My daughter is turning into her father and its all my fault

[17leftfeet]

My ex, dd's father was EA

We split up when she was 9 and is now 13

She seems to take pride in hurting people, the words that come out of her mouth, I can hear coming out of his

She will be nasty and then say 'I'm just being truthful, you wouldn't want me to lie would you!'
The only opinion that matters, and is right, is her's

I've no idea how much of it is being a teen and how much is a reaction to what she lived with growing up as a younger child but either way I can see her being friendless and unhappy

She now has very limited contact with her father

How do I help her?

Let's be charitable and say it's down to being a teenager. Opinionated is not necessarily a bad thing and any hurtful stuff you can (figuratively) slap down best you can. As ever, encourage good behaviour with positive reinforcement.

It's the things that she says to her friends that worry me the most I think

If she's out of line with me or her sister then she gets told

I firmly believe that personality & tendencies are ingrained but that behaviour is learned and can be modified. On the plus side it's good that she appears to be assertive and is not worrying about people-pleasing. I'd work on helping her find more positive ways to use that.

If she's that candid/hurtful to her friends the good thing is that they won't stand for it for long. And if she wants to make new ones she'll need to change her tune or accept she won't have any.

To be honest, the things you describe sound like the sort of hatefulness 13 year old often come out with. The things I said to mother which she repeated back to me made me cringe with shame. In a few years she'll probably be a changed person and you won't recognise her.

Why on earth is any of this your fault? Yes, some of it might be learnt behaviour but you didn't model the behaviour, did you?

Teenagers do tend to think that their opinion is the only one that matters and do tend to see things as black and white - as she gets older, and matures, and keeps being exposed to more moderate behaviour, she'll settle down. In the meantime do a lot of teeth-gritting, a lot of counting to ten and a lot of talking to her (and listening - if she feels she's not being heard she's more likely to dig her heels in).

It's my fault because I was spineless and didn't do enough to protect them when they were younger

I should have left him years before I did rather than convincing myself that they didn't see what was going on

I think that the problem is EA/narcissistic/abusive arse type behaviour is very often similar to quite typical child, teen, preteen (or even toddler!) behaviour, so you will see similarities even if they happen to be coincidental.

Because a lot of behaviours are age related it can feel as though they came on or are part of some inevitable genetic thing, also I do think that when you have a child with an ex who was abusive, this is always your biggest fear (I know it's mine) that they will turn out like your ex. As they grow up you'll see mannerisms, similarities in facial expression, etc, which is really uncomfortable. I do feel that it's easy to inadvertently look out for or expect the kind of behaviour/treatment you experienced from your ex and then to see it as a big worrying issue.

Really, I think it makes sense to try as much as you can to put those worries and fears aside, try to imagine if she just had this behaviour and it was not similar to anything your ex did, and deal with it in a normally appropriate way. I think if you come down too hard on it or make too much of a big deal about it, then it could cause more problems. If it is an early sign of a personality disorder or extreme problem, then it's not more likely to go away if you come down harder on it. But with management, redirection, patience, you might be able to give her ways to manage this part of her personality and it would probably lessen the effects. If it's just a normal pre-teen horrible phase, then dealing with it as you would normally without going overboard is the way to see her through it and she will outgrow it as lots of girls this age do.

And I'm sure it goes without saying but you must never say to her "You're just like your dad" or anything along those lines.

No, still not your fault. Again, you weren't the one modelling the behaviour. And you did leave, when you were able to - you can't have done more than that.