I don't know how much longer I can parent my young adult DD

[intheshallow]

My DD is 18. I want to preface my post by saying that I love her. I want the best for her. She's talented and smart and funny. She's aspirational and interested in the world.

Life with my DD is unbearable most days. She's always been somewhat tricky , has control issues I would say, doesn't always connect well with other young people but does have a few close friends. She is a glass half empty sort of kid and while It's been hard at times , we stayed close and muddled through.

Fast forward to now and she's been studying hard A levels for the last two years. She has crashed and burned so badly that I do not recognise her.
She cannot tolerate even the smallest of requests from me , and I mean tiny ones like 'pick up your cup off the floor'. She is verbally abusive, says dreadful things about the kind of parent I am, and quotes long diatribes about being a toxic parent / she's going to go no contact when she's financially independent/hopes I rot in loneliness when I'm older.

It's just the two of us. Has been for a long time. She does see her Dad occasionally but he's a let-down on all fronts. She runs when he calls though, and I know that deep down so many of her issues are connected to him. Some days my life feels unbearable because for the last 2 years, I can't recall a single act of kindness that she has extended to me. She snarls when I speak, has taken to physically pushing me out of her way if I try to insist on a conversation, tells me to piss off/get out/ etc. my DD lives in squalor in her bedroom, I'm ashamed to say that it's so bad that it smells the entire upstairs. I tell her not to eat up there but she pushes past me and puts her headphones on to block me out. She is clean in herself but sometimes wears dirty clothes because she won't put them in the laundry basket but also won't let me in her room to take them out. She hardly leaves the house so entering her room anyway is not as easy as you'd think. She will physically push me out if I enter. Many, many times I've resorted to telling her that I cannot have her live here and act like this and she just snarls and says she won't be going anywhere.

My DD only interacts me to ask for lifts money or something else. She is escalating every week. There isn't a shred of her former kind self I can connect with , no matter how hard I try. I dream of selling my house and moving to a one bed flat that she can't come to. Believe me when I say that I feel like the mother she says I am, when I think this way.

I've tried to get her counselling. She won't go. She isn't going to university either. She does say she will get a job soon so that's something. I feel desperate most days

Thanks everyone. I think one of the biggest sources of conflict between my DD and I is mess and I have honestly tried different variations of dealing with it , ranging from saying nothing and cleaning up every single item she throws at her feet , to calling her to come and sort it out , which leads to explosions. I'm on egg shells every day wondering which one to choose. My DD creates mess that keeps me working harder now than I did when she was much younger. Her bedroom aside ( i don't go near it ) , she treats the kitchen and bathroom pretty badly too. If a sandwich is made , every item used is left where it was , including leftovers. She will leave half eaten food where she sits, wrappers on the sofa, floor etc and half eaten pieces of fruit everywhere. Literally everywhere. She takes fruit to her bedroom and doesn't eat it so it rots, or takes a bite and leaves it on hallway tables, sofa, windowsills. She isn't leaving the house so is eating a LOT and while she hasn't gained weight, I worry that it's only a matter of time. It's also a bone of contention that my DD will munch through items needed for dinner so I regularly have to think on my feet to change what I'd planned. Before anyone says just tell her to stop... I've tried. She doesn't care.

If we were able to achieve some level of harmony inside the house that she would actually stick to , I already know life would be easier but she is sadly not in a place where she wants that yet. It sounds petty, but coming home from work every day to find mess, dinner ingredients gone, wrappers and half eaten food everywhere , dirty kitchen, bag and coat thrown to the middle of the kitchen floor ( yes!) It gets SO wearing. I've tried absolutely everything and she just rolls her eyes or tells me to shut up.

So I guess I'm saying all that because so much of that particular side of her behaviour is not , I think, connected to her internal state. I think some of it is teenage/developmental selfishnessness that will iron itself out eventually and some of it just had behaviour.
One thing that I have never really been able to get my head around is that my DD will spend the same level of energy fighting me not to pick up her shoes that she did when she was 11. It hasn't in ANY way moved on. That's the part that genuinely worries me. She spends SO much energy fighting for the right to live this way that it feels like it will never get better. An example will be that I'd ask her to come sort the mess she made after cooking some lunch , and she will argue , fuss, fight, refuse , say it wasn't her , and sometimes, but not always just point blank refuse. She will just say ' no'.
The time and energy she devotes to resisting this stuff is honestly mind boggling to the point that I will sob in front of her , sometimes pleading that just for today , just once , please come sort it out. And my DD will just stand there and repeat her answer: no.

Sorry for the multiple threads. So let's say that stuff is demand avoidance - what do I do? Just let her throw rubbish on the floor , ask absolutely nothing from her in terms of cleaning up her own mess, live unhygenicly, eat the family meal ingredients? Honestly if it's PDA, what does that mean? That this is my life?

Multiple posts I mean, not threads

Hmmm I'd struggle too.

Room wise I go in a do a check sweep of food and bowls etc.

Then when she is occupied elsewhere I quickly change bed. Grab clothes. Hand clothes etc. it's hard tho as your dd sound much more demand avoidant.

One think will say is it did get a little batter as she hit older years. She isn't as bad in the house as she was now Her rooms still bad but it's manageable. We invested in good storage and that's helped hugely too. X

Pls try and get counselling for yourself as a starting point

@intheshallow
"Honestly for me the single biggest thing that upsets me is how lacking in empathy my DD is. She is unmoved by my upset or even tears if I'm pushed too far. She makes comments about me being a narcissistic victim if I show emotion at her behaviour."

My daughter was so, so cruel to me when she was at her worst. I remember once she pushed me out of the front door and slammed it behind me with the words "I hope you die of cancer". She would push her way into the bathroom when I was in the bath (we didn't have a lock on the door at the time - if the door was shut it meant someone was using it) and sneer at me, then walk out leaving the door wide open. She laughed at my clothes. Told me my job was shit and I was useless and a burden on DH. Told me that everyone would be better off if I left home. She threatened to call the NSPCC, tell them I was hitting her (I wasn't) and have her younger siblings taken into care. She trashed my bedroom. I genuinely felt like I was the victim of abuse. From a teenage daughter. And that made me feel so ashamed - like I was completely powerless. She did everything to diminish me. She also did the 'stop playing the victim' card while actively victimising me.

My biggest mistake was allowing her to see that I was hurt and was emotionally impacted by her cruelty. It gave her power over me, which I think frightened her in some way. I wish I'd never asked her to empathise with me. Or acknowledge how much she'd hurt me. It was such a mistake to make these sort of appeals to her.

As I said early in the thread, my daughter (now 25) really doesn't know why she was so hateful to me in her teenage years. She's very apologetic and ashamed about her behaviour, and she's incredibly loving to me now. Maybe a psychologist could explain why we went through this period of trauma in our relationship, but I can't. I was very bonded to DD when she was a child, but I became paralysed and withdrawn as a parent during her teenage years.

As for her manipulating you into spending money and treating her - I would have done EXACTLY the same as you. Just taken any moment that looked like connection and tried to live in and appreciate it. But maybe to discipline myself not to expect gratitude or change, and not be hurt. Try not to be transactional with her - it creates so much toxicity in a relationship, even if she is engaging in transactional behaviours with you.

Oh, and I second the advice to get counselling. I did. And antidepressants. They helped.

Sabire this was a hard read. My DD has stopped short of wishing death on me but she's said other really horrible nasty things about my victimhood, called me an abuser , attention seeker , liar , narcissist, pathetic. Ironically she also pushes her way into the bathroom when I'm using it.

I agree with being transactional. She knows how to be civil to me momentarily to get what she wants and even then it's only barely. She has become skilled in switching between these frequencies and will revert within minutes of success to type. I always end up so so angry with myself in those moments for being pathetic enough to believe that she will be nice enough to me again if I do it.
Sadly I recognise the appeasing element that I engage in here. I recall a dynamic in my own family growing up where the dominant parent was appeased and brought cups of tea after an upset in order to bring them out of their funk. Moments of interaction were then lapped up like breadcrumbs. I am doing this in reverse.

I too regret showing her emotion as it only increases her contempt. She often threatens to have no relationship with me as an adult and I hate myself for it but she doesn't realise some days that I would welcome it. I know what some of you will be thinking to read that. In my heart I don't mean a word of it but jesus some days I am so so battered by her hatefulness that I don't know if I will ever recover. It's hard to keep loving someone who wouldnt spit on you in a fire , and sees your only purpose in life as one of servitude.

How do parents recover? Rebuild trust and love? I feel so wary and nervous around my DD that I actively try to avoid being in her company. I remember reading something on here years ago about a mother whose adult son behaved so badly in the the teen years that she didn't recover the trust or love. He did , in fairness do some horrendous things and my DD is nowhere near that. This lady was so traumatized that she could never allow herself to love him fully again.

I absolutely relate to the posts about showing hurt/emotion being unhelpful (yet we're only human!). My DD would also accuse me of playing the victim, trying to make it all about me, etc. On reflection I think this is also about her reluctance to feel negative emotions (make herself feel bad) so she turns it back on me and makes it my fault.

It used to scare me that while my instinct on seeing distress is to try to offer comfort, hers seemed to be to hurt more. It wasn't that she enjoyed me being upset, though, more that she didn't want to take any responsibility for causing it/reflect on her own behaviour, so had to make it my own fault.

She is a lot better now - still has her moments.

Sending love and support to everyone who is struggling.

I think feeling the way you do is very understandable. Anyone who judges you for it needs to walk a day in your shoes. It's not easy.

"One thing that I have never really been able to get my head around is that my DD will spend the same level of energy fighting me not to pick up her shoes that she did when she was 11. It hasn't in ANY way moved on. That's the part that genuinely worries me. She spends SO much energy fighting for the right to live this way that it feels like it will never get better. An example will be that I'd ask her to come sort the mess she made after cooking some lunch , and she will argue , fuss, fight, refuse , say it wasn't her , and sometimes, but not always just point blank refuse. She will just say ' no'."

This is typical PDA.

My children are much younger, so this might not work now yours is older but if i want them to do something, i have to manipulate them into it so they don't realize I'm asking them to do something - If they throw something on the floor, I'll "say where does rubbish belong?", or "where does your plate need to go?" Rather than directly saying "put it in the bin/sink". I do spend a lot of time picking up after them but they're getting much better as they get older. There's also zero point in me making demands when they're hungry/tired.

I'm PDA too, not as severely as my children. Just to give you an insight into how my brain works might help you with what's going on with your dd. I absolutely despise housework. If I'm about to wash up, and someone hands me something to wash up, or puts something in the sink, i immediately feel ragey and then task paralysis sets in because someone placed a demand on me. I have to then wait until I'm regulated again before i can carry out the task. It triggers flight or fight. Regulating myself might take 5 minutes, might take an hour until I'm ready to do it. Obviously your dd probably isn't intending to do the washing up, but just to give you an insight into what's setting her off when you make what is ostensibly a very reasonable request - my nervous system is quicker than my thinking brain. Once my thinking brain kicks in, i can then see that what they said/did wasn't actually that bad.

Doing hated tasks like housework is much easier when i put some music on to give me dopamine and i like to be left alone in the kitchen while I'm doing it. The worst thing anyone can do is criticise how badly I've done it or suggest how i can do it better. So if she does make an effort, just say thanks, even if she's done it badly - she's more likely to try again.

Also apologising feels impossible until i know that my apology will be well received otherwise if i try and reach out and im met with anger or dismissal i get really upset all over again. I've worked hard on this over the years since my diagnosis and i never let any of it show - but it still happens. That instant flash of fight or flight will never go away because it's part of my nervous system. The reason I've managed to work on this is because a) I've put the work in, which your dd hasnt started yet and b) i know my husband will accept me and give me space to apologise. The worst thing i ever tend to do is a slightly cross tone of voice, so it's not really comparable to your dd and its not fair to expect you to absorb that level of vitriol and meet it with "there there". But in that moment when she comes to you after a blow up, if you can meet her not with anger but with calmness and say "i will help you look for your shoes. But before i do, i would like for us to talk about what happened before because that situation (not "you" ) made me feel xyz. What are you really upset about?" That might set her off again but it's about as gently as you can go to make a start. It will also give you both time to reflect.

My dd is Audhd. She had some pda traits.

If we ask her to do chores she kicks off. If we don’t she offers and is extremely helpful. So we don’t ask, and she buzzes round doing lots.

I can’t even get a birthday list from mine! She finds the demands too much.

If you're talking to me then yeah. There's my autistic arse, my niece, my brother has ADHD, my grandfather thinks he'd have been diagnosed with autism if he was born now and not in the 1940s, my parents both have autistic traits, and my sister had learning difficulties when she was younger, meanwhile my late nan had bipolar disorder and her brother has clinically diagnosed OCD. My ex and father of my DS also seems to have something going on, so my poor kid has no chance. It is what it is. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Sabire9 I’m so glad that things have improved so much now that your DD is older. 💐

One phrase in your post struck me- I genuinely felt like I was the victim of abuse.

You absolutely were the victim of abuse, there’s no doubt about it. If one off your friends were being treated like that, you’d consider it abuse. It’s v. hard to admit that our own children can do this to us, but of course they can, every person is technically capable of abuse. You sound as if you’re recovering now, I wish you all the best. 💐

@Confuuzed PDA sounds v. hard to manage, a lot of effort is required. How do you feel if one of your children asks you for something or needs something in the moment? How does it affect you in a work environment? It sounds exhausting.

Have you considered reading the thread?

It is absolutely exhausting. I was completely burnt out constantly when they were small. The first few years are a blur and i honestly don't know how i got through it. If one of my children ask me for something now, quite often i have to take a breath before the fight mode snaps at them. I am very good at masking so i do mask a lot with the children if I'm struggling. If i can't do it right now, I'll say "yes, i will but just give me a minute". They just want to hear me say yes so then That's usually enough to give me time to get over it. Or I'll ask my husband to do it if I'm too overwhelmed/dysregulated. If I'm generally well regulated i can cope with a lot more so i have to make sure i get enough of the right kind of downtime to keep myself regulated and able to cope with daily life. Not easy when we have no family support. Masking takes a huge toll so anywhere I've had to mask i usually have to recover from.

Work is difficult. I work from home part time, in a job where I'm pretty well respected and left to get on with things which helps as i don't have the demands that working in an office, constantly socializing and masking places on me. I have to pace myself and be careful about what i commit to, purchase extra holiday and use TOIL when i feel burnout coming on.

I would look at PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome). My younger daughter has it. I really sympathise. You are not a weak parent if it is PDA. I suggest you join groups for parents of girls with asd for support.

God I relate to this so much, if someone asks me to get them a glass of water as I walk in the kitchen I have a visceral reaction, I know I’m being unreasonable! My son has asd and definitely has traits, it’s a fight for him to do anything and would refuse as a young child even when offered a reward and he hated being praised. Funnily enough I never had any issue being asked to do something in school or work place.

I think mentioned my DD before on this thread. I think you might need to reframe your thinking, but to achieve that you might need some therapy yourself.

My DD is so like you’re but instead of a “life of servitude” I view it as trying to help her navigate a world that is so much harder for her than the majority of other girls her age.

So yes, i dont argue over shoes/coats/bags left on the floor. I quietly pick them up and put them away.

If she’s out I’ll empty her bin, open the window and take out any dishes or rubbish. I can’t do a major clean as she finds this too overwhelming.

I think until you get past the idea that her behaviour is intentional and she’s treating you poorly you are both going to have a fractured relationship. FWIW my own DM treated me very much as though I was at fault rather than needing support and I always felt a deep sense of shame because no matter how hard I tried at that age I just couldn’t keep on top of my room, I had no idea how to even.

Obviously I don't know, but from what OP has said, I'm not convinced behaviour is unintentional. Throwing coats and bags into the middle of the kitchen floor, when it's as easy to put them on a chair or table, sounds intentional. Saying some of the awful things OP has described is surely intended to cause hurt.

I'm not saying any of this should be held against her, of course.

Same. I never forgave my father for throwing me out. It’s such a vulnerable age, 18, I was still doing my A-levels in fact. He didn’t like my then bf, all it did though was push me into his arms, and I lived with him. It was an awful 9 months. I never forgave him for abandoning me like that. Just stumbled upon this thread. How are things now OP?

It's going to be a case of you or her before long. Go to the doctor and explain your situation. Normally they can advise you of people to contact. Ultimately you are a victim of DV. She has to go. Or you move out and get her evicted.

I’m not a person who would jump quickly to get a diagnosis to label behaviour . But as a professional with years of experience I would advise you to approach your gp and tell them what you are experiencing and how you are struggling
Also look up PDA as well as ASD

living like this is not good for you or your daughter

all the best x