To allow my DD to follow her ridiculous "life plan"

[14HoursToSaveTheEarth]

This is not really an AIBU. I'm asking for advice/views. Long post so sorry.

My DD (16) is a number of things including confident and articulate. This may sound harsh but she is also in many ways immature and gullible, and very, very lazy. She left secondary school without a single GCSE of any grade and to be honest I think it is safe to say that this will continue and she will leave all education without any qualifications. Importantly, she does not care. She lives a privileged life in a seven bedroom house where she wants for nothing, but her attitude is that work is for fools and she plans to live off the government until she gets married and they look after her. You have no idea how long we have spent trying to dispel this fantasy and educate her as to how life will be in the real world if she doesn't change her attitude but she thinks we made our life choices (like going to university, gaining multiple degrees and working long hours at good jobs to provide her with this life) and she will make hers.

So she now has a "friend" who she met online via other friends who has had a hard time in life. She is also 16 but she cannot live at home due to her family circumstances, so he has a flat paid for by the local authority (according to DD). This friend has it sounds serious mental health issues, is a self-harmer and has attempted suicide several times, and recently had a miscarriage. I do not think it was her first pregnancy. The friend lives in East London. We live in the countryside several hours from London.

DD and her friend have now hatched a master plan whereby when they turn 18 DD will move in with her friend in London and they will both live off of benefits and never have to work, or at most they will get a job at MacDonalds.They think that this is them beating the system and they laugh at people planning to go to university and get jobs.

I could write this off as a teenage fantasy, which it probably is, but I constantly see threads on MN about young women who are living the life she describes and it makes me despair that this plan may become a reality. I don't even know what to do if we cannot talk her out of it. Do we drive her to London and try to be "supportive" (though I would not give her money other than in an emergency) in order to still be part of her life when it all goes wrong, or do we say "fine, make your choices but stand on your own two feet then" and see her sink possibly out of our lives forever?

DD also has two younger siblings who idolise her and I really worry about the message this sends to them, if she messages them about her amazing life in London sticking a finger up at everything we are trying to get them to work towards.

For full disclosure, as I don't want to be accused of drip-feeding, my DD was adopted at age three.

I know this will probably all come to nothing but it horrifies me when I hear her planning for a future that I know will be so bleak when for so many years we had such high hopes for her future. She has tried vaping and tried alcohol at a party but she hated both, so does not drink or smoke, has never tried drugs and is a virgin. However, she is incredibly stubborn and I have seen her turn viciously on people, including teachers, who do not allow her to have her own way (though thankfully this is not often), and so I can see her following through on this ridiculous plan out of sheer willfulness.

Before anyone asks, DH and I are fully on the same page on this issue. We are both equally horrified at her so-called plans but at a loss as to how to curtail them when she listens to everything we say and then simply says that she has her own mind and when she is 18 we cannot stop her. And she is right.

Beside this ridiculous plan and a general laziness with respect to anything concerning study, she is actually a pretty good kid most days (the moments of stubbornness I mentioned above are momentous but rare), so I have no reason to do anything to punish her. She is allowed to have friends and crazy ideas.

So please MN, your views:

Am I being UNREASONABLE and should let her spread her wings and move in with an unstable friend and live a life that horrifies me, putting her safety at risk in the hope that she sees sense and comes home, or

am I being REASONABLE and should do everything to prevent her from moving in with her friend when she is 18, even if that drives a wedge between us, hoping that she eventually understands this is for her benefit?

or should we do something else entirely?

I think what @JennieTheZebra said is what you need to be focusing all your energy on right now.

She’s on a countdown to where she spends the weekend with her friend and comes back pregnant by some bloke she met at a party, having had her first taste of fuck knows what drugs, and determined to get herself back up there to carry on having fun.

Everyone knows that McDonalds is not the easy alternative to getting qualifications anymore. They don’t take unqualified, lazy applicants because they are swamped with qualified, hard working applicants. There are young people all over the place desperate for part time work. It’s not easy to find anymore.

And they might have grand plans of living together, but any accommodation this girl gets isn’t going to be private; it’s going to be council provided and for her only. They don’t do flatmates. Your daughter isn’t going to have her own bedroom. It’ll be a room in an HMO, a bedsit or if this girl wins the accommodation lottery, a one bed flat (unlikely, especially in that location). Your DD will be on the floor until they realise that she’s staying there and then the other girl will be told that your DD goes, or they both do. Is this girl going to make herself homeless for your DD? I suspect not. So that’s when your DD either thinks that a baby is her way of getting her own place, or she gets herself involved in situations she can’t get herself out of, and you’ll lose her forever. Do you trust that she’d ask you for help if she needed it? Or would she be too stubborn to admit she was wrong?

Whether you have to get her to agree to go by bribing her with the promise of furnishing said flat, or by humouring her plans and pretending you think they’re all going to happen, is irrelevant. Just get her there and let the professionals do the rest before she just repeats the whole sorry cycle with the next generation.

@soupyspoon you are right that I have not answered questions about DD's birth family because that is her story, not mine. All I will say is that she is fully aware of her background and when her siblings have brought her birth parents into a conversation her comments are generally along the lines of "why would I care about them?". Not in a nasty way, just not interested. And with respect I do not want to talk about her life pre-adoption any further on a public forum.

I don't think she is attracted to the idea of a life in poverty. I just think that she genuinely has so few visible outgoings apart from her phone, she just genuinely thinks that life will be a lot cheaper than it is. She doesn't go out much with friends, she doesn't drink or smoke, she is comfortable in joggers and a sweater. If she has access to her phone and has basic food and bills covered, she thinks that is enough. And I kind of get it, because right now her friends are getting this level of support. They are in flats, with enough to eat and they have their phones. I am not saying that this will be achievable for her and maybe some of the benefits for vulnerable 16 year olds will fall away also for her friends, but that is what she is seeing and thinking that if she can be housed, fed and have a phone, and doesn't need to work, that seems easier than my life of 12 hour days and working weekends.

I think my supermarket comment was taken out of context which is my fault. When I was 16 I worked in a supermarket while I did my A-levels and I held down multiple low pay jobs while at university. However I always saw those jobs as a temporary means to support myself until I moved onto the next stage. Because DD does not have any ambition to progress to a next stage I was historically worried that taking a low-paid job would encourage her to see this as the end goal. I am now seeing that perhaps I should be encouraging that. And by the way I am really not knocking shop work or any other job, but it is not necessarily what you have in mind for your kids when you dream about their future.

I have though always encouraged DD and my other kids to think broadly in terms of jobs. I know she is never going to be a doctor but I have encouraged her to think about learning a trade such as plumbing or plastering or car mechanics, or a skill such as hair dressing. But I have not encouraged them to look at shop work as an option, but that is partly because until she is 18 she has to be in some form of training.

Perhaps part of my plan could be to get her to 18 and then encourage her to apply to work in a shop or similar rather than move in with her friend. She is very tidy and presentable, and speaks nicely, so she would fit in well anywhere on the high street, so long as she isn't asked to do anything she doesn't want to!

I am also taking comments on this thread concerning the importance of therapy very seriously. I do not want to get into that on a public forum but please do not think I am ignoring them.

I agree, but at 16 the idea of spending all day chatting to friends and watching Netflix seems to have an appeal.

At 50 it doesn't sound awful.

But thank you.

I agree, as an adoptive parent to two.

You can roll your eyes all you want, but it’s the truth, and there are markers in OP’s posts that genuinely bring this up as a consideration.

Hopefully it won't come to that .:) .Can I ask has your daughter a passion for anything.Even if it's social justice.I think by talking to her in debt about this you might find out ? She sounds very empathetic towards this friend . She obviously feels he understands her .Id gently explore that .I think the key is to communicate as well as loving her unconditionally you really like her as a person.In hindsight that is what my son was testing with me .And he was pretty hard to like at times .But he has softest most empathetic kindest soul now he's in a better place and on the proper medication.

'markers' ??

jesus wept.

I think if she can manage it now and wants to do it let her start the process of trying to get a part time job .Help her with her CV .Help her find something to wear .Wish her the best of luck and mean it .Point out all the great things about her ....If she gets a job great ...she ll learn very quickly how long you have to work to cover the simple cost of things. If she doesn't get a job ... She'll learn you don't walk into jobs. If she gets a job and flourishes fantastic .My three sons all worked .It only benefited them in the long run

Is there some serious issues. I do t know anybody with no GCSEs.

You have worked long hours and weekends. Maybe she doesnt want to work such long hours, for various reasons, and this is what she is struggling to articulate. We just assume our kids will be get satisfaction from the same goals as us and this can be a burden to them. And they kick back at our so called goals.

I know I did. My mother was always busy and motivated and did several degrees, but I felt I wanted to spend more time with her and hadn't had the chance. I wanted something different for my own children so I had career goals which were different. It wasn't about money in my mother's case it was about fulfilling her own drives to be creative, make a difference, a laudable ambition but it left a kind of scar; we admired and idolised her but we felt she was critical and inpatient sometimes - laziness was a horror for her. Tbh I don't think her criticism made us less lazy. My brother left school at 16 and then dropped out again. My sister did well but became critical herself. My other brother has no formal job. I'm a SAHM after working for 14 years only.

I think as parents our messages can sometimes boomerang back in ways we don't expect. My own children seem to love earning money despite my shiftless example. Their goals are different to mine. At 16 their goals were different again.

After 30 years in education I can tell you not all issues in education are down to a learning difficulty.It can be down to children taking on roles in class too protect self esteem.Misding key components stages in reading and writing . Never catching up. Being terrified of failure .The Education system is not fit for these children .We do not support or recognise or put in enough social supports . We do not harvest their talents or interests.My hope is in time we ll realise this and move towards a more integrated education for all

I don't understand why - if you and your husband are wealthy - you don't want to set your daughter up with a nice life (a place to live, car, holidays etc)? Why does she need to graft for money when she has family money? What's this life lesson you're so adamant to teach her? In reality, you are risking her running off with friends with serious MH issues and end up in potentially very dangerous situations. Why don't you help her?

It sounds to me that she just has very very low self esteem. If you don’t even try then you can’t fail can you? What you described about the test where she handed in a blank sheet of paper is a prime example. She’s trying to make the narrative that she doesn’t care anyway, and why should she bother. The reality is she’d rather control the situation by “not trying” than make some effort and not be good enough.
She sounds to me like she’s desperately scared of not being enough, maybe that’s related to her adoption, maybe it’s not. But if she sets really really low expectations for herself then she can’t possibly fail can she? Seeking out friends in this arena is a similar thing, she has no one to keep up with and to them she is not a failure.
I know others have previously mentioned it, but please please please seek some psychiatric help for her.

I kind if get that she’s seen you working very long hours and has decided she doesn’t want that for herself. I think we all did that with our parents…looked at something in their lives and thought I want the opposite.Is there anyway of saying to her sometimes I think I’d like a less stressful ir even part time job myself but I’m not sure what I could do.. kind of brainstorm in a light hearted way and see if she comes up with anything ? Then .. actually you’d be good at that… and it would be much less hours than I do.. and you could be part time even … I dunno 🤷‍♀️

Or she’s trying to look cool to her friends

I don't think that she will be allowed to move into her friend's flat.

She will need evidence of her tenancy for housing benefit and I don't think that she will be granted a tenancy, having no local connection.

I would imagine that her friend's Social Worker will get involved, if they try to make this happen.

Its fairly standard for a care experienced child, that doesn’t make it any less frustrating or worrying, you have to remember while she is chronologically 16 due to adverse childhood experiences she is unlikely to be developmentally 16. We have to parent for our childrens developmental age, not their chronological age.

What support does she currently receive?

Identity issues can really mess you up as a kid. Trust me. And they can follow you through life if not addressed. As other posters have suggested I think therapy is key. And the sooner the better.

You sound like a lovely Mum who's really trying to give her daughter positive guidance. It's not a failing to seek specialised help.

Good luck. 💐

Adding to my previous comment, the fact the you and your DH have modelled hard working “successful” behaviour to her doesn’t necessarily mean that she will follow in these footsteps. If she has really low self esteem she won’t feel she can ever meet this similar standard… I am not saying you necessarily project this standard on to her… but that is what she sees.
She wasn’t good enough for someone to keep her as a baby/ toddler, and deep down she’s convinced she won’t be enough to achieve things in life now, so it’s easiest not to try. It’s self preservation. She really does need some help. She’s not just being a lazy know it all. She needs some serious help .

@14HoursToSaveTheEarth this type of disordered thinking if very common in the adoption community. Has she ever had an assessment? Could she have FASD whereby cause & effect is impacted? This would mean she wouldn't have the ability to see the consequences of her life actions/decisions. These wonderful kids also often live with higher anxiety and can be less able to cope with demands. At her age education, jobs and being an adult who provides for themselves = demands that feel impossible. It's easier to make a joke of it than admit you don't think you can cope.

She has also likely gravitated to people with difficult lives because she can relate on some level. That is likely the experience of her birth family. She is likely seeing people she feels she has more in common with. I once read something about adopted children often finding more peers they can relate to in schools where there's more economic diversity and a lower average income than in schools where the community is wealthier and experienced less trauma. This was true even for children adopted young and even for those whose adoptive families were affluent.

I'd try to engage with a specialist team that works with care experienced/adopted children and has higher levels of understanding of some of the more common experiences, their impact on the brain and the diagnosis' that are more common within this community including their dysmaturity - through no fault of their own, nor the fault of their adoptive parents. I'd also look into things that aren't traditional talk therapy - more art, horse etc., therapy that allows her to increase positive feedback and decrease anxiety, giving sensory rich experiences that give her the message she's okay and accepted, which may then help her open up about her real thoughts and feelings.

She's not a bad kid, she's likely trying to run from something that feels scary. Her plan and this person makes her feel something positive - she's running towards that.

Good luck

I suppose that depends on HOW wealthy they are. You can be well off and give your kids a good start in life but actually funding a separate home car income bills forever needs serious wealth especially if you have other kids who’d expect the same. If we’re talking billionaires then yes I’d agree rather than take the risk of her going off the rails.

I don't think only billionaires set up their kids with a nice standard of living. I work in law and I can assure you that none of my colleagues or former colleagues are billionaires but that doesn't stop them from buying flats/cars for their kids and helping them out in life.

No of course not I knew I was going to get pulled up on the billionaire bit. But you do need serious money to be able to say ok darling you never want to work that’s ok we’ll fund all your independent adult living expenses for the rest of your life including any children you may have and we’ll do the same for your siblings.

My DD is sixteen. I don't think even she is expecting us to buy her a flat and a car at this age.

However you are enabling her entitled and juvenile approach to life, stop now while she is still living with you. If she wants to end her education, let her do so but without money and handouts from you she will soon change her tune as she's unlikely to get much from the government at her age. If you are claiming child benefit at 16 she gets nothing at 18 she gets job seekers allowance of £72 pw. She can always go back to education once she's grown up but as far her attitude goes do something now to give her a reality check before your other children do the same.