parent who is hurting badly.

I say all this as someone who did have toxic Stately Homes type parenting myself.

Apologies, I thought you had first hand experience. It must have been the other poster.

Look, only OP and her family know the full story and are in a position to decide the next steps, given the knowledge they now have that she may be relapsing. But if someone told me that my child who was NC, whom I previously thought was successful (good grades are used as an indicator of succes) was struggling then I would NOT sit back and do nothing because my DD said she wanted no contact.. I would find a way to help her that was acceptable to her. Bear in mind that if she has AN she won’t want any help but OP would be wrong to let her slip further into that mental illness without putting some measures in place to help her. And she can do that via the dad and siblings. She can still respect her DDs boundaries and those boundaries may shift in time.

You’re making a lot of assumptions as to the daughter’s mental health there. Even if it is the case that she’s struggling, that does not mean OP gets to use it as an opportunity to force herself into her life. She gets to decide her next steps, not OP. OP is not entitled to access to her daughter, no matter how badly she may want it.

The way for OP to help her is to respect her stated boundaries and leave her alone. That’s it. Her daughter has already made it known what is acceptable to her, and that’s NC. Any desire OP has to not stand back does not outweigh the right of the daughter to not be harassed by OP.

As I said above: When a grown adult with agency has rebuffed all previous overtures and communicated, very very clearly I might add, that they have no interest in hearing from you, taking advice from the pages of Stalking for Dummies is a frankly terrible idea. Unless you actively want to be on the receiving end of legal action, of course.

OP has explained that her eldest child was not diagnosed until the age of nine, by which time all the other children had been born.

Then three of the others were injured in a road traffic accident, leaving them with long-lasting care needs.

OP could not reasonably have predicted this scenario when she had her babies.

I expect their autism may have been undiagnosed before the car crash which would have caused their other issues.

I totally agree with this sensible and humane post.
Also this:
this was after receiving therapy and the therapist indicating her issues were due to my mums parenting
I think there are so many therapists out there these days to blame for this sort of thing. I had a therapist for a while who was really pushing a narrative that my parents were wilfully abusive. Actually they were human and flawed, but they loved me and tried their best.

But I imagine a letter of apology and unconditional love from OP would do no harm.

I think it could do enormous harm. The DD has made her boundaries clear, ignoring that is just another instance of "I'm not going to give DD the thing she needs".

I've been told my mother loved me, as far as I am concerned she had a funny way of showing it and why would you do the things she did to someone care about, let alone love.

So I am projecting, I know I am, but I'm also talking from experience.

Sometimes distance, physical or mental or going NC is like putting a cast on a broken bone. At some point in the future it may come off, but taking it off too soon will only makes things worse.

That’s not really the point. The three that were injured is an awful thing to happen to a family and could be never have been predicted. But ASD is fairly common. It doesn’t sound like OP could cope with 5 kids even without disabilities, that merely exacerbated the problem.

Exactly this. Op isn’t emotionally intelligent enough (from reading her posts) to give her daughter what she needs. Now that may be for many reasons but it’s just the way it is.

my mother to this day thinks I was so grown up and she was such a fab parent because when I was sick in the middle of the night as a little girl I’d never bother her, I’d just get up , be sick , have an upset stomach and sort myself out and go back to bed.

this is the same mother I’ve just had to explain to that if she put the £5k she had in her current account in an isa or savings account she would get interest that she’s not getting in her current account. I’m still parenting her.

What a scenario where having five kids was going to mean that one of them would be a surrogate parent or make themselves deliberately small to not be any trouble? I think that’s fairly obvious with that number.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.

Are you saying that OP's daughter must have felt that she had to be a surrogate parent to her siblings (because OP mentions her DD reminding her parents to give her siblings their medication), or do you mean that in any family with five DC, the older kids may be asked to help look after the younger ones?

And "make themselves deliberately small to not be any trouble" - is that a reference to the DD's anorexia?

All these posters defending going no contact....

It's a strategy, sure. But it's probably part of a general response of fleeing (flight) when things are difficult. Other people with a trauma history will freeze, others will fawn.

Fleeing isn't always a brilliant idea. Sometimes people do it without even thinking, it's just hard-wired in.

I used to use a combination of fawn and flight but I had no conscious idea what I was doing.

I'm still suggesting family therapy, even if just with dad, or even with siblings.

Parentification and a need for control with her ED because her life felt very out of control as a child. Some of us with parents who can’t cope, instead of going off the rails, become perfect. The only way to get attention and praise is being the best at everything, being super responsible, hyper independent, poised, in control, good. I get it. It must have been tough for her. Undiagnosed ADHD, an eating disorder, a huge traumatic event (car accident that led to significant disability in her siblings, I assume potentially involved you or her dad too, how scary!), all your attention elsewhere, it wasn’t easy for her and she’s done an amazing job getting as far as she has.

Two things I would say: her behaviour sounds pretty normal for a young professional living in London in her 20s. Except for the vaping, it’s definitely what everyone I knew was doing at that age. We are all sensible grown ups in our 40s with mortgages and no drug issues now.

I don’t think you should contact her, but if she does reach out, be accountable. Acknowledge the bits you got wrong. Make time for her. Ask what she needs from you and then do it without trying to explain away why you think she doesn’t need that. Validate her feelings and experiences.

I’m not sure how you can assert it’s ‘probably’ a flight response when you don’t know this girl at all, haven’t observed her patterns of behavior, and lack the necessary qualifications and experience to do so (because anyone with either of those things wouldn’t be ‘’diagnosing’ someone online, based on vague and second hand information).

Could it be, a knee jerk flight reaction that has lasted five years, during which time she’s refused any and all overtures from OP? Sure, I guess. It could also be that she feels no need to cling onto a relationship that is dead to her. Why stick around when you neither have to nor want to? Because someone else might think you’re running away? Lol, so what? Let ‘em think it.

Either way, it was and is her decision to make whether anyone else personally approves or not.

I consciously went NC to protect myself. I set strong boundaries in order to not repeatedly experience trauma feelings. I have complex PTSD and the only way to manage that is by going NC.

It's a bit more than fawn/freeze/flight or whatever you mean.

It doesn't matter whether it's a good coping strategy or not to go no contact. The bottom line is if you're an adult and you have the capacity to make the decision that you don't want contact with someone, then you don't have to be in contact with them. If they persist despite you stating you don't want this you're crossing over into harassment territory, whether family or not.

I've been no contact with my family for nearly 20 years. I've paid for years of private therapy, entered a period of recovery where I feel quite at peace. And guess what, I still don't want to hear from them and their bullshit. Because I said no, and I meant it despite their persistence.

That’s you. DD is young and may just want a break. We have no idea but that an apology and taking responsibility may not be welcome. Even if she decided to keep low to no contact nonetheless.

Youth is not an excuse to railroad over someone's choice to be NC as though that means they can't possibly be grown up enough to make that decision. And we have a fair idea she wants absolutely no contact because OP said that was the case, and also said if she tries to get her father to bring it up she shuts him down and returns financial support. So I'd say its pretty clear she wants nothing to do with her mum/OP.

It’s nothing to do with not being grown up, just that everything is relatively recent. Quite a number of young adults have low to no contact with their parents but go on to re-establish a relationship later.

I’m not suggesting they all get together for lunch, simply that an apology and acknowledgement of mistakes may not be unwelcome.

You, despite your experience, don’t know that it wouldn’t be.

We do know it would be unwelcome though. It's in the OP. She does not want contact. She has made it very clear.

This thread is wild isn't it? Someone has clearly stated they want no absolutely no contact and have shut down other family members attempt to intervene on behalf of OP. And other posters are like 'I know she said no contact loads of times, but what if she secretly wants to hear from mum'. It's like banging your head on a brick wall.