DD2 lost control, physically hurt us and has now left home forever

[LampsAndWatches]

DD2 is our middle child and recently turned 19
she had a belated birthday get together at home this evening. A mix of us, her friends and DD1s friends.

I don’t have all the details yet, DD1 & 2 argued and before I knew it there was some shoving, hair pulling and punches thrown. Luckily I was close by and managed to get between them, I had to restrain DD2, she went wild trying to get to DD1. This has never, ever happened before.

from what I witnessed just as it happened out of no where DD2 instigated it and DD1 tried to duck away and after 2 punches she retaliated with a hair pull.

DH told everyone to leave and arranged all of that whilst I sat with (on) DD2 keeping her away from everyone. She then left after throwing a barrage of abuse at me and her dad (DH)

she has just returned to bin bag up some belongings along with more abuse she threw a glass bottle of coke at her dad which just missed his head and smashed on the floor. I don’t know where this has come from?

we recently discovered she has been doing large quantities of balloons in her car to the point that she wets herself. She promised this wasn’t happening anymore. It was supposed to be a good weekend and turned into this
she has blocked me on all social media.

I’m in shock at how she behaved, she shoved me and scratched my arm as well as taking some of my personal belongings with her when she “moved out forever and we will never see her again”

I need some support and some guidance if possible please.

I agree. It sounds as though she's been struggling for a very long time. We've had problems with DD for years and we've only recently managed to get her in the Pathway. To have a girl diagnosed with both at 14 means that she must have significant difficulties.

Does she have any medication due her ADHD? You must know that risky behaviour and self-medication are risks if she's not medicated?

Is she also very sensitive to any form of perceived criticism? We have to be very careful around our DD, she can even misinterpret a frown in concentration as me being cross or unhappy with her. Your DD is also very likely to not be able to interpret the nuances of facial expressions too.

I'd also be wanting to know exactly what DD1 said. If she knows that DD2 has problems controlling her anger due to ADHD, does she ever deliberately wind her up?

I'd be sending a message through her friends that she's very much loved and wanted and you are ready to help her when she wants to come back.

Right now she's probably scared and angry and extremely vulnerable.

You knew she was taking drugs in her car and yet didn't call the police? Or get help?

I agree that you seem to be taking the easy option instead of parenting your child.

And being ND means she needs additional support and input. Not parents taking the easy way out and leaving her to it.

Drug abuse is very common in people with Adhd. I wouldn't be giving up on her after 1 violent outburst, she needs help. Girls mask, a lot! And that catches up with you at some point, and now she's turned to drugs. She needs therapy, whether she's willing to accept it is another matter.

You choose ‘peace’ over her?
That is a really shocking comment to read.
Your daughter needs support and love as she is clearly struggling. Could she be feeling inadequate to her siblings?
Could she feel pushed out?
Has she experienced a traumatic incident/s she feels unable to talk about so is on self-destruct?
’peace’ and your ‘little home’ should never be chosen over your own daughter.
This is also teaching your other children that if they ever step out of line they will be banished.

This is not normal behaviour ime.
It's concerning behaviour, not normal behaviour.

But it will have a huge impact. People with ADHD are far more susceptible to drug addiction because of how their brains are wired. So casual drug use can’t be a dismissed as ‘something all teens experiment with’. There needs to be serious intervention and therapy to prevent her becoming an addict and ruining her life. Also the autism is again relevant as social situations, even if enjoyable, will put them under greater stress and make meltdowns more likely. Absolutely no excuse for her behaviour in any way, but a very strong indication that support systems are not adequate and major adjustments need to be made. Also consider that autistic individuals often have developmental delays so she more than likely has the emotional maturity of a 15-16 year old, another important consideration when deciding what support she needs.

Also consider that autistic individuals often have developmental delays so she more than likely has the emotional maturity of a 15-16 year old, another important consideration when deciding what support she needs.

Agree with this, my 15 yo is more like a 12 yo in a lot of ways, just not how she looks. The OPs DD is likely to have the maturity of day a 15 yo but with access to drugs, alcohol, money and men who will be only too happy to take control of an immature and vulnerable woman.

I thought the same thing. I've seen similar behaviour from a family member when under the influence of Coke.

You're doing the right thing by your other children not to have her back, OP. You have a duty to keep them safe, and they're clearly not safe with DD2 in the house while she's in such a bad place.

DD2 needs to understand this, but in a way that she can't perceive it as an outright rejection, but a risk management thing. And that she can come back if/when she's clean. Maybe you could meet with her outside the home, when she and you feel ready, so that you can explain your position.

It doesn't sound as though she's in a position to address her substance use atm, but I'd explore what help is available in your area so that you can help her access it when she's ready.

Having lived with aggressive teen behaviour, it is scary, it's not 'normal' behaviour and we struggled to control a 13yr oldso cant imagine the strength of a 19yr old.
I get how you want to choose 'peace c. I think it also shows that the situation has been worse than even you have probably admitted to uourself. Tonight's aggression has brought that to the immediate fore front .

I can't give any advice on drugs at all, other than supporting her to get some advice/help.

Yes. You have to take care if your family and your home needs to be safe, but so does your DD, she is exceptionally vulnerable with her diagnosis and drug use.

ASD /ADHD does NOT excuse her behaviour BUT can give some possible reasons for the situation being what it was. And it is important detail for her story which I was surprised you missed out. (PP who suggested this was a possibility was shot down )

You can support your dd from separate homes. Keep communication open but dont push her for contact yet. Everyone needs time to regroup and need to be calm. Speak with your other Dd and find out what was said and why. I've seen others trigger severe behaviour, sometimes on purpose, due to anger at ongoing attitude/behaviours.
However regardless.of the 'why' you can definitely say aggression will not be tolerated.

I hope you can all get through this and remain family. Now is too early and you all need this time to work through everything that has gone on.

Once again, diagnosis is NOT an excuse to physically assault your family or anyone else. It's a FACTOR perhaps, not a reason to let someone off.

I feel the same as you. It sounds to me like there's more to this. The 'peace' and the 'little home' should not take precedence over the vulnerable Daughter and her very obvious issues with drugs, ADHD and Autism.

This girl has had one violent outburst and you're saying you feel like you can't ever come back from this?

It sounds to me like she needs you more than ever now, now is not the time to be giving up on her and leaving her to her own devices.

Ditto.

The only times I've seen behaviour like that it's been coke rage. But then N20 wasn't really a thing when I was young (although someone would occasionally rock up with a canister from somewhere) so I wouldn't really know what the effects of prolonged use are.

A friend's son got massively into E's in the late 80s though, and he had a couple of episodes where he had a massive rage and smashed up the house.

This girl has had one violent outburst and you're saying you feel like you can't ever come back from this ?

And yet how many times is a woman told if her partner has a violent outburst to get the Hell away from him as he will not change ...?

I wasn’t going to comment but there is so much hysteria on this post that I feel compelled to.

This is not usual behaviour for your daughter. This would indicate to me that something has changed for her - whether this is an escalation in drug use or something else….the only way you will find out is by TALKING to her.

It is really important that you keep communicating with her and checking in on her. I imagine this morning she is feeling terrible.

Continuing to support your daughter is not the same as condoning her behaviour. You can support all of your children in different ways. Of course you can’t have violent outbursts in your home when you have a younger child, and of course it isn’t ok that your older daughter was hurt and your husband almost hurt. It is ok that you feel angry about these things. BUT that doesn’t mean you can’t still support your daughter.

The comments about her being a druggie are appalling. She might be using more drugs than you are aware of, but to label her in such a derogatory way is not helpful. She is a young vulnerable women who needs her family.

OP it sounds like a horrendous incident but I do feel like you need to try and de-escalate things instead of adding to the hysteria. You can do that without condoning the behaviour - but also without demonising it too. It wasn’t ok, it shouldn’t have happened, but I would now be trying to find out why it happened, what led to it, what in gods name happened that a happy event went so wrong?

The balloons - that is excessive use and not safe for her or other people.

I also don’t think that it is helpful to compare the incident to domestic abuse perpetrated by men.

@BonnieBobbin

or maybe they will see that their mother is trying to protect them from siblings unpredictable and sometimes aggressive behaviour?

Parenting a child with ASD or ADHD is often very challenging, parenting a child with both must be incredibly hard. But for dd who is actually having to try to live with it it's got to be 100 times harder - who knows what she is going through inside her head? I suspect she feels extremely lost and has no idea what her place is in the world or how she can fit in.

You haven't said OP what if anything prompted dd to behave like this - do you know? It seems like you might have gone past caring? You didn't mention her SEN in your first post, you haven't said what caused the meltdown - it just seems a bit like you don't want to try to understand what is going on for her and just want to have your nice peaceful life and take no responsibility or interest in why she's falling apart. It seems like you just want to place all the blame on her and wash your hands of her.

I'd be concerned that dd1 knows exactly how to wind her up and push her buttons, you just see dd2 kick off and so she's the one that always gets the blame and that that is just devastating for her. That no one seems to care or understand what is going on or how hard things are for her. Maybe that's not correct but I would want to be sure.

It's so important that you remember that emotionally she may be several years behind her actual age, she might find it very difficult to cope with things that others can cope with due to her SEN. I would say she needs so much support, so much love and much help with listening to, trying to understand and help with communication. Right now I expect she feels completely cut adrift and is attempting to medicate all the pain away with anything she can. I really hope she gets some help.

You don't give birth to your partner though, do you?

Generally parents don't give up on their children after one violent incident, but I grant you that we don't all have the same familial beliefs.

Agreed

So if your child takes drugs you just write them off and concrete on your "good " children?
So glad my parents didn't do this to my brother when he was a heroine addict as he'd be dead now if they had. I am quite worried by the amount of people including OP who think it's fine to opt out of parenting when it gets tough.

My two DSIS physically fought at a similar age. One of them would instigate and niggle until the other blew up. Turning the younger one's party into something they gatecrashed with their friends would have been standard behaviour. They were always trying to take any attention, friends or relationships that their sibling had.
My DM (like OP) would always blame the one who blew up ... but the rest of us (including DF) could clearly see who the instigator was and all the issues around favouritism, manipulation and lack of support that left the 'volatile' one vulnerable.
When the 'volatile' one left home - too young and straight into a relationship with someone much older - the lesson we learnt wasn't that home had safe boundaries but that our parent's love was conditional on not being difficult or creating any scenes and that we couldn't rely on them for support or to look even vaguely below the surface.

As the wife of a male mental health nurse, this is the most offensive comment I've EVER seen on here! My husband is more at risk than ANY of his female patients and has been so badly assaulted at work by a female patient that the police were called!

Neurodivergencies often go hand in hand with poor choices like your daughter is making in a bid to fit in somewhere and have some semblance of control, even when it's clearly not right.
Drug taking is not something that just happens, it is usually an avoidance tactic to dampen down feelings or thoughts that the person does not want to deal with. I would be thinking carefully about what she said to you that you said "simply isn't true" and see if there's any clues in there that might give any hint to where the behaviour is coming from.
Something has obviously happened at some point to get your daughter to the state she's currently in.
As others have said- keep communication as open as you can, try and remember this is not really about you as hard as that might be to accept, and try to respond rather than react. If she does come back to you maybe start by asking what does she actually need and go from there. If she just says she needs you to leave her alone ask how that would help.
As hard as it will be, you are her parents and you cannot give up on her.
Though yes if you know she's driving while high you must report that for everyone's safety including hers.