My daughter is 18 and came home from university for Christmas last weekend.
She has always had quite a volatile personality and, although we've always been close, her mood has tended to dictate the atmosphere in the house at times. She can switch from delightful, reasonable, personable and loving in one second to the opposite in an instant without warning. There are no tangible or predictable 'triggers'. She switches without warning and once the black cloud/red mist has descended there's no way of de-escalating.
I'm a teacher, I know how to de-escalate a dysregulated child - what to and not to say and do - and how not to escalate it further but it's never been easy. This improved massively once her A Levels were over and she had matured hugely over the last 6 months before turning 18. We had a really lovely summer with relatively little conflict.
However, she has one friendship that seems to bring out the worst in her. I am NOT blaming this friend for my daughter's choices or behaviours but they are worse when she has been with her.
They have been friends with since starting secondary school. I don't really know her because she hadn't been round to the house at all until this summer. There are many reasons for this and none are because she hasn't been welcome. They are mainly because my daughter has wanted to keep some distance between her friend and her family. I'm only describing her circumstances because they feel relevant and give context to my daughter's behaviours. NOT because I am judging her based upon them.
Her friend is a very troubled young woman and has been dealt a really shit hand by life - she was removed from her parents care at 3 months old (drug use, DV and chaotic lifestyles. One parent and an older sibling are in prison). She has spent her teenage years being hospitalised for suicide attempts, absconding from care, moving children's homes etc.
She left care at 18 (she's just recently turned 19) and was allocated a room in supported accommodation - like a halfway house towards independence for careleavers. She left school with no qualifications but found a job. My daughter and another friend helped to make her room homely. She was really excited about a fresh start and it all seemed really promising. This was the first time I met her.
However, she only stayed there a few weeks before losing the room because she left. Ultimately, she is a very lost little girl who has experienced deep trauma and is desperate to be loved. She absconded from her various children's homes and this accommodation because she travels across the country to find her birth mother. Her mother moves between HMOs and areas and has no stability so she can't live with her. She has since left two more accommodations for the same reason.
Since leaving school, the disparity in their lives has become more amplified and more apparent.
Her friend has now moved to a completely different area of the country and in with her boyfriend of 6 or 7 weeks and his dad and I'll admit, I'm very concerned for her welfare. She's had a couple.of pregnancy 'scares' since my daughter left and a few of the girls she was in care with have had babies since leaving care - at least one has been removed and another is on a CP Plan - and she has talked about creating her own family. It's terribly sad and my daughter is understandably concerned that she is intending to become pregnant and can see how much their paths have diverged. She is very worried about her friend.
Her friend's life now centres around the 'drama' associated with a trauma informed chaotic lifestyle - bouts of homelessness; problems with benefits; problems with 'the social'; hers and her other friends' dysfunctional and often abusive relationships; day drinking; her pregnancy scares and her other friends' involvement with CP SWs; and her (understandable) anger towards her mother. There isn't much fun in her life. It's all bouncing from one crisis to the next, conflict, hostility and confrontation and her experiences are really the only conversation she has. Like I said, she is surviving. Not living. This is her normal and it's terrible.
So how does this impact the relationship between my daughter and me?
Well, when they have spent time together, my daughter expresses the same level of anger, aggression and hostility towards me as her friend does towards her own mother and 'authority figures' in her life. She can't seem to separate their different experiences.
She reacts to really inocuous things I say to her angrily and with hostility. She uses 'fighting talk' when she engages with me, and it comes out of nowhere. Eg she went out with this friend the other day to do chrostmas shopping and buy some toys for our pet (my daughter has really missed him while away). They both came back to the house and showed me what they'd bought. All full of happiness and fun - just like two 18/19 year olds who have spent a nice afternoon together.
One of the toys, our pet already has so, after saying all the right things about everything and it all being lovely and nice, I suggested she put that one toy away until he the other needed replacing expecting her to say, "Oh, ok. No problem." Instead, she unnecessarily argued with me that he didn't already have one and then started 'posturing' and accusing me of trying to be a 'bigman' (which, my son tells me, is language used by certain groups of people when they are spoiling for a fight). Just out of the blue and unnecessarily aggressive. She went upstairs and sent me texts telling me she wasn't coming home at Easter and as soon as she was out of university, I'd never have to see her again. She didn't speak to me for nearly 24 hours. She frequently threatens going nc with me.
I checked the time stamps of her messages telling me they were in a taxi 5 mins from home and the one of her telling me she wasn't coming home at Easter and there were 11 minutes between them.
I have no problem with her moaning about me to her friends - we all do that. But she also talks to her older brother and he is also very concerned.
He says that the person she describes when talking to him about me isn't one he recognises at all. He doesn't ever tell me what she's said, because she speaks to him in confidence, but he has said it has gone way beyond gripes about me reminding her to keep her room tidy and she speaks about me quite venomously. And with all the anger and hostility her friend talks about her life. He describes it as though, when she has spent time with this friend and been exposed to her high conflict conversations and relationships she sees our relationship through the same lens. Yet, she has also told me that she knows this friendship won't survive long term because of her friend's dysfunctional world view.
I don't know what to do. After living without any conflict for 3 months, I'm finding its return quite difficult. I feel anxious all the time and, when I hear her key in the door, my heart pounds because I don't know which version of her I'm going to get, whether or not it's going to change or what's going to trigger it.
She's thriving at university - doing well on her course so far, has settled in well. She has a boyfriend who she describes as treating her well, lovely friends, has some great flatmates, has joined a couple of clubs, and has a part time job she can return to in the holidays. We speak on the phone and message each other.
She worked hard to save for university and is is loving the independence. I'm so bloody proud of her and I have told her so.
But she's come home and I feel like I'm living in Trainspotting. It's gone way beyond normal returning from university and being an arse-ness.
I don't know what to do but I'm really concerned that the narrative she has created in her head is the one she will remember. She's battling an adversary who only exists in her imagination!
She refuses to do anything family related with us (and has for some.time now). But then accuses me of not including her. She is creating a narrative of dysfunction that no one else recognises.
I'm worried that, we won't reach the other side of this because she will have withdrawn from me so much and created such a distance that she won't know how to get back.
I don't know what to do.
I'm really sorry this is so long!