AIBU to tell my mum to stop criticising my support for DD?

[Islandbopping]

My DD18 is ND and although not difficult in terms of overall behaviour - attends school and plays her sport - she is quite high maintenance emotionally and not as independent as her younger siblings (DS15 and DD16)

She requires a lot of my time and patience and generally I give it, but it’s usually not so much that the others suffer. I work very part time so have a decent balance.

However my DM thinks that we indulge DD, there is nothing wrong with her and basically her neediness and lack of independence is around us giving her too much attention. I am sure there is some truth in it but last night I snapped at DM after an indecent and I was wondering if I was unreasonable.

Basically DD tried to pluck her eyebrows , which I warned her not to do and said I would make an appointment with a salon. This resulted in basically her plucking almost all her eyebrows off (she’s dyspraxic)

DM was here after it happened (we’d had dinner and were relaxing afterwards)

DD was extremely distressed and i ended up upstairs with her for a while and DM left (I had told her what was going on and why I was upstairs)

DM then calls me saying it’s all because I give her too much attention , there is nothing wrong with DD etc etc. I snapped and said she just needed to butt out if she couldn’t be helpful and now she’s angry at the rebuke. I’m at a low enough ebb trying to manage DD and I just didn’t need it. Was I unreasonable to snap

I can see your mums point in this scenario...you told dd not to do something, she did it anyway, was then upset, resulting in you ditching mum who had come to spend time with you all to comfort her.

You are not unreasonable to snap, we are all human. Especially when your mum is saying there's nothing wrong with DD when she's ND (not that theres anything wrong with being ND but you see what I mean, your mum is the rude one here!)

It might be though, that your mum is able to see something from the outside thats worth considering, the fact you say 'i am sure there is some truth in it' I think indicates that maybe you think theres a bit of truth in what your mum says about indulging her?
Its worth being really honest with yourself and thinking about if you rushing to comfort DD is helping her feel supported and helping her grow and move forward, or if maybe its keeping her stuck. Obviously it will depend on whats happening at the time too. But worth having a think, as DD needs your help to be able to cope with these situations herself in the long run, and how you do that might look a bit different to what happens now.
However in this specific instance, I think you just did the kind thing to do, id comfort anyone who accidentally took their eyebrows off too far, especially a teenager! Hope Dd is recovering!

What would've happened if you'd left DD with her emotions for a bit? Would she be a danger to herself or others (or furniture?)

If no, I'd probably try to start baby-stepping away and letting her figure out how to start regulating herself. Gradual retreat type style.

So I can see both sides, yours as DD needs extra support, your mums as DD is getting older and needs help to deal with things independantly.

Edited to add: But I'm a bit of a hard-arse with stuff like this. If teenage DD (I'm not there yet) did the same I'd have probably told her to deal with the consequences (whilst in the background trying to sort a solution without her knowing).

She's your DD and you know her better than we or your DM do. If you feel she needs support then that's your call.
However, at 18, she's making her own choices. You can guide her, give advice, but if she then chooses to do what she wants, and it goes wrong, she should be learning about living with consequences of poor decisions.
What made me stop and think was your mention of her being dyspraxic. I was trying to work out how bring dyspraxic might make her overpluck her eyebrows, and I can't see how it would ( one of my DC is dyspraxic, so I do understand to some extent).
That then made me wonder if you are being a little over-involved/over-protective because of her ND, and whether she needs space to make mistakes. For you to leave a guest and have gone upstairs for some time (long enough for the guest to give up waiting and leave), DD must have been very upset, but I wonder if you being there was helping? If you had said something along the lines of "Oh dear, I can see that's gone a bit wrong, but don't worry, it'll grow back and in the meantime there's eyebrow pencil" and then given her a hug and gone back downstairs, what would have happened? Can she self-soothe?
Obviously any teenager is going to be upset if they think they are going to look awful for a few weeks, but why was it necessary for you to be with her for the rest of the evening? How is she going to learn perspective and resilience if you drop everything whenever she is upset? She is going to have to learn to manage her emotions at some point.
I will say that the overplucking eyebrows scenario and then regretting it was practically a rite of passage for many girls, it's not unusual, and she will probably have friends/relatives who've done the same. She is entitled to be upset, I'm just wondering who it helps if you are by her side for every minute of that upset. I suspect your Mum thinks that DD needs to start managing her own emotions.
Presumably DD has diagnoses that come with strategies for dealing with emotional issues and building resilience: if not, this is something to follow up.

I can see her point. You told her not to do it, she did it and then you've basically spent the time you should have been with your guests, upstairs reassuring her. I get that she is immature emotionally but look at it honestly for a minute.

From this example, she is more coddled than your average 5 year old. Certainly more than mine!

My 6 year old cut her own hair with her brothers plastic paper scissors. Did an atrocious job, obviously. She cried and I gave her a hug and told her firmly that she had done something very silly that I had told her not to do and now she would have to live with it until it grew out.

I evened it up as much as possible but she still didn't like it and was crying but was told that it's just tough. She did the stupid thing that she was warned not to. It's her own fault and that's just life and consequences. You made your bed, now stop crying and deal with it.

I get it's hard with SEN, my youngest and middle child have autism, youngest more affected, but sometimes I think we baby them too much. They still need to grow up and be as functional as possible, I'm not going to live forever.

Thank you for all the responses - I think this is why I am still on Mumsnet. It’s helpful to have other perspectives !