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?

I would get her a token Christmas gift and tell her the £150 she took is her present!

What a shock. It's not just the act of theft, it's the fact that your relationship wasn't what you thought it was because she chose to steal from you rather than come and ask you to help her out eg with a loan.

But what's done is done. I think you have to think really hard about what comes next. How can your relationship be repaired and trust be rebuilt? It's more than an apology. You want her to understand how profundly this has shaken your trust in her and your sense of your relationship. At the same time you genuinely want to understand what she was thinking and why she did this. But you also do want her to know you love her and that repair is possible.

None of that will happen unless you apply some 'difficult conversations' theory and plan the conversation, or conversations, carefully. I would think really hard about when and where you want to talk to her. You need to be calm and it needs to be in a private space where you can both talk freely. Will she be more likely to talk if you go for a walk or to a cafe, or do you need to be at home in case you get emotional? Maybe start by telling her that you want to understand rather than centring your feelings? I'm not saying she isn't in the wrong but being right isn't the end of it all. She needs to understand how badly your trust has been dented and you both need to think about what could be done to start rebuilding it.