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.

Agreeing with your daughter about cutting ties is not what she wants to hear - if her parents give up on her, it reinforces what she already believes about them not giving much of a stuff about her.

I think that based on your referring to your child accessing a year of tier three mental health services as 'teen drama',
I want too struck on this either. It sounds a tad dismissive.

I think she sounds like a spoiled little Madam who resented not being the undivided centre of attention growing up, failed to roll with the tough times, and now wants you to continue to fund her shitty attitude.

'I hate you, I want nothing to do with you, don't even look at me, let alone try to engage with me. Just keep sending me money to fund my life and give me a place to stay when Uni is closed.'

Um, hard no.

I would not be funding this behaviour. I would be willing to offer to support an assessment if you think she's ND and struggling, but I wouldn't be funding someone who openly said they wanted nothing to do with me, blamed for having the audacity of having children in addition to her and 'ruining her life', yet wanted me to keep the money flowing.

Just try not to take it all too much to heart

Teenage angst

I suppose is what you call it

I didn't read it in the way as other posters. Why would you have sought help for her if you thought her struggles just "teen drama"? Makes no sense.

I doubt ops dd had severe mental health problems,

You assert this based on what?

My mum might have written a thread like this back in the noughties. It turned that I had undetected autism, which manifested as suicidal mental health problems not only from my mid-teens but for the whole of my adult life.

The OP doing lots for DD1 doesn't preclude DD1 having severe mental health problems.

Op it was perfectly obvious to me you meant them separately, I was about to post as much myself. Agree that so many are projecting here.

Have you ever discussed with dd or has she ever had thoughts about being neurodiverse?

The answer is simple. In this thread, it comes across like you don’t like her. Therefore, I’m sure this is the impression she gets from you in real life as well.

When she’d say she was ugly I’d say she wasn’t, she was beautiful but if she was unhappy I’d do what I could to help.

I dread to even ask what this means.

All these vile posters who keep calling her a spoit little madam

I would just like to slap you all

She just going through a rough patch at uni around different people and opinions etc etc it's a notoriously awkward time leaving home etc etc yet still being a child

I think she sounds like a spoiled little Madam who resented not being the undivided centre of attention growing up, failed to roll with the tough times, and now wants you to continue to fund her shitty attitude.

This.

And TikTok doesn't help matters as they all scroll through that when bored and think they've missed out on everything ever

I find it weird the amount of parents on here who'd only support their kids through university if their kids were delightful and pleasant all the time and suitably grateful for having such epic parents. It's not much different to dads who think they only have to pay child maintenance if they can see the kids whenever they want, on their terms. Fairweather parenting.

Absolutely.

Let her find her own way in this world for a time, she may eventually grow up.

I don’t know anyone who started trashing their childhood because they heard different opinions at uni.

More likely she’s fallen down a self-obsessive hole of imaginary grievances on TikTok.

This. And she's probably being exposed to too much nonsense on social media.

Does she have the same father as your other two children?

I feel like there is something missing here?

A toxic granny dripping poison into her ear?

Where I live CAMHS is quite hard to access, I would be ignoring any requests for holiday funding though, She can get a job. Good luck

Based on the original post plus I believe op has since said she did pull strings to get the appt.

I'm surprised how many posters are encouraging OP to sever ties with her daughter completely, with a "that'll teach her" attitude

I think best to go low contact for a while, keep the door open, listen to what she has to say and hope things improve over time

She sounds very like my DD who is now 16. I can see her doing something like this and I really can’t see how I would stop it. Every mistake or perceived mistake we made is dragged up and thrown back at us and we are not terribly strict, I would say that we are pretty middle of the road.

So I guess what I am saying is that I don’t know if there is anything you can do but I know if that happens with my DD, I will pay for education but indulge no further.

If my mother could have pulled strings to get me seen sooner, she would have done so. Had she done so, it would not have meant that I wasn't genuinely really mentally ill.

The same goes for OP's DD. That she was under CAHMS for a whole fucking year supports this. I got three months, despite being suicidal.

Did you write about her before, op? Did your younger kids get sent to private school?

Threatening to pull her university funding doesn't put you on the moral high ground.
She sounds like she's still desperate for validation from you, and you stopping her funding will set her on a path of victimhood for the rest of her life.

Be the adult. Help her through uni and stay calm while she deals with whatever crisis this is.

OP, this might just be who she is. And being the eldest doesn't help. They get a lot of focus entirely on them, then find it difficult when they have to share the limelight with a younger sibling. We all know this, and how sibling jealousy can be expressed towards new babies. This is not something you or any parent should blame themselves for, otherwise all families would only have one child.

I think your daughter needs to grow up a lot, and learn that life is inherently unfair and that many people have much worse childhoods than hers. She may be on the spectrum, or she could be just high in narcissistic/negative traits. I've seen it in many multiple child families, where most of the children are fine, but there's one who is a nightmare despite very similar upbringing, and in the end I think people vary in personality just as they do in looks.

Continue paying her expenses and let her have the space she needs.

You speak just like my mother and we had a similar dynamic.

The best day was when I left her home for good, I was much happier, and my mother was secretly happy to be able to wash her hands off the whole issue as well.

If she is neurodivergent like me, it will make her less vulnerable if you are able to help her into her first home, car, etc… once the basics are established, she won’t need you anymore and perhaps she can begin to heal from her experiences with you.

It’s the least you can do if she was emotionally neglected due to you being ill then taking on more children when you hadn’t fully met the needs of the first. That’s not her fault. Try to make the next stage of her life easier.

I hold no ill will towards my mother, but it is less damaging for me to be away from her with extremely low contact for emergencies only.

My mother, unlike you, accepts she got some things wrong, but she has zero empathy for me and has been the opposite of helpful during my struggles with mental ill health, poverty, and homelessness. I’m doing very well now, but with help from everyone but her.

Your daughter is still young, you have a chance to do better and set her on a safer better supported trajectory. Good luck.