My daughter is 25 years old and still lives at home with us. We are retired. She has never had a proper job as she cannot decide on a career that would suit her. We paid for her tuition fees and rent/living fees when she was at university so she has no debt. She works periodically but keeps all the money for herself and never offers to contribute financially to the household in any way.
She does cook meals for the family but always at a time that suits her so it’s often closer to 9 o’clock than 8 o’clock - even though we’d prefer to eat around 7.30pm. If we ask her what time dinner is going to be, she gets very angry and will not tell us. Apart from meal preparation and online food shopping, she does little in the way of household chores.
Our daughter’s love is theatre and we have always supported her fully with this hobby. She doesn’t drive so we take her back and forth to rehearsals and encourage all our friends to see anything she is in. We have not paid for driving lessons as she seems to have no appreciation of her own safety. She goes running in dark, deserted areas whilst wearing headphones - despite us telling her how dangerous that is. Even crossing roads, she expects the cars to stop for her. She doesn’t like to follow rules and doesn’t seem to understand that some rules are put in place to protect her and other people.
Every morning, she takes her breakfast back to bed and regularly stays there until after midday. She will then stay up until the early hours of the morning, usually sitting at the family computer.
In addition to this, our daughter is regularly rude and condescending when interacting with me but is verbally (and occasionally physically) cruel to her father and the two of them rarely speak. This makes him both sad and angry and he takes his anger out on me.
Our daughter has always been very controlling but also volatile. We spend our daily lives treading on eggshells so that we don’t make her angry. I learned very early on that punishing our daughter didn’t work. There was no point in putting her on the “naughty step” as she would never understand that she had done anything wrong. I think she did, and still does, consider me a little unhinged and petty. Taking away any privileges just made her angry with me, it did not encourage her to behave properly.
Our daughter could not enjoy school as she could not respond to discipline and saw little benefit in a good education.
There is no point in trying to discuss all of these issues with her as she refuses to talk through the problems. She flounces away and then there is a horrible atmosphere in the house and nothing is ever resolved.
Our daughter willingly admits that she doesn’t like people although she has a few friends she has made through her drama society.
She struggles to engage in regular conversations unless, again, it is theatre related.
The obvious answer is that she should find a full time job and rent a room somewhere before our relationship with her is ruined completely. However, we love our daughter very much and don’t want to make her life completely miserable. In any case, she could not share a house with people as she demands the kitchen to herself and has some OCD issues.
Any suggestions and advice would be gratefully received.