Dd, autism and cake - Thread 2

[bendmeoverbackwards]

I had no idea that my first thread would fill up and I am in awe and overwhelmed at the amount of support.

I am going to re-read all the responses and make a plan. Thank you, this has been eye opening.

I don’t think there’s any point dwelling on what could have happened or should have happened or what life may or may not have been instead. You can’t go back in time. Maybe if you’d have done things differently they’d be better. Maybe they’d be much much worse. No one knows. There’s no parallel universe where you can find out. And as I said, no matter what, you can’t go back and change it now anyway. You just need to move forward. That’s it.

No I don't. I think what you did was reasonable. And I think your DDs difficulties and situation are because she's autistic, not because she's traumatised by an incorrect autism diagnosis. As people said on the other thread, autistic people can be developmentally behind. So at 10/11 she may have been more like 6/7. It's completely reasonable to make a decision about an assessment for a child this age to get them support.

I think she doesn't want to accept it as she doesn't want to accept her difficulites are because of something 'wrong' with her, and she's rejecting that idea and trying to blame external things, like you and the diagnosis, as it's easier than looking inwards. Why else would she be trying to get you to admit she's isn't autistic, when you already think she is, her psychologist thought she was and her behaviour now.

You are indulging her in this idea that's all of her problems are your fault. They aren't, and it's not doing her any good to think that.

OP you did the best you could at the time with the information you had. That's all any of us can do.

OP you may well benefit from some counselling yourself here to process your own thoughts.

I had a situation where I had to make a major medical treatment decision for someone I loved. It ultimately went very badly which was a known, although typically unlikely risk. If I was doing it again obviously I would make a different choice. HOWEVER, and this is the really key bit, I had to make a difficult choice with limited information available and no crystal ball on outcomes. I could only try and make what I thought the best decision at that time and with those facts. obviously I felt terrible but had to make a conscious decision to put guilt aside - I had to make a tough call and made a reasonable decision and that had to be enough for me.

Beating yourself up about a reasonable decision you took 8 years in the past, even if you might make a different one now, is going to get you nowhere.

Also no amount of blaming yourself will improve your DDs situation.

Would it be possible to link to your first thread please? @bendmeoverbackwards

That’s it. You are both stuck in ruminating about this past decision and you are maintaining one another stuck in the loop. You need to let it go so that she can let it go.

No one can know whether things would be better or worse if you made a different decision and there is no point at all in going over it as you cannot change it anyway. You have bought into her narrative about this and given it too much headroom.

Just keep saying to yourself and her ‘I did my best at the time and everything I did was from a place of love and care for you. I have made mistakes and will do again because I am human but I want to focus on how things can be better in future.’

No, I don’t think that OP. I think at the time you were trying to make a potentially difficult process easier for all involved. Hindsight is 20/20 but you had no reason to think that you DD would beat you up over this white lie for nearly a decade.

Your DD’s problems were really not caused by this minor parenting decision of yours. There’s no reason to link the two.

Her problems are a combination of her autism but more significantly I think a reluctance to recognise that she has issues, and active desire not to challenge or develop herself because it’s so much easier to get what she wants by manipulating everyone else around her.

Let it go OP. Or else it will drag you both down.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5494118-dds-birthday-was-an-utter-disaster?reply=150771379

@HazelMember

How are things this weekend OP?

OP, if a toddler shouts "I hate you!" at his mum, does that mean she should give in and give him cake? No.

That is basically what your DD is doing. A lot of her behaviours sound very immature and childish. By trying to ensure she never has any difficulties, you're keeping her in a very unhealthy emotional state.

Life is unfair sometimes. You can only control your own actions. Other people have things going on in their life too. Your dd needs to learn these things. Perhaps with her autism it needs to be explicitly spelt out to her and it will take longer to learn, but she will never be happy if she expects the world to work exactly on her terms.

I have to say that as someone who is ND and has ND children I don’t think this is just autism or even PDA. There does seem to be an element of manipulation here. It reminds me of a friend’s dd who has EUPD (which can exist alongside autism as well).

I’m not sure what I would do either. I know what things would help her but not how to make her accept them or change her thinking. I think in this sort of case you can only change yourself.

I think that message is manipulation.

I would put it back to her that if she is suffering from trauma, the only way of addressing it is through therapy. Be unwavering and calm but do not give any hint you can do more to solve this - it’s on her. She says she hates being miserable well then it’s down to her to change that.

I would say the cold and distant thing is manipulation. She also appears to be rewriting history as it was Covid when the wheels fell off, not diagnosis.

kindly, she is blaming you for everything. You won’t ever win in her eyes, anything you try will be used against you (it already is - cake!)

You all need a reset but how to achieve that?

I must say I can understand that your dd is angry about being hoodwinked into a diagnosis, especially if her mother (parents?) have a tendency of being avoidant.

This may sound a little harsher than the other posts but perhaps it might help see things in a different perspective.

Your DD has extreme black and white thinking and an enormous desire / need to feel in control. She trusted you when she went for that assessment and came out of it having been diagnosed with ASD when she felt she had no control over the process experience or outcome whatsoever. Essentially this was 'done to her' and changed her life. It undermined her autonomy and feeling of being in control which I believe can be particularly import for autistic girls. If she has problems with identifying her feelings then the enormity of the diagnosis would have been impossible to process.

I am guessing that the reason you didn't tell her at the time was due to being avoidant. You didn't want to deal with her reaction or refusal and tricked her (not judging you just observing). The cake saga also has avoidant personality written all over it. Letting her call her sister 'it' is so very unacceptable and how the family are dealing with this also seems avoidant.

The problem with this is that you have accommodated her wild expectations (various cakes in certain sequence) when what she needed were firm boundaries as well as genuine empathy and helping her understand her own though processes.

If she has OCD this may need to be medicated but if it's not at that level, you could have tried saying that you understand she want the cakes in a certain order and why she might find that idea comforting or appealing but that in the reality of family life during COL buying several cakes is not achievable and is actually a 'bad' / negative thing even if it seems appealing. It was avoidant of you to promise a second cake rather than dealing with her stubbornness and outbursts.

I am also surprised she has uncensored access to the internet. She is an adult sure but I'd limit access to WIFI and internet to a couple of hours a day. If she can entertain herself in her room she will feel no need to tackle the world and her life as it's all safe and comfy and she can control her family at the click of her finger.

So my suggestion is stop being avoidant as avoidant parenting will make your dd feel unsafe and undermine her need for honesty and transparency.

Being avoidant is in essence quite manipulative and controlling just in a different way. Not the typical authoritarian control where the you would dictate every choice but controlling in a passive, indirect way. It leaves your child feeling like they can’t fully trust their environment and like their own emotional needs are secondary to the parent’s need for peace or avoidance of discomfort.

Forget the assessment! You made a decision based on what you thought was best - and it’s a decision other parents might have made too in your position. You wouldn’t make the same decision again. That’s fine. We could all say that about lots of things in our lives, but dwelling on it years later, taking it out from its memory box and examining it, poking it, pulling it apart is pointless and almost indulgent. Both of you need to move on!

Your DD’s message is still trying to blame someone else and shrug off all responsibility. She’s an adult. This immature behaviour has become a pattern which has almost become her. You and her are two players in a movie on repeat. You’re repeating the same moves - and you’ll reach the same ending time and time again unless you press Stop.

I too suggest you step back and let your DH do more regarding her. She needs to break these patterns. She also needs to start acting like an adult. She’s making excuses because she’s afraid of being an adult. She wants to stay in a perpetual ‘mummy and child’ relationship, and her excuse to do so is the assessment - which is ridiculous! If she didn’t use that, she’d use another excuse. If she refuses therapy again, then she clearly doesn’t think she needs it, so she can get on and grow up. Don’t indulge her. It’s not helping her at all. It’s not kind, even if it comes from a desire to be so.

OP your DD would benefit from some sort of therapy, but it would need to be ND and trauma informed therapy which isn't really available on the NHS.

She also is of an age where she doesn't have to do it if she doesn't want to.

A friend has a daughter with a similar issue around birthdays, mentally still a teenager, but very much an adult with complex medical needs and so can't work, can't be abandoned.

It benefited my friend to also have some trauma informed therapy for herself as carer trauma is real even if you don't think of yourself as a carer, or your caring needs aren't as substantial as people you would compare yourself to.

It is costly though, but my friend said it's like a new bed or a new pair of shoes, necessary and worth every penny.

Yes, honestly. The circumstances around the assessment and the birthday cake situation are both finished now.
Your daughter has agency. If she truly believes she is not autistic can she explain why she won't engage with education? If people are believing 'lies' about her, so what? That doesn't stop her from doing things.

The way you got her to the assessment wasn't the right way to go about it but you did it for the right reasons. It's over now. All parents look back and regret something. We all make mistakes.

I would focus on her life skills and work on getting her to be less dependent on you. That means having boundaries which she's not going to like at first.

PS I also wondered about EUPD.

@GesTans good point about the internet. We gradually loosened the rules with all 3 dc as they moved through the teen years. We used to turn off dd3’s WiFi (via an app on my phone) at night which seemed sensible. Then during school years 10 and 11 when her school attendance was erratic, we stopped her WiFi access during the school day. But it wasn’t having any sort of positive effect and didn’t encourage her to go to school.

Since she turned 18 her WiFi access has been unlimited including overnight. Partly because she’s an adult and I wanted to show a bit of trust, and also I didn’t want to limit her ability to keep in touch with her (very few) friends.

On the one hand it’s consistent with treating her like an adult that she doesn’t have internet restrictions but on the other hand it’s your house, you are paying for the WiFi, her phone bill and the devices she accesses it on so I think those do mean that you can exert a bit of control.

Maybe WiFi goes off past midnight for the whole house? Probably not the best for anyone to be on the internet doom scrolling after midnight and will help her to have a better sleep routine. Getting up at 11am isn’t conducive to having a job or studying or much else really. It’s something I see a lot in NEET people of all ages; no routine, delayed sleep wake cycle, no exercise or fresh air. I don’t think those are conducive to anyone’s mental health.

@Shrinkhole I don’t think I’d feel comfortable doing that. I’m not exactly sure of my older two DDs’ nighttime screen use, but they work hard at their jobs and are never late. Dd1 works shifts so she might not have much screen time before midnight. They would most likely feel they’re being penalised because of their youngest sister which would not go down well.

Fair enough. I just think it would be a difficult argument to single her out for restrictions and would likely be resented and another stick to beat her with. The only way you can make a distinction there is if hers is the only phone contract you are paying for. You might have to leave it.

How’s it going OP? I followed your other thread but missed what your daughter’s responses were to being asked about why she’s so anti-ND, what difference it makes to her life and if she isn’t ND, why is she displaying so many symptoms!!!

Im really pleased you’ve spotted your own rumination too. Even if your daughter won’t engage with therapy truly I think you’d benefit yourself and it would enable you to hold firmer boundaries.

I think the part about her saying she would lull herself and going on an afternoon hunger strike, and then what appeared to be a realisation that actually this was just daft nonsense, was particularly revealing. Are you still able to see that manipulation?

Yes I can @Teenthree

I have had therapy on and off over the years. I am incredibly hard on myself, Dh is always telling me this. Beat myself up over things I felt I should have done differently. I am aware of it and try to keep it in check but it’s not easy.

At the start of year 12, dd had a place at a comprehensive after she didn’t get the grade for her school sixth form. She and I had been to see this school, she liked it and they offered the subjects she wanted to do. The downside was the journey - not easy by public transport (and a good 15 min walk just to the tube station). If I’d taken her by car it prob would have been 40 mins + one way. So at the last minute we looked at a small private school 10 mins up the road. It seemed like a no brainer. But this turned out to be the school that dd hated and refused to go back. I’ve often wondered if the further away school might have worked out - if she’d liked it, we could have managed the journey somehow.

In a twist, my work is soon to be locating to near this school. I’m trying so hard not to ruminate but it will be hard for me not to tie myself up in knots especially if the journey isn’t as bad as I’d thought.