Adult daughter conflict

[EverythingisRosie]

Hoping for some advice from anyone who may have been through similar and can offer some advice.
My eldest daughter is 40, I have a son of 38 another son who is 20 and a daughter who is 16.

The youngest two children are half siblings as it's my second marriage. The eldest have always got on with my husband (their step dad). He was a brilliant step dad although the teenage years with my daughter were quite tricky as she was very challenging at times.

My eldest daughter has made it known to me that she is disappointed with our relationship.
Four years ago at the start of lockdown she had breast cancer and it was a very difficult time for us all and her especially. As it was during lockdown it was very difficult to spend time with her but we made it work as best we could. I visited most days, cooked and looked after my grandchildren as much as I could, (she has two girls). The relationship took a big wobble when my youngest daughter wanted to return to school (she was in year 6 and wanted to finish her time at primary). My eldest daughter thought I was putting her life at risk as she would then be at risk of catching covid at a time when her immunity was compromised by having chemotherapy.
I was stuck in the middle and wanted the best for both and offered to do as much as a could for her without coming into direct contact. This was difficult but we got through it.

Since then and during her recovery from breast cancer she has been highly critical of my apparent preference/favouritism to the younger half siblings.
She feels excluded and not part of the family.
The truth is that her life and my life are very different.
Her home is chaotic and very disorganised which I find hard to deal with. I don't cope very well with mess and its very triggering to be in her home. I have tried in the past to help get things in order but it's never maintained and in order to protect my own energy I have stopped offering my help.
I have just accepted that we are different in that respect and that's okay.
Her lifestyle is VERY different to mine, her husband is a high earner and she has frequent luxury holidays and membership to a beautify private spa and leisure facility. Her whole family are vegan and only eat organic & whole foods which is different to us.
I gave up my career when my youngest son was diagnosed with autism and I needed to be at home more. I work part-time now but don't earn a huge amount. We are comfortable but careful.
I have always tried my best to cater for them when they visit. When we meet up I am always fearful of the costs involved and inevitably visits mean eating out. I also have to drove and hour there and an hour back to fuel costs are also noticeable.
My daughter offers lots of (often unwelcome) advise including those around health. I have a few ongoing issues. Her advice often involves huge amount of money if followed through therefore I largely listen but don't follow through.

I could go on but she feels that I don't want to spend time with her. In truth with parenting the two children who live at home, managing a part time job and looking after three dogs I am pretty exhausted.

She sent me a message today which was very hurtful. I appreciate she feels hurt but compares the time I spend with her to the time I spend with my 16 year old. I have tried pointing out that she had that time when she was younger and that I can't do any more.
She accused me of not including her in family things. One of those being a short break I had with my younger daughter so that she could surf abroad. It was a budget break and we stayed in a surf hostel which she would have hated.

We have argued back and to all day and I am just constantly accused of not hearing her hurt. I do hear but I can't give any more of myself as there is little time or energy.
Where do we go from here? I want the make it better and for her to feel heard but she makes me feel so defensive and then I just want to withdraw and avoid. Not sure how we move forward...

24 years is quite extreme.....

Everything you have described about your elder DD sounds like she is self absorbed and unable to comprehend her asks / advice on your life.

I think you need to put her straight if she keeps talking bollocks
No it wasn't a family holiday, it was a break with my youngest DD and we stayed in a hostel.

Thanks for your recommendation but I cannot afford that

No I cannot come as my DC needs me to pick her up....... My DS with additional needs has to be supervised at this event...........
I am really tired......

I am sorry that your DD had cancer but that doesn't mean you are at her beck and call for the rest of your life. Put some boundaries in. Also where is her DH in all of this?

Well, you would expect an adult of 24 to have their own life and to not feel like they're 'not important' - we're not talking about a toddler here!! Good grief.

Your eldest dd seems to be totally fixated on all this. She needs to focus on her own life and her own children, not obsessing about what you're doing with her younger siblings. My childhood was difficult: parents divorced, didn't see my father and my sibling was very much the favoured one. It's not going to do me any good dwelling on all that, I have my own life and my own family and I'm not living in the past - it was years ago and nothing's going to change about it!!

@EverythingisRosie

I think that if you want to strengthen your relationship with your daughter you need to prioritise it slightly and by that I mean making that time, on a more regular basis, to listen and spend time with her.

I'm trying to find a sensitive way to say this, because it's not meant in a nasty way, but we need to acknowledge the fact that choosing to have more children, decades apart, with a different partner was a cross roads moment for your eldest daughter in that now you cannot simultaneously live the life where you and her have a close supportive relationship in young adulthood, which grows and strengthens over time.
Obviously there's no way of knowing if this would have been the case, but a second family meant it wasn't given the chance.

I think that you'll find that this is the crutch of the matter, deep down.
You have no need to apologise or justify anything about having your family to your daughter, but I think that not prioritising her needs with cancer when she really needed you to, was what ignited this situation.

@thenoldmrsrabbit ’but I think that not prioritising her needs with cancer when she really needed you to, was what ignited this situation.’

Surely cooking, cleaning and helping with childcare should have been enough. The perceived slight was that she didn’t withhold her 11yr old child from education to meet her adult daughter’s demands. Should the child have suffered further?
With adequate precautions @EverythingisRosie continued to help her elder daughter and ensure her youngest got the education she deserved.

Read The Rules of Estrangement by Joshua Coleman. Read up on emotionally neglected children.

No, her eldest DD sounds like a pandered spoiled child who wants all her own way.
We don’t know who instigated her divorce, her DS is disabled, her younger DD may well have equally been traumatised during lockdown, everybody suffered in some way or another. She lives 90 minutes away, works, has her own health issues. If my 40 year old child behaved like her DD is behaving I’m sure I’d feel upset.

I disagree a 16 year old doesn't need much parenting. I think they often have high needs just not the practical needs small children has. Emotionally however teenagers needs a lot of parenting.

Good heavens she is 40 years old! I get that she's been ill but she is not behaving like a mature adult at all.

Your priority is to your 16 yr old. Really, i would start pulling back from your 40 yr old and prioritising your own needs.

She has absolutely no business critisising your parenting or offering unwanted health advice.

Whenever she offers this by messaging, i'd just reply (after a day or two)

with 'ok thanks' and say nothing else. She will get the message.

Advice to your face - just keep a neutral face and say 'interesting'

Don't engage with it further.

I have a 17yr old and my eldest dd is 31 and eldest ds 28. Eldest ds has a child and partner. Both live their own lives and no one interferes with anyone's life.

Neither are jealous of the attention i give to the 17yr old still at home. They moved out a long time ago and made their own lives.

At 40, your dd should really have made her own family her main concern.

Your adult daughter needs to get some counselling, I think. Her expectations of you are totally unreasonable. You have actual children at the moment, who take priority. I have four children very close in age. 16, nearly 18, 19 and 21. As the older children became adults, we made it very clear that, while we will always be there for them to guide and support them, it is the actual children who take precedence now. And they're all absolutely fine about that and wouldn't see it any other way! An adult child should be able to lean on parents but not to the extent yours is - it's as if she thinks she's still your responsibility!

My adult DD(30) is immuno suppressed. DS(11) was kept off school during covid until it could be done in a way the wouldn't put DD at risk. I can't imagine doing what you chose. I'm not surprised your DD is hurt.

@MrTiddlesTheCat
During COVID did your DD live 90 mins away and have a DH as well?

Completely different scenarios. What a ridiculous response.

I’d like to think if my daughter told me she was disappointed in our relationship I would do anything I could to fix it. But then I only have one child and only will have one child so I hope she will always feel that she is the number one most important thing in my life, even if (rightly so) I know I will not always be number one in hers. I have had issues with my own mum and family therapy did help- It’s not possible for her to “walk all over you” in family therapy, the therapist is there to ensure you all get heard, and having experience in therapy doesn’t mean you have techniques to try and “win”, that’s not how it works. I also have a withdrawal/ avoidance approach to conflict which I recognise is problematic and the therapy did help, even if it didn’t fundamentally change my approach I do recognise it more and try to internally challenge it.

I’m not sure the relevance of your daughter’s lifestyle, house mess or being vegan- I would feel pretty devastated if my parents didn’t want to see me for one of those reasons- but equally she needs to understand that unfortunately you do have other priorities right now and she cannot have the time with you that she wants. In the case of my mum it was me who had the other priorities and couldn’t see her as much as she wanted. Therapy will help you to reach some compromises here.

She lived 2.5 hours away and had a partner. So no, not completely dfferent at all.

Apologies. It sounds similar.

So did you travel 5 hours a day, everyday?

Not sure how practical that was particularly putting such limitations on your own family.

Myself and my DH decided to prioritise our own family when his mum had terminal cancer in lockdown, on the basis we couldn't travel 5 hours a day and when she went in the hospice, he took a test multiple times a day and wore full PPE - he did that for the last couple of weeks of her life. It was a really shit time.

That was a beautiful post.

Op chose to have four children with two separate men and three dogs. Ops children didn’t make these decisions, but they have had to live with the consequences. So yes op does need to take responsibility.

Her eldest for whatever reason has been neglected, overlooked, expected to get on with things otherwise she wouldn’t feel like she does.

Hell, op doesn’t even seem to like her dd and her messy veganism, I am not sure how that won’t impact their relationship?

Parenting isn’t a conveyor belt, and the child reaches 18 and is turfed off for the next child. Parenting is needed throughout life and doesn’t really end in the real sense of the word. An adult child will always turn to their mother for support and guidance, for nurturing. This is ops
issue to deal with and work on.

No not every day. Just on days she needed to be at the hospital. I couldn't leave her to travel on public transport. It was a very difficult time.

When schools reopened in June 2020 for YR, Y1, Y6 and vulnerable pupils it was entirely optional until at least the summer holidays. Plenty of children didn't go back. We had children of governors stay off.

Oh good grief 🙄

Its quite normal to go on to have other children with new husbands.

Op could have had her first child at 16. She has many many years ahead of new relationships and new children.

OP first child was on her mid 20s so hardly a neglected child. She’d had 24 years of her mother to herself before other children arrived. Plenty of years to get past tricky teenage years.

My eldest is 29 and in a stable relationship, has her own home. Of course I am there if she needs me but obviously my youngest - 8 years old needs more attention.

A 40 year old adult should be able to recognise this.

I think both OP & the DD should have separate therapy because the enmeshment is unhealthy

Is there a problem in your eldest DD's marriage? Because I would expect one of my adult kids to be leaning on their partner rather more than their mother - I'm reminded of some of the threads from wives whose husbands spend all their time trying to gain their mother's approval, and surely the same thing applies here - apron strings cut, cordial family relationship but not in one another's pockets?

So I'm wondering whether DD's wonderful, high earning husband who enables a fabulous (yet seemingly chaotic) lifestyle, is largely absent, requiring her to lean rather too heavily on her mother (who, other children excluded, is entitled to have her own life).

OP, it is possible your daughter is resentful, even if she was an adult by the time the youngest sibling came around. Mine is 20 and is constantly looking for reassurance I don’t want any more children because “she doesn’t want to share any attention” (her words, not mine).

I just want to say I’m with you on the mess - I cope very poorly around messy places and avoid it at all costs. My daughter has ADHD and unfortunately her messiness has taken a massive toll on my mental health, so it’s not something to just be dismissed.

I understand your daughter’s reservations because of her health but let’s not downplay the importance of social life for children during lockdown. Mine was a teen and really, really struggled being at home. It’s easy to downplay it now looking back.

Would maybe make plans outside of the house be an option? Like going for an afternoon out with the children. That way you’d be able to spend time bonding while also being away from triggering places.

She was pretty young to be going through breast cancer and it must have been so scary to have young children and be in the middle of a global pandemic when you’re having chemo. I can’t even imagine the terror. In 2020, the messages we were getting about Covid were so worrying, the importance of lockdowns, of staying safe and protecting the vulnerable. I would think she had all this going on and was just panicking about you choosing to send the youngest back to school, and possibly introducing Covid into the family bubble when she was immunosuppressed. Must have been so scary.

my sister had breast cancer recently in her 20s. She spoke to a dietician who told her that cancer can feed from red meat and sugar. My sister became dairy free and ate no meat bar chicken and fish. She’s relaxed a lot with that now shes better but I think that’s possibly where the strict diet comes into play with your daughter.

i understand that she’s 40 and not 16 and should obviously understand more of your attention needs to go on your teen daughter who lives at home. But I have to say, I’ve not spotted anything positive about the oldest in your post. You don’t come across as liking her. You don’t want to spend time with her. You don’t like her home life. Maybe she’s picked up on this? It’s hard to feel like your mum doesn’t like you but likes your sibling no matter the age gap.

There are major alarm bells here - you’ve written a list of criticisms which you’ve dressed up a bit/ you clearly have no respect or affection for your daughter. Normal mothers have lots of pride in their children, despite any differences. Lots of adults have parents who think they’re great!

Please dont use the word ‘triggered’ about something you don’t like. It’s a word that describes a psychological state associated with PTSD.

She had breast cancer and you talk like she was making a fuss about nothing. You should have made the decision about your younger child going to school/their contact. She wasn’t being unreasonable here; you were being unfair.

She should walk away from you.

The underlying issue might well be that you have had another family with your second husband. Not a criticism but fact. I've seen many adult dc of the first relationship have issues with the second relationship children.
I'd say her behaviour is about feeling replaced by younger half siblings.