This morning I told my adult DD that I hated her guts...........

[HorribleDD]

It's true and I hate that I feel that way about her.

She's almost 23. Just finished Uni, which TBF she only did as a bit of a doss and as it was an easy option to get money. She finished with a 2:2 as she spent most of the time going out getting drunk, taking hard drugs and not bothering to turn up for lectures.

She lived at home (not my choice), hasn't paid rent, does nothing around the house to help, you can't have a conversation with her without her going off on one shouting and swearing.

She can't find a job now, although she is trying, but spends much of the day in bed then awake all night. She is probably depressed but won't do anything to help herself like take some exercise or sort out her sleeping. She can get up if she's going to meet friends etc.

She invited her cousin to stay this weekend without asking if it was OK and I asked her to get up and tidy round before she came as I had to take my youngest to a party yesterday. I had to pick the cousin up from the station (20 mins away) as well as DH at work. I got home and DD was still in bed at 1.30 pm. She was contacting the cousin and didn't bother to tell me that she was almost at our stop until she'd been waiting there for 10 minutes. I then had to drop everything and rush off to get her. They stayed in last watching TV as cba to go out. I had planned to repaint the house this weekend so really pissed off.

She has spent the morning in bed while cousin has been up, won't now go off for a coffee or something with her so I'm needing to entertain her which I could do without (we are not close to her family, I used to have her and her brothers in the school hols etc but it was never reciprocated and her mother's an arse).

She constantly swears and stamps about. Brings up stuff about my abusive childhood and telling me I deserved it etc. She's horrendous.

I can't kick her out as she has nowhere to go. DH is sick of her too. She'll even square up to him if he tries to talk to her about her behaviour. She's threatened to 'knock me out' numerous times! Her nickname from her tutors at college was 'Hulk Smash' which sums her up. She has been sacked before from a part time job for her behaviour.

I know she has big issues but she won't go to her GP or source any help. I'm thinking hormones and MH.

I have 3 younger DC, one with SN with his own behaviour issues, and I've had enough.

What can I do?

It’s really easy to become an enabler as a parent - do you think you’ve become that?
I know you’d had therapy but it might be a good idea to get some professional help /therapy to give you insight into the unhealthy dynamic with your daughter. It reminds me of the dynamic between my sister and parents. To me, it sounds like she’s desperately crying out for boundaries and the sense there’s something solid to lean on. But all she finds is weakness and that’s why she has so much anger and hatred towards you. I’m not judging you - it sounds like you’ve done an incredible job overcoming a lot of terrible stuff from the past. But right now you’re not able to be the strong parent your daughter needs. She sounds like a strong wilful character and she does not need an enabling parent.

A counselling psychologist I used to know, who specialised in 'difficult' children, said she had yet to meet a 'problem child' that didn't come with 'problem parents'. Those children grow up into dysfunctional adults.

Your daughter's behaviour is unacceptable but i also wonder how she ended up that way.

You said in an early post that there was no childhood trauma and then, in the same post, go on to say that her sister died when she was 4.

I wonder what else there is in her life that you have minimised or ignored.

I'd get her to the GP pronto and consider why she isn't coping with life. Depression? Could she have a BPD?

I say this as she sounds like my sister, who now at 42 is an alcoholic, lost custody of her son and is in a real mess. My mum enabled her to continue to behave as she did through teen years etc and was always afraid to challenge her. She has recently been diagnosed with BPD. She used alcohol and drugs as a way to escape during her younger years and alcohol all her life. My mum bailed her out every time. My mum is not approaching 70 and is so frail from all the stress. We both were techinically parented the same, my other two siblings have no issues. She blames her childhood. I see it as that when she was a child she was super anxious and quite difficult, but they didnt manage it well, they just tried to avoid all conflict with her.

A traumatic even as a child can lead to BPD, I would imagine understandably you had a horrendous time after losing her sister. Maybe she feels like the unloved one, especially if that has been thrown at her int he past. I would be getting her assesed for reasons why. I dont believe she is just horrible and bad. She sound like she is struggling with life and probably feeling quite unloved. Not that is is an excuse, it isn't.

She was hysterical and I had to leave the room as I couldn't bear it

My daughter had a similar procedure at a younger age with a similar response. Do you not understand that she was terrified?

I stayed with my daughter and reassured her.

A nurse told me I could leave if I found it too distressing. I did find it horribly distressing but how much worse was it for her? I told the nurse I was staying because the day she was born, I made a promise to her that she'd never have to face the world on her own and I meant it.

Even in your daughter's own personally traumatic times, you made it about you.

If have been furious with you too.

Cancel the wifi account. Give her a reason to move out.

And on top of everything else, telling someone you hate their gits is an incredibly immature way of responding you your feelings towards her.

For those saying it doesn't matter, she's an adult now, she has spent 20+ years learning her worth and her place in the world. She can heal from that but it wont happen overnight and now is not the time for 'tough love' - she needs boundaries but those must come with love and support and not feel like a punishment/further rejection.

I think a lot of what you mention is the same for every teen/young adult. I went to University because I wasn't sure what else to do, I got drunk and missed lectures, I slept a lot, did little round the house and had people over. I dropped out of Uni. But my mum was understanding and supportive.

TheBatsHaveLeftTheBellTower telling the OP that you'd have been furious with her too, isn't helpful now - is it? She can't go back in time and change what's already happened.

OP I feel sorry for you because you sound like you are at the end of your tether. I can't give any specific advice because I haven't been in your situation, but I hope that you and your DD manage to get to a place where you can both find some peace.

It wasnt intended to be 'helpful'. It was intended to be honest.

Abandoning your child when they are scared, in pain and need you most, and to he unable to reflect on that nearly 2 decades later and understand that it perhaps wasnt the best decision, is pretty impressive.

Absolute Batshit. I'd only recently gone through giving birth to a baby that died in my arms. Leaving the room for a few moments while my DD was being held down in distress because I couldn't take it whilst still recovering from a traumatic experience myself was not abandoning her. I was right outside the door. You are being deliberately offensive.

Threads like these certainly make the cray crays come out don't they? I think people are projecting their own mother 'issues' onto me.

How is her relationship with her father?

Please apologise to her for saying you hate her guts. That's a difficult thing to hear from anyone, nevermind a parent....

You just appear to have very little insight, OP.

If you read you posts objectively, there are several things you have written that jump out as being possible explanations and you don't even recognise that.

You want people.to bitch about your daughter. I agree that her current behaviour is unacceptable but people are usually trying to tell you something when they behave badly. What is she trying to communicate to you?

Look, the more you say on this thread, the more it becomes abundantly clear that you have huge issues feelings any empathy towards your daughter. That's culminated in you telling her you hate her. A natural culmination tbh.

You seem to imply with each post that it's reasonable that you have no empathy for her. If that's the case, if you truly believe that she deserves no empathy, then there are two options:

1. You're right, she is a shitty human being and you have done nothing wrong, she's just bad. In which case, kick her out and leave her to her own devices.
2. You're wrong, she deserves empathy. In which case, get yourself into therapy and start working with the strengths you do have to make this situation better for everyone.

What you're doing at the moment is telling her to her face that you hate her, talking here about how she deserves no empathy, but also enabling her to stay in your house. You're blending together two approaches that contradict each other and that is only going to cause pain.

Decide what you believe about this situation and then make a plan, and execute it.

For what it's worth, it sounds to me like you have serious emotional challenges of your own, and that would make sense since you had an abusive childhood and were then bereaved of a child. Unfortunately, your eldest child has borne the brunt of your lack of insight into your own emotional shortcomings. She is now doing what you'd expect - she's suffering. However, because you have those emotional challenges, you are unable to empathize with her or model good behaviour for her, and therefore she has very limited opportunities to find a way out of her suffering.

Added to that, you seem to have ideas about motherhood and your duty towards your dd that cause you to keep her in your house despite the fact that you have no empathy for her.

You really don't seem to have insight into this, which is why you find yourself in a bind. I sympathise with that since you have no idea how badly you're fucking up.

Please get counselling. Stop focusing on your dd. She's not the issue here, and even if she were the issue, you can't change her, only yourself.

I teach in a school for boys with social, emotional and mental health difficulties and have done for 6 years. I am genuinely shocked here at how little importance you have attributed to the multiple traumatic events your daughter experienced in her early life. I teach students with an EHCP plan for mental health issues and attend a specialist secondary school who have experienced (on paper) “less” trauma (quantifying trauma should be avoided but I’m trying to get you to see how bad it is.)

I’m not saying acknowledging them means she should get away with her appalling behaviour (making her seeing a therapist as a condition of staying at home is a great start) but I think you are really underestimating the effects the death of a sibling and a life threatening illness can have on a child.

I would suggest looking at ACE (asverse childhood events) and thinking over your own childhood? Maybe you can’t see how traumatic her’s has been because it was “better” than your’s?

It sounds like you really don’t like her at all. I was a fairly awful teenager but luckily I had an amazing mum who supported me and was proud of me. My first university course resulted in a diploma when I could have gone for a degree and my mum was so happy that I had passed. Any time I’ve been depressed or anxious she’s supported me through it. You need to apologise to your daughter.

I think you need to set a deadline for her moving out. Perhaps give her first month's rent or a damage deposit as a going away gift (pay it directly to the landlord). Then change the locks and tell her no moving back home.

Blue just to check your reading comprehension skills seeing as you are a teacher, you do understand that DD never met her baby sister as she died when she was born? There was no sibling relationship beyond the idea that she was getting a sister. Being unwell and having to have an operation would have been mildly traumatic yes. DH or I never left her side for the week she was in hospital so she wasn't abandoned in some strange place either. It was much more traumatic for us.

Really clutching at straws to try to unpick her behaviour when I actually only asked for constructive advice on how to deal with an adult child's behaviour (who you can't just ditch) which is inexcusable even if she does have a hormonal imbalance or MH issues when she has the capacity to get help but won't!

It is possible that she's just bloody horrible but knows she can get away with it with me because I'm her mother and I've never let her down.

Op, it sounds like you expected your daughter to understand at 4 how traumatic it was for you to have lost a baby and to be grateful that you didn’t break down in front of her.
The next few years sound tough too and you sound like you’re blaming her for not realising this.
You really sound like you hate her, do you?
Yes you took care of her but have you been loving to her since she was 4, has she felt loved by you?
You keep justifying why you think she’s horrible and yes things needs to change. Maybe family therapy would help

I think rvby is bang on the money and has written, far more eloquently than me, what I wanted to say.

Yeah, I am aware of that. To be explicitly clear I am shocked that you don’t grasp that losing a sibling to miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death is deeply traumatic for a child. Especially at your daughter’s age when she will have had some understanding of what was going on during your pregnancy and that you received the devasting news so late in your pregnancy (although I do teach some students who are impacted by the death of siblings before they themselves were born).

The fact that you clearly state that her near death experience/operation/hospital stay was more traumatic for you than your daughter speaks volumes. She was not “unwell”. A burst appendix is a critical illness.

Seek professional help for yourself and your family.

This just gets better!

What an absolute crock Dileen

It was much more traumatic for us is almost comically revealing of the root of the problem. You are sure of this are you? Far more traumatic for you to have to leave the room while your seriously ill daughter, aged four, had painful things done to her by total strangers and was too young to know why all this was happening or whether you'd return. Your lack of empathy is chilling.

I find all the armchair psychotherapy here both dull and frustrating. Very few people were putting 4 year olds into grief counselling 20 years ago, so suggesting that the OP "failed" by doing that is just silly.

OP, you need to just get a grip. Give your DD a date by which she needs to be out of the house. If she gets violent, call the police. If you find evidence of drug-taking in the house, sling her straight out. Oh, and stop banging on about her GCSEs and degree class. It doesnt matter now and its in the past.

You may well find that your relationship improves once you do not live together.