To leave friendless young adult alone for new year as parents

[cotswoldsblue]

Hi Mumsnet!

I’m working through some issues in therapy and I can’t quite decide if this bothers me or not/if they were being unreasonable.

I’m approaching 30 and am neurodiverse. Up until 23 or so I had one to zero friends as I was painfully shy- my one friend was often in France for the Christmas and new year period.

For the Christmas period my siblings and I would go to visit my parents in the country and my siblings would leave after a few days for their New Year plans. I had no parties etc as a teen so stayed with my parents. I have quite fond memories of this- we had champagne and smoked salmon starter and then cake and then watched the fireworks on TV etc.

We have a flat in the city (I lived with my parents until I was 22) and after the age of 17 or so they said they wanted a peaceful new year just the two of them doing the same thing and that I had to leave and go to the flat alone if I had no where else to go.

I remember being sad as it made me remember what I was missing out on not having any parties to go to, and I felt like I belonged being with my parents. I remember crying one year as I did the same thing alone. I do see they deserved a break and to live their own lives, but do we reckon that’s a mean thing to do to an AUDHD 20 year old? They may of course have been hoping I’d find my own things to do and that the independence would be the making of me. I never did at that age haha :)

I am really surprised at the responses in this thread. I think what your parents did is really horrid. You don’t help someone make friends by forcing them to spend NYE alone. I would NEVER do this to my kids in a million years, neurodiverse or not! I also spent NYE with my parents sometimes when young as for various reasons did not always have somewhere to go. At that stage of life not everyone has the easy local party invite (esp as may be living away in term or whatever). Parents are a really important support and fallback.

I am glad I don’t live in some of the families reflected here who apparently don’t give much of a shit about each other! I’m sorry your parents did this. (Though I agree that it is usually best to try to move on/get over it).

Op, you are focussing on just one day, but it sounds like you were also there 17x365 otherwise.

Nobody is saying it’s ok but if you can’t see that the remarks were a mark of a certain desperation then you haven’t much empathy. Disability is not a competition and it’s very unfair to minimise others’ experience because you’re having a tough time yourself. But there isn’t much support for those at the more extreme end of the spectrum as I outlined in my post upthread, and my take from her post was that she was at the end of her tether and in need of support. Yes it’s unfair and unacceptable, but it’s also understandable.

Yes I think this is quite mean, sorry you went through that. Never in a million years would I make my kid go to an empty flat on New Year’s Eve when they could be having some bubbles with me. Makes sense that you feel sad and confused by this past experience.

Is it partly what spurred you on to make your own NYE plans though?

if you still lived with them as an adult, maybe they also needed to get a little time to themselves, whilst also helping you see the benefits of making your own way, your own plans for your future.

if they cared for you generally, and they meant well for you, I think it’s part of the separation from child to adult, which just came a bit later and with more of a push by them, for it to happen for you.

And I would have been very understanding of that if she hadn't have been so rude and swore at us and made out like the late diagnosed are privileged.

I mean in whose world please? I was saying she has no idea of anyone's else's lives to be so disparaging of us. No one has an idea fully, even if you have that condition yourself, as each person's experience is unique to their own. I was angry at her attacking other ND people when they aren't the people she should be angry at. Be angry at the government for not providing proper support.

It is like when people try to compare people's grief. No matter how it occurred, we all have grief and feel it. But I wouldn't be abusive to another person because I feel I am the worse done by.

Like I said, she’s clearly exhausted. What sort of Christmas do you think the parents of severely autistic kids get?

There is a world of difference between her situation and mine. And yours. It’s not a competition but it’s poor not to acknowledge that.

No chance of my kids getting late diagnosis - they couldn’t even speak or sleep or eat, there was quite obviously something clearly wrong from the start. I’m assuming the same with her child. I can completely see why she got so irate.

Read my above response.

I again get that it's hard but it is still not a competition.

How about have empathy for everyone instead of knocking others down? We can afford that!

I was angry because she was so goddamn rude.

Jesus. I would love my 20 year old to want to celebrate with us. I might worry that she’s not out with friends though. Perhaps they are trying to encourage you to make other friends. It can be a worry to parents. We won’t be here forever sort of thing.

Your experience is your own. You have no idea how the rest of us live or how we got to that.

It's one thing to have learning disabilities alongside being ND, I do understand that. But we can afford empathy to all. It isn't limited to just extreme situations is it now?

Exactly this. The situation of some parents trying to cope with the more extreme behavioural issues that Autism brings can be devastating. And support is patchy across the country - in some places it’s non existent and parents are left trying to cope with adult children much bigger and stronger than themselves and with violent tendencies. Placements outside the home for those with these issues are difficult and sometimes impossible, so families are left to cope - often until behaviour escalates and the child ends up in the criminal justice system. This is potentially what this poster has to look forward to as her child grows up. He will never be independent and she will always be a carer.

It sounds to me as though this poster is at the end of her tether and in need of support, not a lecture from those who clearly have no idea what an exhausting and demoralising 24/7 slog it can be caring for someone profoundly disabled. No-one is suggesting it’s fair or acceptable to minimise the experience of others based on one’s own situation, but I think this poster was just venting her own frustration, which is understandable.

I think sending a 17yo out of their home into a flat alone on nye is weird and extreme. When did you actually move out? Most 17yo live with their parents so it’s really odd to kick them out for a few nights in order to be alone.
I don’t think a 20+yo necessarily needs to be accommodated in mum and dad’s nye plans though. I just don’t really think of it as a family time or one where people can’t be on their own. If you don’t like parties or crowds or “fun” in the traditional new year sense (I don’t) then you need to build your own rituals around that rather than expect others (even your own mum and dad) to provide it for you. If you do want a more social/celebratory. NYE then you need to make that happen yourself by doing the work the rest of the year rather than expect mum and dad to invite you to their party. I’m still not entirely clear where you lived from 17-now and being asked to vacate your home is distinctly odder than not being invited to your parents home that you don’t actually live in

This. And so beautifully put.

I must admit I'm confused about the whole family setup here.

For the Christmas period my siblings and I would go to visit my parents in the country

Visit your parents? Didn't you live with them the rest of the time? Was this a visit to a BnB or similar, or their second home?

and my siblings would leave after a few days for their New Year plans. I had no parties etc as a teen so stayed with my parents.

Were you living mostly with your siblings instead of your parents? Are the siblings older?

We have a flat in the city (I lived with my parents until I was 22)

Is "we" meaning you, your parents and siblings as a family home? Or was it a flat, say, that they'd bought with room for just the two of them really, and squeezed you in as well, thinking it would be just till you left for university? Just trying to think what's going on here.

No one is suggesting what the poster said was fair or acceptable. But life isn’t fair. Her son is never likely to be independent and she will always be his carer. That’s her experience, and she’s clearly in need of support. Where is the empathy for that ? Sometimes you just need to vent.

Sometimes when things have been difficult for us, we misremember them as having been more long lasting than they were.

If you remember several nice years of drinking champagne with your parents, and also being made to go to the flat by yourself at 17, I think that perhaps your memories aren’t 100 percent accurate of that time.

Your op also speaks about travelling back for Christmas and being asked to leave by new year, but also of living with your parents into your 20s.

Im wondering whether this actually happened a couple of times in your 20s, after you had already left home, when your parents were trying to encourage independence. Rather than at 17 when you were still living at home (which would have been much harsher). And that in your memory the two have become merged. Might be worth a conversation with your parents?

I think this was harsh to do at 17

By 19/20, less so I think. If you had no friends, I am guessing you basically never went out in the evenings. I don't think it's so unreasonable for your parents to want the house to themselves once every now and then and they probably assumed by the time you were an adult that that would sometimes happen

I wouldn’t ever turn my DD away no matter what her age

she might be on her own - I might go to bed or go out but she always has a home here - and we would both say we always have a home at grans to!

That’s incredibly cruel.

If they wanted time alone, then they should have had a night away - not kicked you out of your own home to do so.

Buy honestly, I wonder if they were trying to force you to invite friends around or go to a club.
Perhaps if they thought you were bored, you would go and do what other young people did.

And so on the face on it it is cruel but they may have had good intentions.

Agree with this and also surprised at the responses. Did people miss the fact that this was the OP’s home they were being shipped out of.

Also agree about moving on, although as they are in therapy they seem to be. I guess they’re just trying to process it/get some other perspective.

Were you diagnosed with autism and ADHD at that age? I was diagnosed (with both) as an adult and feel very sad about some of the ways I was parented and some events in my childhood/ teens where I was punished for things I wasn’t doing purposefully or ridiculed for odd behaviours etc, but I have to remind myself my parents had no knowledge of neurodiversity and probably did think they were helping to mould me in some cases. If your parents thought you were NT and all your siblings were off making plans with friends I can see why your parents thought pushing you to do the same would help you do the same, although obviously that’s much harder for someone neurodivergent.

Op, what is your relationship with your parents like now?
You can't really know what the thinking is behind having to leave at new year unless you ask them. If you were to ask them, they may or may not be able to give you an honest answer or they may remember things differently with the passing of time.

If you have a generally good relationship with them then I would put this one to bed. It sounds like things are much better for you now.

It can be useful to look over the themes of the past to understand our distress patterns, or our patterns of responding to things in our present and to give some of how we got to where we are now a sense of perspective, but I'm with one of the other poster (who quoted Larkin) that it can be detrimental to hyper focus on details from the past. I think therapy can be really good when it focuses on how to move forward in a healthy way that allows for all shades of grey and a focus on a bigger picture, rather than putting events and relationships into binary categories.

Agreed.

I expect we will have DS2 (17) with us for a good while yet as he doesn’t drink, has no intention of doing so in the future, and might not have anywhere to spend NY if he’s not in a relationship.

I wouldn’t dream of kicking him out so we could be alone on NY.

On the face of it, it does sound mean. I’d love to hear the parents’ perspective though.

Maybe they got tired of preparing NYE with champagne and smoked salmon for grown up children.

I imagine you were always there in the living room, which could have made them weary.

Maybe the grown up offspring being there all day every day got wearing,