Morning all, I’m returning to mn after about 15 years of fairly confident and smooth parenting my dd since she was a baby and toddler! Update: I’m now stuck!! Please help me!
a bit of background…
DD stayed with her dad and his wife for 6 weeks during 1st lockdown. During this time, unbeknown to me, the marriage fell apart and she was witness to some brutal rows etc. I don’t know the full extent and as she has only really begun to talk about it. I find myself ashamed that I am afraid to ask much as I can’t bear the thought of what she was going through while I did nothing to help. She said she didn’t tell me at the time as she didn’t want to worry me.
Post lockdown she experienced high anxiety, anxiety attacks, struggled with school at times. She had therapy and a lot of support and settled into school again eventually, only then to start SH, struggling with meals and food at times. She had an upset with a boy she liked and then bounced into a relationship with a boy who she said ‘saved her’.
During this 17 month relationship she seemed more settled and she said (and I believed) she was not sh any longer. However, she was reliant on the bf and stopped seeing her mates, even into the start of college and all the parties etc. A few months ago they broke up and she got together almost straight away with the boy she had originally liked (and has done for years).
Right, fast forward to now…
new bf broke up with her last week (as predicted, he is playing the field)and now we are on holiday she has revealed a few things that have made my heart drop to my stomach and sit like a lead weight. The traumatic time at her dads during lockdown and how she felt, the consequent feelings she has towards her dad and how she feels about staying there with him now (she tends to stay 2-3 days a week), the fact she has now lost her virginity and has been sexually active, an incident with a different boy at the end of school in which she didn’t feel able to stand up to him when he was making advances, more recent scars from sh as recent as 3 or 4 months ago (around the time she broke up with her first bf).
She is seeking little ego boosts from a sudden influx of interest on social media from boys who know she is single again. While I do understand this, it worries me she feels she needs the compliments or interest from boys to boost her self esteem.
Me - what I am needing advice and support with now is the overwhelming feeling that I have fucked up my beautiful kid. I feel sick that I haven’t done enough to protect her from the difficulties she has had at her dads/with her dad, and the impact this has had on her. I work with and am trained in supporting teens with emotional and behavioural needs and yet I feel completely lost in how to support her. I don’t know what to say for the best, don’t know what to do. I feel weak. She has so many amazing qualities and yet she measures her worth in attention from boys and evidently has struggled to cope with her feelings and talk about things. She doesn’t hide the scars in her thighs and I have offered to get her some bio-oil but she doesn’t want it and says she doesn’t want to talk about it. I sense she still struggles with food at times. She has worked hard to deal with things but keeps a lot private so in some ways I am just picking up on clues. She also says she thinks she has adhd. I know she does has certain traits but also in the past was wary of labels and getting into the whole camhs
system while there was a lot going on developmentally already. I feel like I had ‘one job’ -raise and protect this kid - and yet she is emerging into adulthood with these issues and I don’t know how best to help her move on and become the strong and resilient, confident woman she has the potential to be. I feel so sad and guilty and the weight of that is so heavy it is making me feel scared and almost like I just want ti stick my head in the sand. Any advice on these last difficult couple of years of the teens will be most appreciated. I have thought in the past I am a good mum but now I just feel crap and ill equipped.