To be brokenhearted by my daughter’s behaviour?

[OneAvidRubyLeader]

My DD, 1st year of uni, stole some money from me (£150). She needed it to pay back a friend and she doesn’t work because of high contact hours at uni.

I just realised today that it was gone but she took it a couple of months ago. We give her money to live on but she also had a good few hundred pounds given to her for starting uni which she could’ve used to replace it and I wouldn’t have been any the wiser. She was the only one who knew it was there but I still didn’t suspect it would be her, I genuinely thought someone else must’ve taken it but I mentioned it to her and she denied it to my face but then eventually came clean and said she was always going to pay it back (then why didn’t she?)

I genuinely thought we were as close as a mother and daughter could be. I would’ve given her the money if she asked. She has generally been a dream to bring up, a happy, kind, hardworking girl with lots of friends. I have always given her everything her whole life because I enjoy spending my time and money on her. She has been brought up to know how wrong stealing is.

I just don’t know how to get over this. She knows I’m struggling with an empty nest, my mother’s dementia and my own health. How do I handle this? What is wrong with her? Am I overreacting?

It’s a fact not an excuse. She is not complaining about her current money situation. She has not said she is finding it hard to manage. The money she took was to pay a debt from before uni.

To pay for holidays?

She's behaved very badly but £50 a week is a struggle if she's trying to keep up with her friends.

The right and mature thing for her to do would be to admit that sometimes she cannot afford to go out for drinks and shots and on holiday with her mates. But it's not the easy choice.
She's probably ashamed/defensive that she wants money to spend on frivolous things.

I'm sure she would have come to you in an emergency, but because this is money she spent on something 'fun' I expect she didn't feel she had the right.

So she spent money she couldn't afford on holiday. Then she needed to pay it back. So she stole from your holiday stash, and justified it to herself because it was only holiday money.

She wants to have fun. She has found that living frugally is boring. She wants to have the same amount of money as her richer friends, to do the things her friends do. She doesn't want to hurt your feelings by telling you that her life would be more fun if you were richer.

This doesn't excuse her behaviour, but it is an explanation. It also doesn't mean she's not very lucky - she has a mum who loves her and cares about her - and when she's older she'll understand that a loving family is much more valuable that unlimited spending money - but right now she's young and stupid and would like unlimited spending money. Or at least more of it. She's got to come to terms with that in a mature way, and it doesn't sound like she has.

She's obviously not coping on 50 quid a week.

The money was borrowed from the friend in the summer. She paid it back with the money she stole. Afterwards she was given the £300 from grandparents and could’ve replaced the money she took but didn’t. She then went away to uni and claims she forgot about it until I confronted her today (home for midterm). She has given me the money tonight so did have it.

OP, I'm so sorry, this must be very hurtful to you. I stole regularly from my parents, from small change as a child, up to using their bank accounts when I was older (they put me on them). I can't explain it other than the classic "stealing to try to replicate affection". I know now, many years on, that of course they loved me, but they were constantly too busy to pay attention to me or my siblings, and I felt a constant pressure to give out to others (the really sad thing is that I mostly bought sweets to buy school affection when I was young). The only thing that I can think of, and it may be entirely wrong in your case, is to tell her explicitly how much you love and value her - as well as telling her how disappointed you are. Many many hugs to you, and to your daughter too.

I can completely understand how you feel ! I went through a really hard time with my dd when she started uni. She ghosted me for weeks. Blew through her savings , didn’t respond to messages, all kinds of stuff. I think it is a huge shock to their (and our!) system when they move out and start independent life. I think they go a bit mad from all this new found freedom! Mine is now second year of uni and it’s gotten much better - she is much more grounded now. Hugs OP, I understand why you are distressed by this but I think it might be just lapse of judgement and their brain doesn’t fully mature till 25 :)

Young Adults do daft things … Executive Brains are not fully developed, and they don’t make the best decisions. We all did daft things, drank too much, dating the wrong people, stopping up all night when we should have been doing college work etc etc

If this is this worst she does, it’s not too bad. As long as she apologises, and pays it back when she has it.

it’s not really that that dramatic

If that’s all she has then she’s extremely skint. Especially if, as you say, it’s:

6 days per week, often from 8am to 7pm with few breaks. It’s a performing arts degree so dancing all day and exhausting.

She’s probably spent everything she has on food because she’s ravenous. She also probably doesn’t feel that she can come to you to ask for help because of your approach to money. It shows in your responses here so it wouldn’t surprise me if she feels that she absolutely cannot ask.

I don’t think it’s that big a deal OP. Sure, she shouldn’t have taken it and mine would have got a big lecture about the fact I would give them my last 2p but she told you and she has paid you back. She’s still your daughter and finding her way in life. She has made a mistake but if you blow this out of proportion you risk pushing her away from you. I would be trying to understand (with her) why she didn’t come to me in the first place and try to support her. She is probably very embarrassed but also I suspect trying to protect you from the reality of her precarious financial position as she knows you are not in a position to help more. My dd is off to uni next year - literally none of her friends will be taking a student loan (she will be) and as a previous poster said at uni is the first time they become aware of financial disparity.

Starting college and trying to fit in, make new friends etc can put a lot of pressure on a young person. She may have intended to pay back but got afraid of not having enough money to do stuff her new friends were doing. At about 17 my ds stole 50 off me and like you l was devastated but looking back l can see how much pressure he was under to be one of the gang. He is now 35 and has a responsible job, has never stolen from me since and was suitably sorry for it. I had imagined he was going down a road of no return but thankfully everything turned out OK. So don't panic. Go through her spending and make sure she has enough..not too much for college..and hopefully she will have learnt her lesson.

If it’s okay and understandable to steal from your struggling mother why isn’t it okay to do the same from an employer, your friends or your partner? I can guarantee if the OP said her friend or DP or an employee stole from her, people would be talking about police involvement. I also like how this becomes the OP’s fault because apparently she doesn’t give her DD enough money. How would some of you like it if someone helped themselves to your money and then straight up denied it until backed into a corner? The truth is this daughter doesn’t give a shit.

Given that she literally said six DAYS, that seems a fair assumption ;)

You haven't referenced how she's feeling to see the heartbreak it's caused you? How she reacted during her admission would tell me a lot if it were my DD.
Hopefully it's simply been a foolish misjudgement.

My guess is that DD genuinely did forget that she'd taken your money. Which doesn't reflect well on her, it's careless and self-centred not to keep in mind that at some point you'll need that money and go to look for it, but it doesn't mean that she doesn't care about you. I hope the two of you can move on from this in time.

To find out our daughter is a thief is a difficult thing to come to terms with. I'm not surprised you are heartbroken, in your shoes I'd be devastated. TBH I don't know where you go from here. She's proven that she's untrustworthy and every time something goes missing you are just going to have a question at the back of your mind. Hopefully in time the relationship can be repaired but I doubt it'll ever be the same.

Given that she’s a decent person in all other respects I don’t know why you’re making such a drama out of this.

I have health issues, and a parent with dementia I don’t see what that has to do with anything. It’s not an excuse for blowing things out of proportion.

Yes you are being unreasonable to be "broken hearted" about this. Of course you are. Disappointed, a bit upset and taken aback are all normal feelings "broken hearted" is over dramatic and weird.

If you put your daughter and your relationship on this pedestal she probably felt she could not ask you for help and yep it is entirely possible she pushed it out of her mind because she is 18 and that's how 18 year old minds work,. She did the wrong thing, she has apologised, she will pay you back.

Literally nobody has said what she did was ok, including me, before you try that tactic 😄

She's not a prostitute, drug addict or abusing kids. Yes, it is imo opinion entirely unreasonable to be "broken hearted" about a stupid, impulsive act which she has already apologised for and will try to recitfy.

You have very definitely done equally stupid, unkind or thoughtless things. Yes, you have, even though you will now want to deny that. I know this because you are a human being and we ALL fuck up. Including you.

What more do you want from her? Self flagellation, weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth? You sound like you are very hard work.

What your DD did was wrong. She owes you an apology and must pay you back but the way you’re talking about it is existential and that to me feels like an overreaction. You’re saying things like: is she just a spoilt brat?; maybe I don’t really know her?; maybe we’re not as close as i thought we were?; why couldn’t she just come to me?

Those are such high drama responses. Everyone does wrong things sometimes. Everyone. Your daughter did a wrong thing but that doesn’t make her an irretrievably bad person. Don’t blow up your relationship with her over this. Don’t throw your daughter away.

My attitude to money 😂 Some posters really read between the lines and make things up. She is not struggling to survive on £50 a week (which is only for food), she in fact only spends roughly £30 a week on groceries as she’s a veggie and doesn’t like coffee or alcohol. The money she stole was to pay back a debt from before she even started uni. For a holiday that she should never have agreed to go on if she couldn’t afford it or could’ve ask for more money.

By the time we pay for her accommodation balance, travel, phone, clothes, extra dance and singing lessons, uniform etc she is getting hundreds spent on her every month.

I have said several times that I would have given her the money and she knows that but has no explanation for why she did it. The holiday with her friends was one of 3 holidays she had over the summer. 2 weeks away for her 18th with the family, a further week away with just myself before leaving for uni and not including a weekend in London too. She didn’t pay a penny towards them or anything towards everything she needed for uni. She also had an 18th birthday party over the summer and we paid hundreds for a performance summer school. We’ve also just finished paying thousands, more than our mortgage, on dance and theatre school fees every month. She is not the only one who has made sacrifices for her dream, the whole family have. She is not hard done by and she knows this. She is generally extremely grateful for everything she has been blessed with in her middle-class life (2 parents who both grew up on the breadline). If we could afford to give her more money then we would but we also think she needs to learn to live within her means, especially if choosing such an unreliable career.

So to clarify, she is not skint, she is not deserving of anyone’s sympathy, she stole and has no excuse for it except that she spent more than she had and didn’t want to admit it.

Yes, along with many other things that they are almost certainly unable to afford if their uni contact hours hinder them from finding employment in the midst of a cost of living crisis. It is really prevalent in students, the fast, easy cash to access luxuries they ordinarily would never be able to afford would certainly appeal to a person on £50 a week spending money and a pittance of a student loan.

Thanks for the clarification on the timeline OP - that makes sense now (apart from her not being sensible enough to replace it before you discovered the theft, of course!).

This actually made me shed a tear because when I was about 12 I nicked £100 from my mum to buy a mobile as I was on the only one of my friends who didn't have one 😭😭I feel terrible about it but at the time I felt a bit desperate like it was the most important thing and I felt like I should have one. I try and quell my guilt by telling myself I was quite young, but it's still not right. All I can think of maybe your daughter was desperate for that money too? My heart goes out to you💐.

Everyone has said the theft/lying is an issue - but to address that it would be prudent to understand what led to those events and how to prevent it from happening again. Not to immediately jump to your black and white thinking.

OP hasn’t reported this to the police, presumably as she doesn’t think police involvement is appropriate given their family relationship. Therefore in an attempt to reconcile and to salvage the relationship, it isn’t a bad thing for a parent to attempt to understand the child’s perspective even if they don’t agree with their actions.

It’s not rocket science to see that quite impulsive choices were made at each junction? Whilst I don’t agree with theft, it’s very easy to see how things progressed as they did.

To me, the most important thing is does she fully understand? I wouldn’t want my kids borrowing from anyone as it can place them in vulnerable positions. If she becomes reliant on borrowing from others, she might end up being taken advantage of by the wrong person.

@OneAvidRubyLeader - actually i think your DD does deserve some sympathy because you seem so willing to allow this to change your view of her and your relationship with her.

Your daughter fucked up. We all fuck up. You’ve got posters on here who seem very happy to encourage you to build distance from her and become alienated from her. Whatever happened to the unconditional love we’re supposed to have for our DCs? Your DD did a bad thing. We all do bad things. That doesn’t make her a bad person. You can be a bit disappointed but don’t smash up your relationship over this.