To feel sorry for my friend's daughter?

[Feelingsorryforher]

My friend has been through an incredibly difficult decade. I won't give details because it isn't my place to share her story, but it has been very tough. I have done my best to support in different ways throughout, both emotionally and practically. My friend herself has been amazing...strong, positive and resilient in the face of some tremendous challenges. I really admire her.

Recently, she has made a decision to cut her young adult daughter out of her life. The daughter is toxic in many ways, and her behaviour has been truly dreadful, causing my friend a huge amount of difficulty and stress. Again, I'm not going to provide details because it isn't my story to tell, but suffice to say that I totally understand my friend's decision and I respect that she has to do what she feels she needs to do to preserve her own sanity and protect her younger dc, having previously turned her life upside down in order to try and support the older daughter. I have not questioned my friend's decision or expressed any doubts about it to her.

But actually, I have been struggling with her decision, because I find myself feeling very sorry for the daughter who is now desperately trying to mend the relationship. The pity that I feel is despite the fact that I still feel incredibly angry with the daughter for the way that she has treated her mum. I just can't imagine ever cutting off my dc in a million years. Then again, my dc wouldn't ever behave in the way that my friend's daughter has behaved, so it's a very different relationship.

My friend will not engage with the daughter's attempts to fix things, and I totally understand why. The daughter has a history of being manipulative, and this may just be more of the same. But at the same time, the daughter herself is extremely vulnerable and very messed up, and I can't help not feel sorry for the fact that she has effectively cut off the only solid source of support that she had.

The daughter has now contacted me directly to ask her to intervene with her mum. I will tell her that I definitely can't do this, but I'm wondering if I should offer to at least meet with her myself as she is in a very bad place and I'm worried about her - she has a history of self harm. Should I ask my friend if she is OK with me offering to meet with her daughter, or would it be better off just telling the daughter that I can't get involved? I don't think I would want to have contact with the daughter without sharing this with my friend, as that would feel disloyal.

I have known this young woman since she was a baby, and I had a lot of contact with her when she was growing up. I am under no illusions about how toxic she can be, but I also recognise that she has been through some very tough times herself. WWYD in this situation?

YABU - tell the daughter that you can't get involved and ask her not to contact you again
YANBU - ask your friend if she would mind you offering to meet with the daughter to check on her wellbeing

But perhaps that isn’t the most important thing here?

What a read this thread is. How heartening to see that even on a parenting forum
it's always the mothers fault.....
The adult dd is behaving toxicaly, mums fault, she's placed a younger siblings at risk, of course, mums fault.

So by this decision making, it must be the ops friends mums fault that op caused all this damage? Or is it her mother's mother? How far back can we go?
Back to Eve and the original sin?
@Feelingsorryforher I would be very cautious re the dd, how much damage could she do to your life if she becomes unhappy with you?

I don’t think it’s about fault, but it is about responsibility. Obviously we all approach parenting differently but I believe that a parent is a parent for life, and carries that responsibility for life. And it’s hard, sometimes (and I do have experience of this as a parent for reasons I won’t go into) it’s soul destroying, but we have to be the adult even when our kids are grown, especially when they’re grown and struggling.

And when I say parent, I mean parents, not just the mother. Both are equally as responsible and it’s shit in this situation of the OP that it’s all falling into the mother to burden the responsibility. I really feel for her. It’s also impossible to comment not knowing the details of the daughter’s behaviour. The mother is fully allowed boundaries, I just think that as a parent, cutting off should be a last and extreme result.

Your friend raised her daughter, and her behavior didn’t come out of nowhere. Instead of cutting her off, it might be time for the mother to recognize her own role in this.

I’m siding with the daughter here. As you said, your own children wouldn’t treat you that way because you raised them differently. To me, a mother turning her back on her child speaks volumes. Both mother and daughter are responsible for this situation.

We are in a very similar situation with my BiL and MiL. Frankly, if you have never been in the position of caring for years (decades?) for an adult child who is manipulative, controlling and emotionally (and physically?) abusive, whatever the reason, you can simply have no clue what a toll it takes and how hard the decision to cease contact is. You obviously have your own relationship with the daughter and can meet up with her and support her if you like - under no circumstances is it a good
idea to discuss this with your friend or speak to her about her daughter. Your friend has drawn a much needed boundary and you should respect it. Yo

Hi I totally get this situation as I have it but its my mother whose the toxic one and causes me problems and messing with me emotions etc.

People who think she is bad cutting her off or not giving a second chance is because they have no idea what it is like and how it can affect you and you havd to in the end put your sanity first!

The way I see it is if it was a partner or a friend would you continue to put with the abuse and games... no you would end the relationship. Family doesn't mean you allow someone to continually affect and ruin you as a person and mean your life is that for the rest of your life and that as a result it also affects other children or partners you have. They literally destroy your life and others close to you.

So no you should not get involved she won't change these types of people can't. It's very manipulative and narcissistic and clever behavior. These people are not daft and play on your weak spots and use you and then turn against you after gaining your trust in order to get whst They wanted!

Stay put of it, stsy away from the daughter. The daughter has to accept what's happened and go try sort herself out on her own now. I doubt very much she is capable of changing though. I can think things are all good now and then she will say and do horrible things to break my trust or emotionally upset me every time!!

It's their own issues not yours and its not your responsibility and not for you to feel guilty which is what I eventually learnt. They try to make you feel bad for them then they shit all over you!

It's sad but they havd problems we will never be able to help them with or mentally deal with in our lives x

so speaks someone who has never dealt with serious mental illness, trauma and/or personality disorder within their own family. You are fortunate, OP’s friend is not. It is simply not the case that every ‘well raised’ child turns into a decent adult. Other factors are at play. In any event, if something the mother did has ruined the daughter to the extent she is abusive and manipulative to the point mum needs to cut her off…well it’s probably best the relationship ends.

The OP has described it as a last and extreme result. Asking her friend to rehash all of her thought processes in reaching that conclusion is cruel as is putting the burden of deciding if someone else should try to assist her child. Her friend made the tough decision and needs to get on with parenting her younger children.

If the OP thinks she can do better than her friend, that’s up to her. Guilt tripping any decision made here is unfair and unnecessary.

Stay a long, long way out of this. No one will thank you for getting involved. Your friend will be annoyed that you’ve decided to insert yourself into a very personal and difficult situation, and the daughter will probably blame you when your intervention inevitably doesn’t work.

I’m sure you are coming from a kind place here. But this isn’t your mess to sort out.

It could also be a mental health problem, or a personality disorder, or simply a not very nice person bullying those she is close to, manipulating and chaos-making. I do believe that we are the product of our upbringing to a large extent, but that does not simply mean that when someone turns out to be a bad egg, the mother has failed — it is always a complex mix of circumstances and genetics. In any event, no one stays totally responsbile for their adult children forever, at a certain point we are well within our rights to decide that a relationship with our adult children is no longer sustainable, we have done all we can and they need now to fend for themselves, and heal their own wounds.

I agree that it doesn’t mean the mother has failed. I just think we do have a responsibility to take care of our adult children and help them to heal if we can.

I also certainly don’t see cutting them out because of a mental health problem, or personality disorder as the right thing to do. In fact, quite the opposite. That’s when they need more support than ever. And in the case of them not being nice and bullying, well that’s often a sign of deep hurt (not condoning that behaviour).

Do we remain responsible for our adult kids forever? There’s so much nuance in the answer to that question. But you can exonerate yourself from any responsibility without going to the full extent of cutting off your child. There’s a deep deep hurt and pain that comes from that sort of abandonment. It’d have to be abuse, as I said upthread, for me to do that.

But like I’ve said, all parents do things differently, hold different standards and limits. But I certainly don’t place blame anywhere, like you say, so many factors at play in how a child ends up as an adult.

I think we have a certain responsibility if our children have developed mental health issues or other problems due to OUR earlier life choices - yes. Of course.

How can you possibly know whether a mental illness is 'caused' by something you did? That's not how it works. In any event, if you have cared for a mentally ill child for decades on end - with all that entails, often violence, smashing up your home, control, manipulation, the destruction of bonds with other children, cycles of addiction, dangerous strangers in your home - family events ruined, missing weddings, christmasses, not able to have grandchildren to visit and so on, you may well get to a point where you felt that you had no more responsibility to indefinitely care for your adult child at the expense of all other areas of your life.

Many mental illnesses are caused by harmful ACEs as a child, if you do the research you will easily see the correlation.

You have seriously exaggerated or made up the facts. We don’t know the dd in this case has ‘smashed up’ her house or anything else. The dd does sound extremely vulnerable.

Your question as to whether we always have to support mentally unwell children is a personal one. Yes many parents would support their adult children indefinitely, others may feel they can not. Cutting off a mentally unwell child is fairly extreme in my view, given there are medical reasons why they can not manage relationships/life well.

This.

A parent cutting out their child IS worse than vice versa. Parental abandonment is rejection by the person or people who should be the only ones who love unconditionally - it's an utter and complete rejection.

Additionally if the young adult is still very young (under 25) it's highly probable that their parents played an instrumental role in making the child who they are, through both nature and nurture. Things like borderline personality disorders are the result of genetic predisposition plus trauma or abuse in childhood, for example.

Parents can't in conscience wash their hands of their children, at least until they're over 25 (the age at which the neurological element of puberty finishes) - doesn't mean they have to live with them of course, sometimes that's not in anyone's best interest even in certain cases with teenagers, but going no contact cuts deeper than any parent should want to cut their young adult children. We chose to take the responsibility of having children, they didn't choose the context they were born and brought up in.

So. Much. This.

Handhold to you, @ThePieceHall - you are not alone.

I would ask your friend and if it’s a no signpost the daughter to services eg housing the council and mental health etc but keep an ear out for her

Did you miss the part where this pp mentioned her child is in residential care with very complex needs? In that context cutting off seems shocking to me, this is a highly vulnerable person with high needs that requires as a bare minimum, protection and care in my view.

So the daughter isn’t sorry that she was horrible to her mum, she’s just sorry that she was caught??

You need to be really careful here. Your friend sounds like an excellent mum who has explored every avenue before making this decision.

her dd needs to really look at her own behaviour, then try to mend things with her mum.

My DD1 is in a residential college for her very specific disability as she is blind due to her in utero exposure to drugs and alcohol. She is adopted. I don’t ’play that card’ because I get criticised when I do. Sure, my DD has very complex needs but she also has no attachment and she hates her younger sister and I. My DD1’s birth father hanged himself in prison with schizophrenia and her birth mother is apparently bi-polar, plus an alcoholic and drug addict. My DD1 is violent, aggressive and verbally abusive and she steals everything she can get her hands on. When she is home, we have the police over at least twice a week. The neighbours dial 999 regularly. As I say, my DD1 hates me so much she was happy to make a false allegation against me and see me arrested and put in the back of the police car. There were actually three police cars and six officers sent to my tiny semi-rural street. My DD2 was woken by a police officer at the end of her bed and saw me being carted off under arrest. Thankfully, they understood her distress and they were kind and did not handcuff me. Genuinely, I am happy to accept criticism from anyone who would accept their child being responsible for putting them in a police cell for 21 hours. Being in that cell broke my brain and my whole life. I’m okay with the fact that people think I’m a shit parent and I must somehow be responsible. I have searched into the recesses of my mind and I know I am not. This is just how it can be when you live on the margins. After nearly two years of a full mental breakdown, I am okay with saying that I choose life and I choose happiness.

I am so sorry you have experienced such distress and trauma. I am so sorry for that young girl that has had the most difficult start to her life, before she came to you. I can’t imagine the pain you have collectively been through. I hope you have access to proper, long term support 💐

This sounds impossibly difficult.

It's not the same thing as the OP, unless the OP has slipped telling us that her friend's child is adopted though. Adoption isn't "playing a card" because the biological parents created the foetal alcohol syndrome, in utero damage, attachment disorder and genetic predisposition to mental illness that your daughter has. Biological parents bringing up their own children also can't control whether their children are born with genetic conditions obviously, but they absolutely are responsible for their choice of second parent, and conditions in utero and in the months and years after birth, when neglect and rejection cause attachment issues.

I've said this before but it's bad enough when you set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. A lot of these situations sound more like setting yourself on fire and the other person is still cold. I don't blame anyone for getting to a point where enough is enough.

So what you are saying is that men who are abusive to their partner and/or children are let off scott free because the mum should have chosen better.
What about the men who dont start to be abusive until after you are pregnant and past the point of being able to have an abortion but leave and the crts order access is that the mothers fault too?
Your whole point is its always the mums fault never the dad's. I went to he'll and back trying to protect my dd from her dad until a judge finally saw him for what he was and removed his parental rights but the damage was already done and the years of therapy since have barely helped in repairing the damage but according to you that's all my fault and nobodies else carries any responsibility because I didn't choose better.
May I suggest that you look up covert narcissism before you judge people

Men who impregnate women they then claim are "psychos" are responsible for any problems with any children they conceive - very poor choice to create a baby with a "psycho" (we all know 99% of the time the poor choice of reproductive partner goes both ways and the woman was no less well balanced than the man).

Men who abandon their babies and children because they can't be arsed to parent are responsible for their poor choice, but women also share responsibility if they know ahead of time the man is unstable - plenty go ahead, knowing the potential father is an addict, an alcoholic or unstable or just unpleasant.

If you don't know until the child is born you can't do anything about that part, but you don't abandon your child by "going no contact" because you plural - the two parents it takes to make a child - have created someone troubled/ unwell/ unpleasant.

My point was entirely about not washing your (plural) hands of a child by "going no contact" if their issues are a mix of genetics and upbringing, when you and your partner at the time created the nature and nurture conditions that made that human who they are. It's absolutely right to bring in outside help, but not to abandon them.