I feel like i'm back in an abusive relationship only this time with my daughter

[18yearstooold]

Dd is 13 (also have dd2 who is 11)

I was with their dad for 13 years, split up when dd1 was 8

It took me years to recognise I was being emotionally and sexually abused and took me years to get out of it -but I remember well being unable to relax in my own home and feeling like i'm walking on eggshells, always putting myself on the bottom of the pile

Well it's all happening again, only this time with dd1
Today we are supposed to be seeing family, she doesn't want to go and I've woken up with a massive knot in my stomach, worrying about what will happen -her dad only visited my parents 4 times in all the time we were together, he would be 'ill' or cause a row to avoid it

Yesterday was a write off, apparently I got her nothing she wanted -I obviously don't even know her her dad used to say this or similar

Food is an ongoing battle, her dad constantly used to criticise my coking, telling anyone that would listen that I was trying to poison him

I'm really struggling to separate normal teenage behaviour and worrying behaviour

I've spoken to school who say she's a model pupil but I finally got a learning mentor to speak to her and she said she's incredibly defensive and has obviously got a lot of issues relating to her dad
Dd has been offered counselling but refused it

People tell me to just get her told, make her get in the car etc etc but that's not even close to being possible

It hurts me to see her so unhappy and that I can't help her but there is this fear that she is so much like her dad and she's not choosing a different path -she says she's who she is, can't help it and it's not her fault if it upsets people, they should just man up

I can't go on like this, i'm so tired of it all, it's got to change but I don't have the option of leaving this relationship -I love her to bits but this hurts

I don't think that's fair Ask. OP has explained that having been a victim of abuse she's sensitive to certain behaviours and finds it hard to distinguish between normal teenage stroppiness and something more significant; also being met with the same abusive tactics as the ex used can feel overwhelming. That's not the same as wanting abuse.

A situation can put you back somewhere you really don't want to be but it's difficult to overcome.

She hasn't responded to discussion and explanation though, has she. We all start with that and it's hard to get out of it, it can go on for far too long if it clearly isn't hitting the mark. We're dealing with our kids and it's hard to get the balance right. Choosing your battles as the picture becomes clearer over the years is one way.

Yes she needs you, BIG time: she needs your boundaries - it's working out what those boundaries are that is the brain-teaser. You don't want to be bringing up a savage so holding out on the visit was a good boundary to uphold imo and well done for that.

For the record, I excused appalling behaviour for years, twisted myself into a pretzel over it thinking it was (admittedly extreme) teenagerdom. Turns out it was plain old abuse all along.

Kids can be shits and kids can be abusers. Honestly, it's absurd to think they're not, they are little human beings, as capable of shit as anyone.

But no, wait, we're projecting

I don't think that's fair Ask
Of course it is. You might have a different opinion, but that's fine.

Yes we do have different opinions, which is fine, but i also think saying "You seem to want an abuser" is quite aggressive and provocative. OP does not want this situation, and is trying hard to solve it.

Have you been through this, Ask? Genuine q. Theory and experience are two very different things, both valuable in their way.

Ask, who on earth wants to be abused?

I don't want that for me and I don't want that for my children

What I do want is support through what is a very difficult time for me which is why I posted in relationships rather than AIBU or chat

Fortunately most people are being supportive as that's what I need, not people sticking the boot in

I've identified a problem and i'm trying to fix it

Remember that abusive people don't have super special abusive-person ways of acting, they're acting in some kind of emotionally immature way.

Bertie's point's very important, I think. If an adult with (perhaps) PDA acts like a teenager with PDA, he is an abuser and we shouldn't try to 'help them'.

When a teenager with PDA acts like what she is, she's in need of the help we're in a position to give as responsible adults. Apart from anything else, this can make the huge difference between her growing up as an abuser, or as a self-aware adult with good coping strategies.

It is going to be incredibly hard if you've been traumatised by the adult abuser. Any techniques that allow you to separate the two cases, and also to defuse your trigger reactions, will be helpful.

You don’t seem to be ‘slipping into victim’ so much as rushing to embrace it and make yourself the injured party – do you like being the victim?

This was staggeringly offensive, Ask. You might as well say the same to an ex-soldier who freaks out at sudden noises, or a plane crash survivor who is scared of flying.

And what if OP's daughter, or anyone's child, doesn't have a dx? Perhaps people, kids, just behave like this for no particular reason other than the power of it is too attractive.

It's tempting to pathologise poor behaviour - perhaps in order to understand it, get it under our control, know what to do. But if there is no particular dx then we're left with plain shitty behaviour. yy if it's been learnt in an abusive home, identifying with the power of the abuser rather than the pain of the abused, but it's still abuse, or abusive.

As a pp said, identifying the behaviour is not labelling the person but the behaviour. We should have that dialogue with our kids I think.

As another pp said, it's important we don't view boundaries as punishment. I also don't think it's that difficult to separate out what's happening in the present to what happened in the past: the love we have for our kids is completely different to the love we had for our partner, who turned out to be abusive. It's very unsettling when the same behaviour manifests in our children but the response is different, I think, because of the type of love we have for our kids. It's not the same as the love we have for an equal adult, where 'foe' is much more clear cut.

Garlic it's not even so much that we shouldn't try to help abusers, it's just that abusers' victims CANNOT help them.

When a teenager, child or toddler is acting in an immature way, we discipline them or reason with them or ignore it knowing they will grow out of it. With an abusive adult we can't do any of those things, but on the discipline/reason point, there is a massive difference when you're dealing with your child.

With your child, you are an authority over them. Even if they don't act like it, they have that respect for you. Ultimately, you are older, wiser, bigger, stronger and you DO have the final say in your house. You control whether they have those privileges they want.

For an adult abuser you don't have any of that power. Not only are you probably physically smaller and weaker, they see you as inferior, they are an adult so you can't control anything about them (and you shouldn't try.) They don't respect you as a human being, let alone a higher authority. They see themselves as higher than you in the hierarchy.

Even when a child/teenager/toddler is acting disrespectfully and defiantly and testing boundaries, they still have some level of natural respect for you as an adult, and you still have measures of control over their life. (Not that you should abuse this of course.) It is absolutely not the same as the relationship between an adult abuser and their victim.

Yes of course abusers were children once and they probably acted abusively as children, but let's not pretend that it's the same and abusiveness is inherent and unfixable. For one thing most abusers have had a somewhat disrupted or toxic childhood themselves. It might be the case that there is some kind of disorder, (and I don't know about PDA so I don't know if what I'm advising is applicable in that case), but I do think that the vast majority of abusers, including those with personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder etc, are acting the exact same way that a developmentally normal child acts, because they have not developed appropriate emotional response to act in an adult way.

With children and teenagers we still have a chance to teach them these things. It might fail (and that wouldn't be the parents' fault), they might have a pre-existing condition but it is not helpful to write off a child as "an abuser". Abusers act like children would if they had no parents to tell them otherwise. Your child does have a parent, so you owe it to her to try and override this natural (and absolutely perfectly understandable) tendency to react as an abuse victim does.

It's not helpful, BTW, to interpret this natural slipping back into fight-or-flight victim mode as being "wanting to be abused". This is complex psychological stuff. I don't think you need a psychologist to fix it, necessarily, but you do need to recognise what is happening. It is indeed similar to PTSD. Like a war veteran might be unsettled by fireworks, it's important to recognise in yourself that this is not the same situation and that reacting in the same way is not necessary - with your ex, you had to react in a very placating way in order to protect yourself. With your DD it will be totally different - you need to NOT placate as far as possible, she is not going to go as far, she doesn't have the power to.

The boundaries thing is key too, because when you are in an abusive relationship, your boundaries take such a battering (if they were there in the first place) that it's hard even to know how to uphold them. It's almost like you have to practice putting arbitrary boundaries in place and keeping them there. Abusers (and teenagers!) are experts in talking their way around boundaries to the point that you think you've agreed willingly to something and don't realise until later what has happened.

It might be that you don't really know how to set boundaries; this is a common feature in people who have experienced abusive relationships, because it's one of those red flags that tend to screen certain people out. (Although some abusers take great delight in breaking down strong boundaries, so if you once had high ones and now they are weak that could be what happened.)

Just try thinking about how you relate to her in terms of boundaries. What's acceptable (or not), what's realistic, what's appropriate. How you're going to keep it strong. It feels cold, it feels unemotional, inhuman perhaps. Keep going with it - it is the very opposite. The lack of emotion is its strength.

I think that is very well put, Bertie.

I think sometimes we underestimate the power of the media on our children too. I haven't watched television for many years, so correct me if things have changed for the better, but some of the programmes on television aimed at young teenagers are appalling and normalise appalling behaviour.

Does it matter what the label you give it is? Op still has to manage her behaviour day to day.

What I think you should hold on to is that at school she is a 'model pupil.' If she can reach her teenage years and be perfectly well-behaved outside the home then the picture is not all bad.

It does sound like normal stroppy teenage behaviour to me and the need to exert control over everything in the home.

Btw I have a dd of the same age who acts the same way but has been causing chaos wherever she goes (school, clubs etc, anywhere with an authority figure) since primary school.

We do have input from CAMHS and plenty of diagnoses but what really matters is how the adults around her manage her challenging behaviour.

The best advice people have given here is the ignoring, carrying on as normal, walking away, not giving in or becoming over-emotional. Also as she is getting older, start to consult her, listen to her opinions about family stuff.

I do think that the vast majority of abusers, including those with personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder etc, are acting the exact same way that a developmentally normal child acts ... With children and teenagers we still have a chance to teach them these things.

Yes, exactly. You've put it very clearly.

As far as we know to date, people can be born with sociopathic and other disorders which mean they may never feel the same things, or experience life the same way, as everyone else. But, just like everyone else, their childhood shapes the adult they become. Most children learn social strategies to deal with individual quirks such as shyness or boisterousness, for example. For those with different 'wiring', deeper levels of insight & guidance might be needed. The point is that childhood's the right time to acquire this insight & guidance.

Conversely, children who are deemed 'evil little shits' tend to internalise the message. And that does no-one any good, however they are wired.

'evil little shits'? Is anyone saying that?

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People do, Springy. I've heard it often enough :( And even some MN posters write "How about the child is being a shit" with clear implications of harmful intent ... I am aware of your backstory. I'm also aware of several diagnosed sociopaths who manage their differences responsibly, as well as the small armies of well-adapted people on the autistic spectrum. Childhood development is usually about a combination of genetics + environment.

Gosh, my dd was dreadful at this age, but she is a perfectly well-adjusted adult. In fact, the OP's complaints about her dd are nothing compared to the problems I had with mine.

I agree Garlic

Ive seen posts where posters kids have behaved in ways like my daughter outwardly appears to behave (which sounds similar to OPs, especially with the 'not coping', and going somewhere but refusing to partake) where the replies are all full of 'show her who is boss', 'there's NO WAY my child would get away with that', 'dont let her win' etc etc, punishments, consequences, firm boundaries, etc

But unless you are in that person's shoes there is no way you know how you will react. And what if it makes it worse. What if the child starts really hurting themselves. What if rewards, punishments, boundaries make no difference to the behaviour, in fact make the behaviour worse? And if the behaviours seem to mirror previous abuse then thats 100 x worse, because, irrespective of logic or self control, it puts you smack bang right back in the path of abuse and your fight or flight impulses kick in whether you like it or not. And your responses (which probably never worked with your abuser) will automatically kick in too. If you have suffered abuse it is traumatising, somthing people just dont seem to consider. And when it apparantly happens again, but from your child, you feel a desperation - you can leave your partner, but you cannot leave your child. Its frightening on a whole different level, because you see no way out, you are trapped, and because (apart from leaving) you never got a handle on controlling the abuse, you feel helpless and afraid, and probably dont act in a rational or compassionate way. Its fucking hard.

Before my daughter completely lost the plot I would never in a thousand years have thought what happened would have happened. She too had been perfectly behaved at school. Even up until the point where she completely lost it and just refused totally, she had still mainly been perfectly behaved at school. Because up to 11 she had felt safe. After 11 she had been well behaved because she felt frightened. And then the fear got too much and she imploded. And yes, she does try to exert control, but its driven by fear, not by a hunger for power. And actually her 'behaviour' to the outside world is now possibly worse, because she feels safe enough for ALL the fears and anxieties and sensory things which drive her nuts to come out.

I was lucky in some ways that although her behaviour mirrored her father so much I knew that she hadnt been influenced by seeing him behave that way, because he was gone by the time she was 2, and contact was pretty sporadic and minimal since then. Initially it freaked me out and I felt exactly the way that you do. Exactly. Knowing she hadnt witnessed it and wasnt copying him was the saving grace which helped me to separate his behaviour from her behaviour. But strangely it also made me realise how 'intrinsic' the behaviour was - how beyond her control to be honest. And this 'beyond her control' is particularly evident if you push a point - either by refusing her something, or more often trying to get her to do something she doesnt want to - the 'meltdown' or self sabotage for want of a better word, goes way beyond what is normal.

I would be asking yourself a few questions - did your daughter see this behaviour from her dad alot? did she see it as a way that he got his own way? Is there any reason why she 'cant cope' with going where you want her to go? Have they said stuff to her which she has found upsetting? Is there stuff she is afraid of going on - change of school, bullying, stuff between you and her dad?

And take a look here

Some MN posters? That would be me then. I don't remember using the word evil when I said shits. Or little.

You are aware of my back story? Could someone get a crowbar, I feel in a box.

I think the assumption is that all children are good and are somehow corrupted which makes them bad. Inverted commas. However, I think children are not born good, or bad for that matter, and can be good and be bad just as well. Hence shits. Or angels. Neither of which is accurate of the whole person, of course, but the behaviour at that point in time.

As a result, I am suspicious of dx that pathologises what is essentially convenient behaviour at that time, for whatever reason.

Sme children are just very strong willed and want their own way..you have to be very firm (not the same as unpleasant).

Ill give a small eg from my own life. My family..dh, ds1 and dd are very very strong willed. They will go to great lengths to get their own way. They will insult and berate if they think this will work. This has caused me a lot of angst over the years as I am not the same. I don't really know if this is nature or nurture or both but I have recently realised I have to be very very firm.
Yesterday dd invited her boyfriend over without asking permission in the evening. Today she came down and asked when was lunch'because if it isn't soon she will have to make food for bf'. I said I am making food, in an hour or more will be ready. I said don't cook, just have fruit or sandwich like everyone else. I mentioned that she hadn't asked permission for bf to come over..on Christmas Day . She launched into her usual tirade of they will be living together soon (I said fine, who's paying) and if we ' want to spend time with dd, we have to accept her bf will also be there' . All said in a patronising tone as if I am spectacularly stupid. ( I'm really not) . So I said..next time he is coming over for the night, ask us first. I repeated that each time she traded about how ridiculous that is. I also said if she wants bf to stay for dinner, to go and ask him, then get back to me( instead of cooking him meals and taking them up to her room). Cue further disbelief.

She came down once and said' Mum, you really need to be more welcoming, bf doesn't want to stay he's going soon(fine). I reiterated he could stay and eat but could she ask and let us know? I was pretty sure she hadn't asked him.

Would you then believe 30 mins later she came down and said' oh hi mum I asked bf he'd really like to stay for dinner thanks!'

I found this all highly revealing . She openly admitted she didn't ask me if he could come over last night as I ' might say no'. I have reiterated, she is welcome all holidays of course, but she has to ask if her bf is to come over and not take it for granted. This is how someone's mind works when they just really want their own way and think you are a nobody just getting in the way of their fun. You have to be very very firm. I was trying to teach my daughter she is being hugely entitled and taking things for granted.
It's similar to your dd in that she is manipulating you. You have to work out how you want to conduct yourself, and then behave like this. Aim for pleasant but very firm, with a few home truths not being a bad thing.

Oh I agree Springy, it's not my intention to suggest that all bad behaviour, or indeed all fairly standard teenage behaviour, is down to a diagnosis. And a diagnosis doesn't mean that abusive behaviour is acceptable, nor that someone with such a label cannot be helped to address their issues. But there is a world of difference between a behavioural diagnosis such as ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) and a developmental condition like PDA (pathological demand avoidance) - even though superficially they may look similar. The former usually involves a parenting issue whereas the latter is part of the autistic spectrum, and a totally different approach would be appropriate. We cannot know if there is something pathological under the OPs daughters behaviour, but a need to control which becomes so extreme as to be out of the realms of normal could perhaps warrant a consideration?

She may, of course, just be testing boundaries and knows which buttons to push after having watched her dad abuse her mother for years. Again, possibly damaged, but needing handling in a completely different way.

Gosh that's hard. I would find it very triggering if ds started to behave in the way his father did. Especially if there's any physic similarities, which would feel like some kind of horrific echo through time. Ds so far is the mirror image and personality as mine/ my family, so I'm hoping I never get that awful experience - but he's only 4 so who knows!

I hope you feel supported and some of the advice here helps.