To drink alcohol when my daughter doesn't like me to.

[AnonymousMum37]

Hi, I wanted to ask some advice anonymously.

My 9 year old daughter hates anything she sees as bad for you e.g. alcohol, smoking, tattoos, piercings... . She is autistic and very black and white about what she sees as good and bad.

I have 3 small tattoos (from before she was born), pierced ears, and I enjoy a moderate amount of alcohol (a glass or two of wine with dinner 2/3 nights a week and go out to the pub with friends maybe once a month).

I have never smoked or vaped, but I have some friends who do.

Her reactions are getting unbearable.

She growls at any of my friends who smoke or vape and has decided they are bad people, even if they don't do this near her she knows they do and she therefore hates them. I don't like it either so I can understand but they are not bad people.

She begs me at the supermarket not to buy wine, loudly making a scene as though I'm a raging alcoholic, so I can no longer buy it with the weekly shop as it is mortifying.

She refuses to do her chores unless I promise not to drink anymore. I stupidly relented recently and said that I would not have a drink for a few weeks and then last night I had had a long day and had 2 small glasses of wine with dinner and at bedtime she was screaming and crying saying she can't trust me and I am a liar and I'm not ever allowed to drink again.

I know this sounds awful, and when she's saying it I start feeling like I must be an awful parent..

I do so much for her and she already controls so much of family life. I don't like her feeling she can control what I do when it doesn't even affect her.

She is adamant I should not get any more tattoos when I was thinking about one recently. I feel like I'm the rebellious child and she's the strict parent.

It's very hard to argue with her because of course she is right in a way, alcohol, smoking, tattoos, none of these things are good for us, but at the same time I would like her to be tolerant of people's rights to make their own choices and see that we are not good or bad people but unique and complex combinations. I have tried comparing it to her choosing to eat sweets sometimes which is not great for you but fine in moderation but she can't make that link.

Am I being unreasonable to say I am allowed to drink alcohol?

I think you need to explain to her that adults make choices for their bodies. Children also make choices for their bodies, but very occasionally adults need to step in to make choices for children because it's our job to protect them, which is why she can't choose to drink or smoke.

The ASD is playing a part here but she is going to grow up to be a very judgemental person if it isn't nipped in the bud now.

I'd be very surprised if ALL her choices are 100% healthy- does she sometimes choose to lounge in front of the TV when she could be exercising? Does she ever eat sweets or chocolate when she could instead choose vegetables? She needs to understand that sometimes less healthy choices, in moderation, are part of the point of life. We could all live an obsessively healthy life and live to 120 but what's the point if we don't allow ourselves any joy?

An adult who goes around trying to stop her partner or friends drinking and proselytising about it is absolutely a bad thing and she'll quickly end up without any friends.

My mum told me that a glass of red wine every night was good for you and produced the research to back it up! So I believed that all through my life (and didn't notice or question that the red turned white quite often!!)

Could you try this?

I think although lots of the research is a bit de-bunked now, there will still b loads of info out there saying that red wine is good for the heart etc.. and that the Mediterranean diet, which incorporates a glass of wine with meals a couple of times a week, is the healthiest in the world!

If she's a black or white thinker, she will understand the rule that 1 glass of red wine a night is good for you.

Take away social media for good . That will sort it ! I’m a mum to a 9 year old myself and this would not be tolerated

The problem with this is, what if OPwants a white wine or a g&t?

I have a lifelong phobia of drunkeness. I'm tee-total myself and used to hate my Dad and ex-Fi drinking anything as I felt like I couldn't trust their behaviour if they had. Neither of them had a drinking problem or drank much at all, I just knew alcohol affects behaviour and I thought the smallest sip would make them unpredictable and unlike themselves, and therefore scary.

I've lightened up slightly as an adult but most of my friends also drink very little and I still hate drunkeness.

Tbh, I'd avoid drinking around my dc if this was their reaction and keep it for when I was out without them or they were in bed.

I would have a tattoo if I wanted one, it doesn't affect one's behaviour.

Yes, a lot of people are in denial about how much they drink, and it’s not pleasant for children to be in the company of adults who are even tipsy. It’s scary for children.

@LittleHangleton FYI, safety plans, where the needs of the child are given higher priority than the desires of the parent, are commonplace in families who live with domestic abuse, serious violence, alcoholism and drug use

Yet absolutely none of that is relevant here. Your ‘safety plan’ seems to consist of OP never having 1 drink with dinner occasionally, being screamed at by her child throughout the supermarket, not having g a personal choice to get a tattoo, having g no contact with her friends etc. In essence, being bullied, controlled and coercively abused by her child. Frankly, that’s weird and I hope to goodness you have nothing to do with SN families in real life.

Once you give an inch to these obsessive anxieties, they will take miles and it just proceeds down an extra slippery slope. ‘Fix’ one thing and they will just swap the obsession to something else to exert control over people in their environment. While they don’t set out intending it, it often becomes extremely abusive.

The most extreme example I have seen is a family where the child controlled everyone’s diet to the extreme. They started off complying as they simply couldn’t cope with the extreme meltdowns. As the child got older other forms of control started to replace the meltdown including physical abuse when they reached puberty. This affected both parents who then were extra keen to comply to save the NT sibling from coming to physical harm. Culminated with one parent taking an extreme way out when they couldn’t go on anymore with not only the food but other aspects that had crept in during teenage years. The ultimate train wreck.

Best to stand firm and nip this in the bud early on. Assist the child with clin psychologists etc to try and manage their discomfort but listening and acting on what the child wants imposed on others around them is terrible advice.

Social media is evil. My 10 year old comes up with different things every week. I blame the older ones first and they tell me no he got it from social media. Is there a way of switching off YouTube?

I’ve acknowledged this fully upthread. No offence meant

Putting the wine issue aside, why does she think tattoos and piercings are bad? I really hope you have explained to her they are not bad or unhealthy.

And yes, I think you should be able to drink in moderation around her and she needs to know this is ok.

i removed YouTube for my daughter . She has access to restricted content once a week and I think it helped a bit . But it’s as you say they come up with so much crap that is obviously from online influencers , I honestly worry they cant distinguish real life from YouTube .

Or her own autonomy.

In which case I'd get a health professional or someone that's NOT you to explain it. Her teacher? A friend that's a nurse or doctor?

The piercing thing is irrational as they can just be taken out so there is no logic behind this. More people have died falling out of bed! Ditto for the tattoos.

I understand the smoking and vaping one - there is NOTHING good about that and you are indeed just poisoning your body, so she is right about that.

Alcohol - as you're not getting blind drunk then someone can explain to her that binge drinking is bad for you, but small amounts are fine.

If she's anything like my autistic 9 year old, then trying to have any "negative" conversation and suggesting he is wrong is a no-go!

@springintoaction321

it is the right of an adult to consume alcohol if they so wish though.

At this age I was crying when my mum would drink (weekly, in the house)

At that age it's petrifying seeing a parent drunk. She was also a mean, mean drunk which didn't help

I was ignored and I resent it

@TesChique

im sorry you experienced that but your situation sounds very different to that of OP’s daughter. Sensible drinking in moderation is perfectly possible and most of us do manage it.

Don’t promise something and back out but you know that.

my daughter is 12 and has this sort of thinking at times too. I’m not a huge drinker but she’s lectured my husband about beer. Got a bit intense about caffeine for a while. Won’t sit in the front seat of the car because she knows it’s slightly safer in the back. Etc etc.

I find teachers she trusts to be enormously helpful here, just to help frame some more middle ground situations that ‘good’ or ‘bad’

You're quite right in retrospect

Quite, I completely agree!

I get it, it's awful having a disabled child screaming etc in distress but when some professionals suggested I just put up with my child insisting everyone called me 'David' (discussed upthread, I'm a mum / woman in my 30s) I said enough was enough. I love my child but I wasn't going to be dehumanised in this way and have my autonomy stripped from me.

As someone who has worked with autistic children for years,my advice is stop the control right now. I have seen the results of allowing the control to escalate and know of a family who all have to go to bed at 8pm ( parents, late teen siblings) whilst their son patrols the landing to ensure they haven't got out of bed. This started with just small things but they're now living an unbearable life.

Agree. Also, my experience is, say the first time you do the behaviour the child is distressed by and they scream at you / cry then you comply x times or for y weeks, but then try to 'get away' with the behaviour again, the child's reaction will be bigger that time. It has to be. Subconsciously (because in my experience this is rarely deliberately malicious) the child understands that the first reaction wasn't enough to get the desired result, so they have to escalate the reaction. If this is repeated across several months or years, you get to a situation that is even harder to reverse because the rare times you don't comply the child's reaction involves self-injury, self-harm, physical violence or significant property damage.

I'm not normally a behaviourist in approach but this pattern often requires it. As the controlling behaviour is almost always anxiety driven, the anxiety gets worse and worse. It's why the gold standard treatment for phobias and OCD is Exposure Response Prevention Therapy.

None of which awful situations apply to the OP. Stop trying to make out like she’s a SS case or an unfit parent. She’s having a couple of glasses of wine, not mainlining crack fgs. Ridiculous.

But also surely she shouldnt regulate her own ( normal) life because of a 9 year old.Where does it end? Don't do this , don't do that. I wouldn't be allowing anyone even an adult to be dictating to me like that.

The DD will come across many people in her life who do stuff she hates. But she's not going to be able to stop it

The weaponising of 'safeguarding' is really repugnant.