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 😢

This.

And I say this as a mother or a DD with ADHD, PDA and possibly Autism.
They need to be a person in the world so have to learn to meet people in the middle as otherwise they will be utterly alone and miserable, because literally only a mother will put up with this.

My DD can behave like this but I make clear that these conditions don’t allow her to be an absolute arse and any fallout is her own doing and she needs to understand that she can’t behave like this.

That’s not to say I don’t put up with a lot daily but for something like this I would be taking a harder line.

You’ve shown love and compassion and your DD has gotten in her own way.

Absolutely. Autism or not, she's old enough to be told, and to understand that is not reasonable behaviour at all and it won't be tolerated. She's an adult, not a child.

This doesn't sound like a pure autism problem, she sounds like her behaviour has been enabled for far too long.

At 19, the importance of birthdays can be dialled right down surely. Doesn't want to go to the show or meal you suggested and offers no other ideas, just leave it there. It sounds like she is being pandered too, to the detriment of your own sanity.

Yeah she sounds like a complete brat and you’re just allowing it continue. Good luck with her making a useful contribution to society.

This sounds familiar- especially the old presents and jealousy over her duster. Have you posted before?

Honestly I know you are trying but you’ve got to stop this approach. She’s 19 and it’s clearly not working. Stop the guilt and buying multiple presents. If she’s not using the old ones put them in a box in her room and forget them. She may just always hate birthdays and do very little. That’s fine.

When things have calmed down, just say that you’re wiping the slate clean. No talk of past presents or things you haven’t done in the past. From now on she’s got a budget of X and you’ll be led by her. She can take as long as she wants but if she doesn’t choose something, however long it takes, it’s not going to happen. Buy a nice supermarket cake, a card and a few little things she’d like but otherwise leave it to her. And mean it this time. No booking things last minute or taking over.

I kind she’s autistic but quite a bit of this does sound like emotional blackmail/ rudeness and you’re not helping her by enabling it.

Very interesting point. I see this all the time in my work in mental health. A lot of very unhappy neurodivergent young people who have just ‘failed to launch’ and no one seems to know what can be done about it.

You sound lovely. She sounds overindulged and really quite unpleasant. She’s got you wrapped around her finger at this point.

Absolutely this!

It also sounds like this 19 year old needs to experience some natural consequences.

She's made a very big fuss about cakes that were bought for her and supposedly now 'can't have them' because things aren't quite as she wanted.... Okay, so she doesn't eat birthday cake this year. Fine. It will not harm her. Everyone else can eat the cake, if she feels she cannot eat it, well, ok that's fine. She does not need this fixing or any sort of replacement cake bought, she can just not have cake.

She's 19 she's not 5. Many adults don't get a birthday cake on their birthday at all!

You may find that next year, having not had any cake this year following this situation, she decides she 'can' have cake. And if she doesn't, well that's fine again, cake isn't a need. And maybe the following year no need to waste money on a birthday cake if she can't eat it anyway. No fuss, no anger or argument, just neutral voice and natural consequence.

I completely agree with every word of this.

There is fundamentally a communication problem here (as is so often the case with ASD) In your situation I'd wrote DD a note, explain that you want to put the issue of the birthday to rest forever as it is still bothering you.
Apologise for throwing away the morsels of cake and forgetting the additional cake and ask how you think you can both move on once and for all.

Be honest OP, was her 18th cake significantly cheaper than her sister's? Because honestly, the fact that her sisters birthday was in lockdown and hers wasn't shouldn't make a difference. Of course a NT brain would have the maturity to let this pass, but a PDA one? not so much!

People who have PDA can also be incredibly astute at picking up nuances in voice, my DD has PDA and we find it easier to discuss arrangements over what's app. There's no ambiguity, no misinterpretation of tone of voice.

To those saying that your DD is an arse because "my ASD child doesn't act like that", know very little about ASD. As the old saying goes "if you've met one person with ASD, you've met one person with ASD" and PDA is a completely different ball game.

Dr Naomi Fisher is an excellent therapist who has made a lot of her resources available on line and hosts many webinars about PDA. Id recommend attending if you get the chance.

I suspect that parents in this situation can spend so much time learning about their child's needs and how to meet them and adapt their world for them that their expectations on the capacity of the rest of the world to do likewise become very unrealistic.

But I wouldn't accept this behaviour from my 10 year old child. So it's all very well saying 'at 19 she has the maturity of a 10 year old', well fine, if my 10 year old behaved like this they would get a bollocking and the presents and cake taken back until she apologised and behaved in an appropriate way.

I have an autistic child, and I have followed recent cases in the news with interest. axel Rudakubana for instance. With his case it's clear that it wasn't his autism that caused him to do terrible things, but rather his parents making every excuse for his behaviour and not expecting basic things of him, allowing him to become what he did. I see a real lesson in there for myself and my child. Autism makes things tricky at times, but the expectations for how we treat others MUST be the same, whether it's masked or not.

The outsider always has to fit in, so I suggest she start learning how, instead of acting the victim.
I feel for you OP.

I really profoundly disagree with this. Autistic people are pains in the arses because of their autism. The difference between NT and ND pains in the arses, is that NT people are able to understand the impact of their behaviour on others but just don’t care or enjoy the negative impact they are having. ND people don’t understand the impact. They are extremely ego centred not by choice, as a genuinely selfish person is, but through disability.

Its a completely different situation and cause.

OPs daughter has not developed appropriate strategies to manage the difficulties her autism causes and to behave in a more pro-social way. Whether because her parents have not found the correct strategies to teach her, or for another reason.

But it is very clear her behaviour is not due to personality or choice, her behaviour is hurting her too, but due to her disability.

I think this is a big issue

You need to stop pandering to this madness and she needs a dose of what the real
world is like. You’re not helping her by acting as though this is normal or acceptable.

I have a son who sounds very familiar and gets stuck in what I call doom loops (my phrase for what you’re describing). I’ve realised it’s not helpful to them to act as though their ‘problems’ actually need to be solved, as they then just add more problems and the situation spirals. The big wide world won’t pander to them, so we need to stop too or they will expect that others do the same.

As someone else said, she’s able to communicate well enough to make her demands, so she’s high functioning enough to understand. Sometimes in life things don’t go your way, and sometimes you don’t get what you want. It’s a really important life lesson. And I say this as a mum who’s raised a child with severe PDA/autism/ADHD. It’s not easy to make a stand but it is necessary.

Yep.
A few pages back a poster said something along the lines of ‘people with autism still have to learn coping strategies to live in the real world, else they’ll never go anywhere or do anything’.

And that’s exactly what I see. Young people who never go anywhere or do anything. It’s quite upsetting.

JFC stop putting so much pressure on her bday. You are part of the problem.

You have posted here before about the same issue and clearly didn’t listen to the feedback the first time.

This is very accurate.

Oh yes, it’s coming back to me now, was it your DD who won’t accept that she’s neurodivergent and engage with any help? If this was her then, again, I think I would be focussing on that rather than the birthday issue. Birthdays are the tip of the iceberg TBH.

Agree.

Honestly we are facing down a workforce crisis in future where a high % of adults will simply expect to be kept and pandered to and ‘have their needs met’ and throw tantrums whenever it doesn’t happen.

And a huge number of frail, exhausted elderly people dealing with such adult children.

The fault that the birthday was bad sits 100% with your daughter. You did what you could. Don’t set yourself up for her behaviour to be like this every birthday. Just firmly say you’re sorry she feels the birthday celebrations weren’t good, but that you did your best. If she remains difficult, that’s on her.

Absolutely this. I know several families with a young person with PDA where the family have gone 'low/no-demand'.
The result has been fewer tantrums. Great. But there has otherwise been no actual improvement in terms of any of the following:

1. engaging with education. All are still not in school, have now had years to 'recover from burnout' but do not appear to be recovering they just spend huge amounts of time each day on screens with nobody making any demands on them. Despite this all seem very miserable.
2. helping out around the house or doing anything at all productive
3. managing any better to access the outside world
4. develop any coping strategies for things they find difficult

So far these young people, none of whom have any intellectual disability, appear to be getting worse, not any better, and are if anything now less likely to ever live independently or support themselves as having refused school have achieved no qualifications at all, and everything in the home is done for them with no demands placed on them. They do not even get dressed. That pattern for the several I know is strikingly similar. Lots of screens, no demands.

Its not working clearly!

I have a teenage DS with autism and learning disability, he is non-speaking. My attitude, as he knows very well, is that your autism doesn't give you the right to be rude or selfish. He would not be catered for in this way in our house. If I ask him what he would like to do for a birthday and he doesn't tell me, then fine, we don't do anything apart from say happy birthday. I would not pander to all the cake fuss. Buy a cake, everyone is offered some, if some dont want to eat, no-one cares. All the more cake for everyone else then. If he doesn't express a wish for a particular present I will get something (one thing) that I think he would like. If he doesn't like it he can put it away somewhere, sell it, give it away, whatever he likes. Just like anyone else.

The world is not going to accommodate her in this way. You are not doing her any favours.

The issue is that we need to be consistent that the world can’t charge for neuro divergent people as early as childhood. There can’t be a cliff at 18 when they’re supposed to drop all extra support and accommodation such as they’ve had in school in order to enter society. In many ways the unpopular Asperger’s title helped as it signalled high functioning with brings expectation with that.

100% agree. Parents do a disservice to the wider society that their child has to live in, which in turn out will impact the adult they become, as they realise that others will not enable their behaviour to the same extent as the indulgent parent. They’re being taught to think that the world revolves around them and their unreasonable demands, and as a result their adult lives will be very difficult to navigate away from home.