DD wants to cut ties-Says her childhood was toxic

[SadandStressed3]

This is long, so my apologies.
I’m in a horrible, stressful situation with my 19yr old daughter. Basically, she feels that she had a very unhappy childhood and now doesn’t want to have a relationship with us (apart from us continuing to support her at university and keep her during holidays from university 🙄) She does not keep in touch whilst away and when home, spends the entire time in her room. I’m just going to give a brief overview so as not to drip feed.

She is the eldest of 3 with a 5yr gap and essentially says she feels like we ruined her life by having the younger two. Apparently this meant no time for her and less holidays. She said she had to listen to us saying we couldn’t do stuff because of money but yet we chose to have the younger kids. She said it was toxic due to arguments and stress. There was an awful 2yrs after the youngest was born where I had hideous PND but still had to try and cope as we have zero extended family and DH was working away through the week. There’s 18mths between the younger 2 so DD would have been 7-9yrs during this time.
When she was Y5 we put her in for grammar entrance (she’s exceptionally able academically) She passed and went to an all girls grammar. She hated it and we let her move to the comprehensive for Y8. She hated that too but still came out with 4 top A’levels.
There has been lots of teen drama and she was under CAMHS for a year. This was counselling and I was called in for the last 10mins of each session to be told how awful I always made her feel. How she was belittled and unloved and how the younger two were treated more favourably and how I gaslit her. She complains that the younger two have more relaxed rules on bedtime and internet use (probably marginally true but not by a significant amount) She’s also very angry that family holidays can now be more teen focused whereas when she was their age, we had to accommodate younger kids. To me this is all just what happens when you’re the eldest. Every year, I’ve made sure her and I had a weekend away just us. I’ve also taken her shopping for clothes and when she was 14, we completely redid her bedroom allowing her to choose and putting in a make up desk etc. If anything, she’s probably been over indulged a little.

It breaks my heart that she refuses all contact when away and lives by this narrative of having had a toxic childhood. I work in child safeguarding and thus deal with kids daily who really have experienced toxic situations and it frustrates me and upsets me so much to hear DD say such things. Half of me wants to support her and acknowledge, as I have tried to, that there was a very difficult period when her siblings were young and the other half wants to tell her to stop wallowing in self indulgent MC bullshit. Obviously the latter isn’t ideal and I do push that away. As things stand, she’ll finish next year and we’ll never hear from her again and I’m desperate to sort this out beforehand. Well done if you’ve got this far. Any advice is very welcome.

I’m so sorry for what you’re going through.

As a teacher, I’ve worked with several children with ASC. Is it possible she’s ASC? Some of the traits you’ve mentioned such as struggling to regulate her emotions, how she process events, how she communicates and understands others feelings (you being “dramatic for internally bleeding) and being exceptionally bright make me think this. I think you need to speak to an ASC advisor to get some specific support for how to handle this.

I also think, the fact she still wants funding for university and everyone saying this is obviously very cheeky shows your daughter processes things differently as she obviously doesn’t think this.

Good luck, OP 💐

I genuinely blame TikTok for all this crap. They see someone talking about “toxic parents” and the automatically think they’ve had that because they didn’t get a holiday.

it really takes away from those who have had some terrible upbringings

This is a great answer. Just ignore the others who are trying to goad you.

I’m not a psychologist and I hate people diagnosing people they’ve never met. However, have you explored personality disorders? Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (aka bipolar) expresses itself in a number of ways and from your description your DD is displaying a number of similar traits.

I don't know if you are still reading.this thread OP. I think you sound like a lovely caring mum whi has and continues to do her best for her daughter. Maybe your daughter has ASD maybe she doesn't. Either way, life is hard for all of us sometimes and she seems to have no understanding or empathy for anyone else. Keep her close but be clear about the realities and your truth too. Wishing you well OP.

Is there a step parent involved OP?

She sounds very selfish & ungrateful & is probably surrounding herself with people at uni who are lapping up what she says & reaffirming it back to her. She should understand that parenting is all about balance, as is being a subling. You've obviously done your best for her & all your children & she's constructed a toxic childhood narrative based on a few negative things she remembers & chosen to inflate them out of proportion. If she can't recognise your efforts to do special things with her, then she's very blinkered in her mind. I hope she overcomes all that & grows up a bit to realise the job you had to do as a parent.

I haven't RTFT but have read all your replies. How does she handle other relationships eg with friends? Is there a pattern?

No advice but I am in a similar position and it's heartbreaking. Through bitter experience I've had to just learn to live with estrangement, remember the good times - of which there is much evidence (loving messages and cards and photos) and leave the door open to a reunion in the future. Sending warm thoughts. Hope it helps to know you're not the only mum in this position. Be kind to yourself.

This is the most messed up thread I've read on MN. Half of people saying one thing, the other half saying the opposite. Almost everyone projecting their own childhood issues, and some frankly absurd and bullying comments mixed in. The majority of people obviously haven't bothered reading the OP's responses and updates. It's a miracle that the OP has taken anything useful away from this and I'm glad that they've now stepped away for their own mental health. Poor show.

It doesn't. It takes away from those who were emotionally abused at home but get told it's all just due to tik tok and they have no valid point.

Also wrt tiktok, I'd encourage to look up a lady with the handle Fabulous Fifties. She's a daughter and a mother who has experienced estrangement both ways. If she rubs you the wrong way she's probably just holding up a mirror and you need to take a good look at yourself.

Tiktok goes both ways btw. Plenty of parents there whose kids are estranged through no fault of their own so whatever camp you are you'll find your crew there.

My trauma and depression were caused by events at school, like my sexual assault aged eight, experiencing female puberty whilst autistic, and trying to live in a world set up for neurotypical people whilst autistic. Home was physically safe for me. Yet I just wanted to stay as far from my family as possible, like OP's DD. I blamed them for everything that was going wrong for me when I wasn't blaming myself, like OP's DD. Like the DD, I struggle to maintain friendships. Like the DD, I prefer solitude.

Once the OP had clarified that she had worded her opener in a way that many posters had misunderstood, I didn't attack her again but instead suggested autism as a possible cause for DD's behaviour. Making suggestions is what autistic people view as helpful. Did you notice that change in my posts? Sure, I also replied to rebutt what other's were saying, but that wasn't aimed at the OP.

I'll go back to the bit about preferring solitude and the comments the OP made about taking DD on holiday, because this is an example of how autism coupled with an environment set up neurotypicals can drive hostile behaviour in an autistic child.

When you're autistic, if the people who control your life to the point that they decide if and when you even eat take you to somewhere that:

• is out of your routine that involves having to pack and worry about forgetting things and travelling to get there,
• is probably loud and bright and crowded and certainly unfamiliar
• is probably too hot
• requires you to share a room with other people and lose your solitude for two weeks

But:

• those people are telling you that this is expensive and a treat and you are lucky to be going
• you don't understand your own feelings about this other than "bad"
• you've been extensively taught not to express ingratitude, that you say thank you and smile even if you hate the gift

How are you going to react to this? I'll tell you how.

The SEND kids boards is full of parents of low-masking autistic kids bemoaning the fact that they can't go anywhere without DC(9) having a meltdown, because low-masking kids can't mask how they feel about going somewhere that causes sensory overload or other forms of distress. High-masking autistic kids will mask and mask and pretend to enjoy being there as part of the masking, because they want to appease the people who control every aspect of their lives, until they can't mask any more. And when they melt down, they cannot articulate the bad feeling but they know who caused it by taking them on holiday: their parents. The child cannot articulate why they are unhappy when asked because that involves telling the people who control everything including whether the child eats or not that the "treat" was anything but. If they do say that they didn't enjoy the holidat, they are branded "ungrateful", even though for a lot of autistic children, lego in their shoes every day would be more pleasant than spending two weeks at Disney.

My own experience was that, as I approached the point at which I was able to leave home, I became more and more impatient to do so because I could see the ability to control my environment tantalisingly just out of reach. And I acted a lot like OP has described her DD as being like.

OP I also think you’re getting a hard time on here. You sound like a caring thoughtful mother to me. You clearly care about your dd a lot, it’s not about doing up her room necessarily but taking the time and effort to think of her and do nice things for her.

I wonder about the weekends away (which are a lovely thing to do) - did you do similar with your other dc? And if not, why not?

Excellent words; showing you respect her decision but that you are there for her.

EUPD and bipolar are not the same thing. Bipolar is treated with lithium. EUPD, commonly known as Borderline Personality Disorder, requires a talking therapy called Dialectical Behavioural Therapy.

EUPD is also a common misdiagnosis for autistic women and girls.

OP she is just lashing out because she is not mentally well. I can relate so much to this. My youngest of 5 children is 19 now .She is very smart too (4 STEM Alevels at a/A* ,but thinks shas a failure) she has suffered from depression and anxiety, really since she was about 11. It is so hard, There is literally no help available. Sometimes she lashes out at me, she tells me to go away, and then gets upset when i do. Please see this as part of her illness and grasping at anything to try to make sense of it,

The OP herself, and many of the posters, are operating from the presumption that either OP or her daughter are "right" about her childhood and that the other one is "wrong".

But it doesn't work like that. This isn't about assessing historical accuracy, or even moral accuracy. There are likely to be things you are underplaying and she is overplaying. None of that matters. OP's daughter is expressing her pain. And she is obvious pain. It's really not common for 19 year olds to talk about wanting to cut ties. CAMHs might have been less overstretched 6 years ago, but it was still overstretched.

It doesn't matter if she is a 'spoilt little madam', or influenced by tiktok or whatever. None of that is going to make her feel better about her childhood, or her relationship with the OP.

If the OP wants to continue, and improve a relationship with her, she needs to move away from the justification about what she did or didn't do, and just sit, and hear her daughter's pain and validate it, and show her daughter the unconditional love that she obviously needs. Because she wouldn't be telling you this stuff if she didn't want to keep a relationship with you - she'd just have cut you off.

It's incredibly hard to do this without becoming defensive, or moving into a space of who is right and who is wrong. This is where joint therapy might be helpful.

Spoilt, entitled brat tantrums.
Cut the financial help and tell her to grow up!!!

I haven’t read the whole thread, just the OP’s posts.

I would just say that these two things can both be true at once:

1. You did nothing wrong, or not much.
2. She had and is having a very difficult and unhappy time.

For some reason she is unhappy and is looking around for reasons. She’s fixed on the effects of having younger siblings - but that doesn’t mean that’s the real reason. You are a safe person to blame so she is doing that.

There may be some other underlying reason for her unhappiness. Autism is one possibility. Or depression. Or perhaps as a pp said, she has been encouraged to navel gaze and fault find. Or a bit of all of this.

"There has been lots of teen drama and she was under CAMHS for a year. "
This sounds important. Can you elaborate?

Crossposted with Piglet who put it better.

Great post minipie

What I said about autistic kids masking like crazy until they can't any more to appease the people who control every aspect of their lives because they fear the consequences of not masking? All the "cut her money off" people are demonstrating perfectly why autistic kids do this.

This is an excellent post if OP is looking for a constructive way to rebuild the relationship.