Help with my daughter (24)

[mumhelpwithdaughter]

Hoping you can help me with my daughter (she is 24). I have been to talk to someone as my daughter asked me to, after we last spoke. This person has suggested I talk to my daughter to explain why I feel the way I do but agreed an email to my daughter would be OK. This is mainly because I really can't face trying telling my daughter and watch her face have no expression like last time. Last time, I told her to come home to see me and I cried and told her that I need her to tell me that she loves me. She said she did, but I told her that really I know she hates me.

The person I spoke with agreed that how I feel is fairly normal but made worse due to a couple things.

I have always totally understood that my daughter has her own life now but it seems that she has forgotten I need to feel part of it too.

She might find it hard to imagine but I was 24 years old once, except I was also married with my own house (my daughter lives in a houseshare near her boyfriend, about an hour away from us, where she is doing teacher training).

However I have told my daughter that I never forgot I still had a mum who loved me dearly, as I do my daughter and I continued to visit her, sometimes unannounced, to hug, tell her I loved her and that I still needed her.

Since my daughter left to start university she has never come back unannounced/as a surprise. The first couple of years she left I hoped she might pop home unannounced on Mother's Day but never did. Once I remember her dad said he was just popping out to check the boat and thought he was really going to pick her up from the station - but no. I tried calling her every day at uni, sometimes she didn’t answer so I called her boyfriend instead which she said was intrusive. She wouldn’t give me a copy of her timetable or put an app on her phone so I could see where she was.

Then recently when she bought her car I thought this would be the time she started to pop back home to say hi. Guess she has been too busy.

I have tried sending her lots of messages (emails and texts) in the mornings before work telling her I love her and I need her to let me in.

The lady said that sometimes it takes something drastic for children to suddenly remember one day their parents might not be there. She was speaking from experience as she put off visiting her mum for only a few days. Tragically her mum was knocked down by a lorry and she never saw her again. I have told my daughter this in an email.

I am not going to beg her but I need her to understand that I need to be part of her new and changing life.

Honestly therapy (on your own) is your best option. They’ll validate all you’ve told us here and help you clarify how you want your relationship with her to look (based on the facts of her current behaviour) and they’ll also offer some coping strategies. Having been there it took years to finally realise I had to give up but therapy helped. Good luck.

Thank you @KaleQueen 🙏🏼

Is it kind of that I’m just starting to pull the thread and the knitting is all going to unravel into a mess…?

In a simple way, yes. Children need love, stability, time and good boundaries. Mums and dads need to put the children first for a period in their lives until the children grow up and start to break free. It costs a lot to put your own needs on the back burner at times, but it's what's necessary.

From everything you've said your mum puts her own emotional needs first. She pushed you away emotionally, was cruel to you, was by far the dominant person in the household including over your father. But when a grown up child starts to look at what's been happening, usually because something inside them is aware that things weren't right, you see isolated incidents. As you think more about it and more things come back, it's like forming a jigsaw. The pieces get filled in slowly and you start to see a picture. (Sometimes there's a memory fog actually, if things were too bad, where you can't remember swathes of your childhood and that makes it harder).

Essentially as you become more aware of what good, loving parenting is you see where your own experience of being parented as a child was flawed. It has to be said that most parents are a mix of good and flawed (or downright awful sometimes). But our childhood is what's normal to us, so we often don't see the flaws until adulthood.

From the outside, you've said enough to indicate that your mother was extremely self-centred. Pushing you away as a child, which is when you need your parents most, and then trying to claw you in as an adult, when you should be more free and independent, plus the incidents of cruelty indicate that actually something was very wrong.

Thank you so much @DucklingSwimmingInstructress that makes so much sense. So as well as the specific incidents I can remember, it’s also about that pervasive atmosphere of fear and walking on eggshells, and then the emotional manipulation when I (understandably?) want less to do with her as an adult because of my experience of her…

Your post is so wise, thank you.

it’s also about that pervasive atmosphere of fear and walking on eggshells I'm not surprised to hear that. The effect of this long term is not nothing too. Children have to learn to handle stress but the best way is by having a firm and safe base at home. This wasn't that!

The good news is that a great deal can be achieved later on to gain security, and just from how you talk I'm certain you will come through the process of realising how wrong things were, going through the grief and the anger, and more or less coming out the other side. Your foundations haven't been good, but you can build a strong house anyway. The counseling is a great idea.

It may be that you choose to step away completely from your mum, or that you step away for a while and then (if she wants too) have some contact. You'll always need to keep very firm boundaries up though; she's probably always going to play games with you.

There is nothing you can do here but step back. The constant emails, texts, crying , expecting visits and asking her to tell you that she love you, you sound overbearing and insane. At 24 she will be busy with uni , bf and enjoying her new found freedom and independency. The more you push the more you will push her away. Take a step back , you don't need to be part of anything she doesn't want you to be part of, stop making her feel pressure, guilty or responsible for your emotional needs and wants. I'm sure she loves you but it sounds very suffocating what you are doing

Thanks so much @DucklingSwimmingInstructress, that’s so reassuring.

I agree that she’s always going to play games - that’s how she operates and I’m not sure she’s capable of any other way of behaving/being. I’m definitely going to get counselling to go through all of this. Thank you again, your posts are so wise and helpful.

more than welcome =)

Very best wishes!