DD’s birthday was an utter disaster

[bendmeoverbackwards]

It’s DD’s 19th birthday today. She’s ASD and has been out of education for a few years.

Last couple of birthdays have been disappointing to her and I know this one brought up a lot of emotion not just about birthdays but also her situation in general.

I asked her a few weeks ago if she wanted to see a particular show and a meal at a steak place. She just said no but gave no other suggestions. I then asked last week of she wanted just a meal out and where - no response. So I decided to book a local restaurant just in case as Saturday nights get busy, with the option of cancelling if she didn’t want to.

When I told her, she wasn’t happy and said she couldn’t do it now because I’d chosen it (autistic brain). I asked where else she’d like to go but didn’t get a reply. I suggested a takeaway, took hours of questions about this, she didn’t see a takeaway as a birthday celebration. She eventually decided on pizza.

I also got her a beautiful personalised cake. Last year for her 18th, I got her a nice chocolate cake with her name on but it didn’t have the same personalisation as her older sister’s 18th birthday cake (which was celebrated in lockdown so I pushed the boat out a bit). Also the board base was accidentally thrown out when there was a tiny bit of chocolate left on it. She complained about this for months. I said I would buy her an extra cake (cheapy supermarket cake) but I forgot.

Now she says she can’t have this year’s cake because of the lack of the other one and it would be in the wrong order (autistic brain again).

Choosing presents is also difficult for her so I chose a few small gifts and paid in £50 birthday money into her account. She didn’t like this either, she wanted to choose her own presents (but from past experience she takes ages to choose, months and months, so I thought I’d make it easier by giving her money).

Written down, I realise she sounds like a spoilt brat. But I didn’t do some things that I said I would eg buy her an additional cake and take her for a belated birthday meal (from last year).

The evening ended with her sobbing in the kitchen and me losing my temper 😢

She may had ASD, but you are excusing too many bad behaviours/reactions.

Glad you’ve found it helpful even though not easy to read.
As for being mean/horrible I would stay calm and factually challenge each time. It’s not horrible to expect an able bodied adult to contribute to her home or do something productive with her time. I’m not horrible I’m fully funding you including luxuries like your phone and hair products.
As for being accused of being snappy I think it’s good to realise you are human and actions have consequences. I’m tired dd I’ve worked all day while you have lazed at home. I’ve come home and been expected to cook a meal and carry it up to you. It’s quite mean you haven’t cooked for me when you’ve done nothing all day. Or it’s irritating to have to constantly remind an adult to do something so it’s understandable I snap.
You don’t have to be perfect.

Would writing to her help? When my dd was weighing up two uni options I set out pros and cons and what we would fund in an email and she made her own informed choice. It took a lot of the emotion out of it.
So from you and her dad.
We love you but we can’t continue like things are.
We expect you to be enrolled on a course or in regular employment by September.
I’ll help you look at courses, go with you to open days if you wish.
If you are studying locally or online then we will pay your allowance and phone. You are welcome to live here and we’ll carry on funding your living costs.
If you prefer to move to uni accommodation in September we will top up your loan to maximum loan.
If you would prefer to work full time then you are welcome to live here and pay £x board (whatever her siblings do)
It’s your choice and we’ll support your choice but the current situation of you here and not in education or employment can’t continue indefinitely.

OP you are coming across like a doormat to her. If she has PDA, is this helpful or would knowing you have boundaries make her feel safe and more contained? i am sure many people have expert advice.

I have a young adult daughter with severe anxiety and I often reflect that I tolerate behaviour from her that I would not tolerate from a partner or anyone else. I wonder if this is wise…

“I’m sorry if you feel upset but I’m not being horrible, I’m discussing this with you like an adult. I can see you’re not happy, nor am I, and that’s exactly why things need to change.”

If she says “stop snapping” as PP have said I’d say “I’m not meaning to snap but I’ve had a long day working and I’m very tired, I don’t have endless patience and resources for (whatever is happening) so let’s get it sorted.”

Op, you've been the most caring and wonderful mum to date. Your dd knows that you are her safe space and that she can be left to wallow in inertia because you love her and will always be there to look after her. She also knows you bear guilt over the way you handled her autism diagnosis and she is playing on this for what she sees as her survival in this world.
Allowing her to continue on this trajectory is like leaving her on life support. Everyone's miserable and the only upside is that she's technically alive. But she's not really alive if she's not enjoying life at all. I'd take the risk and start putting in some boundaries i.e. she has to get a job or go back to education otherwise you won't be supporting her the way you have. My mum did this to me and it was such an important step.
I'd hold her hand the whole way; helping her apply, driving her where she needs to go etc. but bottom line needs to be that you have expectations of her, the same way she does of you.
She will be so much happier in the long run, I promise.

I am truly in awe of the fantastic advice, this is MN at its best ❤️

Thank you to you all. Time to build a plan and find my confidence and strength.

You know you can do it - both you and your DD deserve a change of tack. If you’ve not done so, it is worth reaching out to the NAS (National Autism Society) and see if they have anyone on the helpline who can help/advise. There are groups of parents of older/adult children who meet for coffee etc and I know the ones that head up each regional group are usually really approachable. I do wonder whether it would help having a person IRL who truly understands, has either experienced, or knows lots of parents who have experienced, circumstances like yours?

From reading this thread, I hope you can see that you are not alone - lots of us have been through it and many of us are just about coming out the other side, but we are getting there. It’s lonely when you don’t feel you can offload to friends - ‘cos you feel they may be getting sick of you moaning and really don’t get what you’re going through or have any strategies that would work, but finding a support network locally might really help.

Sorry just one more question if I may.

Playing devil’s advocate - what would you in response to something that someone on a parenting group told me - that if dd was ready to start a course or a job then she would already? And that a kick start may just feel like a kick to her?

I guess that the answer is that she might never be ready without the expectation that she does?

She may have got herself so entrenched in a particular way of thinking and living that it needs an external prod to find motivation to change direction. She is comfortable how she is at the moment, if maybe unhappy and frustrated deep down, but there is no incentive for her to face her fears and make different plans.

You say dd2 was recently diagnosed, could it be dd3 is comparing herself and does not recognise her own behaviour?

The expectation needs to be that she is capable of living independently.

She might need practice and support and it doesn't have to happen all at once but it is a process and she needs to start moving towards it. There needs to be progress - researching options, being open minded to look at a range of possibilities, trying something new like volunteering, being polite and reasonable to her family . Not just rotting in her room and raging like a toddler.

We all have to do things we aren't quite ready to do - take an exam, give a presentation at work, look after a newborn baby, figure out how to fix a leak in your bathroom, have a difficult conversation an elderly parent about whether they need care etc.

Life doesn't wait until you are ready

I wonder whether the rigidity around this may be more than autism - but the now deep belief that she’s missed the window? Perhaps it is worth sharing some of the stories you’ve been told here (I’ve been chatting with some parents on a parenting forum…) . Tell her you have hears of many youngsters like her who have had a wobble at 6th form, lost 3 years, but have given an access or foundation diploma a go and are now at university. That when they got there, thinking everyone else would be 18, they discovered there is an even spread of first years aged 18-21 (and indeed much older).

The student cohort is very international so there are often older students who have saved up. There are students who messed up in their first year re doing it, others who made a mistake with the university choice and course and are starting again in a new place. Honestly amongst my DD’s intake she has met so many ‘kids’ with varied backstories of obstacles they’ve overcome, many impacted by covid/lockdown, many ND, etc.

I think perhaps communicating the narrative of what is possible, rather than dwelling on where you are now, might perhaps help? She needs to believe that there are many doors still open to her and that lots of people have been through them before her.

Many young adults would love not having to work. Most parents are not enabling them to do so which is why they have to go out and get a job in order to have some money.

My Dd just chose off her own back to go and do something. She was out of education for 15 months.

Yeah unfortunately sometimes we just have to do these things in life. I would have happily never worked if I knew someone was there to fund my lifestyle and do everything for me, it would be bliss. But that isn't how life works unfortunately.

From what you've told us, I don't think your DD3 has ever been a self-starter, and certainly isn't now.
I think she might be stuck in the groove of just continuing with what she's been doing due to a lack of confidence, fear of failure, or autism 'freeze'.
She might truly think that she has no Uni options left.

I would be showing her some of her options, and websites etc that she can then research herself to check out the details.

And maybe a couple of sites for job hunting.

Perhaps put her in touch with careers advisor - which takes you out of the equation. In fact, maybe get her an appointment with an advisor first, then they can help with all of the above.

Also give her some housework chores that she is responsible for.

Good luck 💐

Bless you hun. You sound like a great mum, doing your best. Sorry the day didn't turn out how either of you wanted.
Not sure what to say or suggest but wanted to send a hug.

I think for a particular profile/type of child, that might be true. But nothing you’ve said about YOUR child indicates that she is just taking time out to heal. I think that the group-think in some parenting groups can be very rigid, which again goes with ASD and doesn’t leave space for the families for whom this is plainly not working.

Its the same with other areas of parenting - I remember the absolutism around baby-led weaning, extended breastfeeding, the evils of formula, the total necessity of “babywearing” etc and the heated entrenched debates and rants that went with it. And of course with a few years hindsight, reality isn’t so black and white.

The thing that rings out from your posts is your belief that the “answer” is inside the child - that she will find her own way. That places a colossal pressure on the child - how can she possibly know what she needs, when she has had no life experience to form an opinion?

I return if I may to my previous post about the family with the boy who had them all camping in the lounge and would threaten to kill himself. My nephew told me that when he was taken shopping for school shoes when they finally decided enough was enough and he had to be back in school, he insisted on going to over 10 shoe shops looking for a particular type which he couldn’t describe properly but was sure existed. It seemed absolutely obvious that this was just him manipulating his mother so that they wouldn’t be coming home with shoes and therefore (by his logic) he wouldn’t be going to school. But she took him at face value and believed that the shoes existed and wouldn’t believe he was playing her yet again. Her older children had turned out nicely so she simply believed this one was wired up the same. OP I fear you have the girl version of this with your daughter and she’s not to be trusted to find her own way through because she has a totally different agenda to you. And based on results is required to do nothing. At all.

My first thought is that this advice comes from a place of incredible privilege doesn’t it? For most people with ASD through most of history and in most of the world and even for most in the UK today it just would not be an option to do nothing until one feels ready. This is not advice that can realistically be universally applied.

My next thought is that I think we all know that this is not how motivation works. I don’t think that people do usually magically wake up one day and change the whole course of their lives. What is far more likely is that the status quo becomes more and more the norm, habits get engrained and embedded and it becomes harder over time to make a change.
Human beings usually fail to act in their long term best interests ( stopping smoking, losing weight, doing exercise) we are more often derailed by short term pain and need more immediate incentives.

In depression there’s a concept of behavioural activation where you essentially ‘fake it til you make it’ You do a little bit every day even though you have no motivation or enjoyment because it’s well known that the less you do the less you will do and the more stuck you will get. In the end practicing that little bit will get easier and there will be some positive reinforcement. On the other hand avoiding difficult situations and doing very little leads to a negative spiral and to things getting worse.

In any case it is not a kick start or a kick that you would be administering more of a nudge, a change to the contingencies. She still has the option to continue as she is until she feels ready but that decision will be a bit more uncomfortable than it was.

Thank you.

To return to the cake issue (minor, I know compared to the other issues), I took the Colin cake into my office as dd said she couldn’t have it. However the other one (expensive, personalised) is sitting in the kitchen untouched. I can’t bear food waste so I told dd if she didn’t want it, I would donate to the food bank. Her response was ‘no’ so I’ve asked her for a solution. But I don’t know what to do with this bloody cake if she doesn’t have a suggestion 🤷‍♀️

Only you know your own child, OP but I go back to my earlier comment. You DH needs to take the lead on this for a bit and you need to step back - your reaction to the cake and the gifts shows you are not acting rationally. Your DH loves your DD as much as you do but isn’t so tied up with guilt. At the v least you need a joint approach to parenting DD.
You should use the forums for help and assistance and ignore them when they are unhelpful. You need to find your confidence as a parent. You seem to have completely lost it. Easy to do when you are worried about a child.
Fwiw I think the big issue here is that your daughter was thriving and doing well academically at aged 11 when you got the diagnosis and misled her as to why she was doing the test. In her mind that was perhaps the last time she felt she was fitting in. She, wrongly, associates the test and autism diagnosis as the cause of all her woes. The lack of a truthful explanation allows her to blame you for lying. Your guilt compounds this problem. I think until you tackle this - hopefully in therapy with a professional, it’s going to be hard to move on. It’s going to be difficult for her to give up this belief.

Here is a brilliant way to start your new approach.

Give DD3 the options: keep it and eat it; or give it away.
And give her a time frame - 'let me know by 5 o'clock tomorrow what you want to do. If you haven't made a choice by then, Dh and I will decide '.

'No' is not an option!'.

You could try serving the cake up as dessert after dinner one day, you could all eat some, offer your dd a slice or just leave some out for her if she won't eat with the rest of you, and then she can eat it if she wants or leave it if she prefers. Then if she has a tantrum just ignore it.

Birthday cakes in most families are for the whole family as well. I would have just started eating it. It’s a cake. She can be daft about it but you are a grown up and can just treat it like the nice cake it is and eat it. Why would you give it away?

This. Invite the family to celebrate DD’s birthday and eat the cake. She can choose to join in or not but at least you’ll have marked it in the traditional way.