How can i help my 18yo daughter?

[Whatdoidonow96]

In short, she is really struggling with college, exams and life in general. Things came to a head and she had an emotional breakdown, and asked me to take her to the doctors. She was a straight A student at gcse, but has hated college and is not doing as well as she could be. She has always wanted to go to uni and this still seems to be the plan (she sits her a levels in June). She is great at procrastinating and making lists but has barely started any revision. They are not revising at college as they haven't completed the course content yet. We went to the doctors and whilst they admit there are issues they are reluctant to take any course of action as she will probably feel worse before she gets any better and her first exam (a retake) is only a month away. She agreed that she would talk with me and let me help her where i could, with time management etc. The first day was great, she even did some revision, but she came home from work yesterday in a bad mood (i dont know why), and basically shut herself with her bf in her room and cried all evening. She wouldn't speak to me at all and i knocked at her door but she didn't want me to go in. Tbf, this is not unusual and has happened 4 or 5 times over the last month. I assumed it was bf issues but she assures me not. She had things she should have done last night - get money from machine and deliver to a friend about 5 miles away, for a festival ticket, finish the unit revision from previous day, eat with bf family, none of which she did. Unfortunately i took it all personally and have been an emotional wreck myself. I feel she has let her friend down, let her bf mum down by not turning up when she had cooked for her, let me and the doctor down for saying she would let me help. On the one hand i want to shake her and shout, but i know i shouldn't. There is absolutely no pressure on her to go to uni, that is entirely her choice. Fwiw, she is 18, an only child ( and yes, quite possibly spoilt), she has a stable family life with her father and me, she has a bf (same age), she drives and has a part time job. She doesn't take drugs, she occasionally gets plastered - less so now that she has discovered vodka turns her into a not very nice person! I have always been quite close and she has she would usually talk to me about any problems. I just don't know how best to try and help her if she is just going to shut me out and not let me.

Last term this could have been my DD - teary, thought she felt depressed, could not get on with college work even though she wanted to - it turns out she has glandular fever which can take 5-8 weeks incubation to come out with full symptoms. The doctor said it was really prevalent at the moment and late teens is peak time. It may be worth a blood test to rule out anything physical - lots of things impact on emotions and behaviour. Hope she feels better soon I totally sympathise as I felt alot like you. It's horrible not knowing what to do for the best.

OP, I too was a great believer in letting their natural sense of responsibility and emerging maturity direct their decisions. (I have 17 yr old twins.)

Then I discovered that this led to crap GCSE results and a general lack of direction. I realised that by 'letting' my DCs make their own decisions, I was actually letting myself off from being a parent.

It's AS levels this year and things have changed - parentwise, I've stepped up. They need a stronger clearer more directive parent than I'd hoped.

Saturday jobs have been dropped; they go out with mates once a week, both have deferred learning to drive til after exams. I certainly wouldn't have b/gfs over from now til exams, either!

So, its been a few days since my last post and I thought we had had a couple of better days. However she came downstairs last night crying and has, from what I can gather cried on and off all day. Coincidentally, i had looked into cbt therapy a bit today. I was at work this morning when she text me to say she had driven to college but couldn't make herself go in, so had gone back home. She is distraught at the thought of college and wants to revise from home instead. I did mail her tutor and she is going to run it past her manager. I thought DD might feel a bit better about it, but judging by the tears it would appear not. She is also adamant that therapy at this stage would be a waste of time and money. I did ask if the last few days have been any better ( she has managed a little bit of studying, but only a tiny amount and seemingly ok with doing it) and she says as bad as ever she just hasn't been letting us see her upset. As an aside, she has dropped her 4 hour weekday shift too. Still feeling helpless and don't know whether to encourage going to college, or hope they agree to her only having to go in for the bare minimum (to finish a piece of coursework) and that might make her feel she can cope better. Any thoughts......

Sorry to hear things haven't got better. Have you seen your GP to check out her physical health to rule out any underlying issues? I suppose you will need to think through the options - stop altogether and recoup then retake a year/help her to struggle on and finish with the promise that at least it is not too long/ work from home and only go in to take exams if college will allow this/ rethink the whole thing and try a new course or college.

Has your DD thought what she would prefer to do (not always easy for them to do this when feeling anxious or depressed). Could your DD be doing the wrong course and need to rethink altogether? We know a few teens who have started a different course after 2 years. It is 2 more years but still free if enrolled in time and then she could just stop now and take a break to feel better and maybe get some support.

She is due at the GP again tomorrow, they haven't intimated it could be anything other than anxiety. She likes her subjects and wouldn't want to change her choices and has been absolutely adamant she wont do another year at college. The only thing i have suggested is possibly taking a year out, earn some money as she would love to travel (she could work as many hours as she wants pretty much, at her pt job) and retake any of her subjects independently to improve her grades, if required. We could also utilise the year to try to get some proper help to resolve any underlying issues that are there. I DO understand she is ill but find some things so hard. She announced she didn't want to go to work this evening, but it wasn't because she couldn't cope with work, but that she wanted to go to a bbq! I did tell her it didn't work like that, but that if she wasn't up to work perhaps she should be resting at home, so she cut the bbq short and went to work. Please dont shoot me down in flames, but it feels to me if i wasn't aware of her struggling, that she was acting like a bit of a brat, almost as if she is playing on it to get her own way. I know that sounds wrong, i just cant describe it any other way, and yes, I do feel guilty for feeling like that. It was just that she hasn't been to college this week, they are deciding what the best course of action from their point of view is, she says she likes her job, but she had been made a better offer iyswim. And i still have no idea whether to try cbt, i have tried to ring a couple of therapists but went to answer phone and i didn't leave a message.....

It sounds like she is afraid and the fear is holding her back. Almost like she is in fight or flight mode and she is fighting with you and fleeing from college. She can't face it, it's too much for her right now.

So what I would do is tell her to continue going to college, revise as much or as little as she feels comfortable with and to sit the exams. If she fails everything it won't matter, she can always have a year out and decide later what she wants to do. It will still be a good experience to go through with the exams.

If the pressure is off, she may feel able to face it. Then she needs to sort out a timetable so that she can start to feel that she is achieving something with her revision. There are some good ones online.

This is one my ds looked at

If she won't revise, well, she is an adult and she will get the natural consequences. You can't force her to even if you tried so no point getting yourself worked up over it all. Let her make some decisions that she is comfortable with, support those decisions and try to work on her being calm enough to have short, practical discussions about planning the next few weeks.

And it is just the next few weeks, not her whole life. Things will work out ok in the end. There is more than one way to get the career you want.

Whatdoidonow96
I would seriously check whether what she's is going through is due to the side effects of the 'implant fitted in January' or not.

I know someone who had a coil fitted and she suffered tremendously for 3 years (serious back pain, mood swings, feeling weepy for no apparent reason etc)
Funny enough she didn't associate all these symptoms with the fitted coil.
She took it out once she sussed out that the it could be the culprit!
Then, as if by magic all the symptoms disappeared.

I think she's is too young to be using an implant (in my honest opinion)
There are other contraceptives' options she can choose from instead.
Women bodies reacts differently - for some implants works wonder, but unfortunately for some they are a nightmare.

I don't know how it is for other people, but for me working thru exam periods was always a god send. (Actually I used to pick up as many extra hours as I possibly could). It was a lovely mental break from revision & all the other stresses of life. I would have hated to have my whole life focused around just exams and no job, no boyfriend, nothing fun allowed. I would have rebelled & dropped the exams instead.

If OP tells her DD "Put all your eggs in just the one basket now": isn't that piling on the pressure even harder? That's how it would feel to me.