Struggling with having a teen daughter who is struggling/having issues ***SUPPORT THREAD***

You can get art and animal therapy without an NHS referral.

If you apply for an EHCP it’s also possible to get both funded via that.

This all sounds sadly familiar.
This morning I have found a screenshot of a message my daughter has sent to someone about how much she ‘hates her fucking mum’, how I have raised her badly, that I ‘don’t fucking care for her’ that if I drove off forever she ‘wouldn’t fucking care’. Etc etc etc.
I’ve never felt more devastated that my sweet, bright little daughter has grown into someone filled with so much hate for me when, despite the tremendous mum guilt that I have indeed raised her badly, I feel I’ve done my best.

@Mydaughterskeeper You are taking it too personally and I say this as someone who has been there and is often back there. Kill her with kindness, show her you love her and that her unkindness isn’t impacting you - model the behaviour you want to see.

We all hated our parents at one stage - it’s fairly normal

You’re probably right. But it’s not so much that she’s said it. She has never really said anything like that to my face-she tends to be fairly indifferent unless she wants something and we do sometimes have a nice time together.
it’s the fact that she feels it strongly enough to share it with someone else.
yes I know it’s normal to want less to do with your parents but I certainly don’t remember feeling that level of bile towards mine.
I just feel like she’s right and I am a complete failure.

I was the teen daughter you’re all describing and have lived with a lifetime of my family deciding I was “deeply unpleasant” around age 13-14 and treating me as such for the rest of my life. Don’t do it to your daughters, you will never get them back. I’m sorry you’re finding it hard to support them and I’m sure it’s difficult but surely you don’t want them to go through a lifetime of this hatred from their own mothers. It’s so incredibly damaging to feel that your mother doesn’t love you. Or to be judged that teen hormones are somehow your personality now. I’m still in therapy for it at 40. Just don’t do it to them!

@ItsCalledAConversation You are right - it can be very damaging when the narrative is built in that way. But I also know plenty of families where there is an acknowledgement that a teen was difficult and everyone moves on - often joking about it.

@Bibbling hilarious. Funny how the joke is never on the parents for being unsupportive, insensitive, thoughtless. My teen hood was difficult yes. But to label me as difficult? And then laugh as if it’s all a big joke? I find that problematic.

I am sorry you are still in therapy and had an awful family experience. I love my daughter 18 with all my heart and would like nothing more than to help her to be happier, enjoy life and to have a lovely close mother daughter relationship with her and for our family not to be walking on eggshells with her trying not to upset her.

She is verbally nasty to me often prefixing sentences with ‘no offence but….(then hurls insults and makes derogatory comments towards me). I wake her up on a morning even on my days off as she can’t get up for school (even though she has a phone and an alarm clock). She shouts back nastily. She leaves dirty clothes, underwear, wet towels in her bedroom, crockery and half eaten food etc for days. She refuses to put things in a bin or clothes or towels in the wash etc. Every few days we go in open the windows and blinds and retrieve clothes, towels and crockery and empty her bedroom bin (which is gross with used sanitary pads and tampax holders).

I reach out to her all the time in many ways but everything almost always gets thrown back in my face. She can be extremely rude and ungrateful, sneers at me and contorts her face mocking me if I smile at her or look in her direction and she won’t accept any physical contact whatsoever (either a hug or if I were to touch her arm or anything). If I make her some tea she slates it and refuses to eat it. When ordering the shopping I ask her what she wants or fancies she always says no and nothing then moans we have nothing in.

She frequently upsets me, reduces me to tears and I have sleepless nights and stressed days worrying about her and where it will end with her behaviour as it is.

What do you think your mother or family could have done differently which would have helped you?

Well clearly your issues are more significant than the families I am
referring to where yes everyone can look back and laugh.

@BeeBB Shes 18 you need to pull back a bit. Leave the room, leave her with no clean clothes, let her make her own food, give her 2 towels , lock up the rest and see how she gets on.

I am all for overlooking and killing with kindness but that behaviour is unpleasant and wrong and it doesn’t matter what’s driving it, you are a person too.

Just dropping in and seeing if I can build
up courage enough to try and articulate what’s going on.

I want to talk about ME, how I’m feeling and what I’m going through with my 14yo DD but that just feels selfish.

plus I don’t know how much of what she is dealing with is genuine anxiety vs hyperbole, teen angst, and a lot of influence by her peers (every last one of them has an ‘issue’ and it feels contagious frankly).

I don’t know where to begin or what the right thing to do or say is, ever.

It’s so bloody stressful and I just want my little, ‘normal’ (sorry but I don’t know how else to describe it) DD back.

@BeeBB I fully agree with this. She's 18.
Do you want to be here when She's 20? Or 22? And still being abusive to you?

Thanks @Bibbling we tried leaving her with two bath towels and she was leaving them wet on the floor and using three hand towels at a time (which are stored in the bathroom). She would use all the crockery in the house and leave us with nothing rather than bring things down to the kitchen to wash.

Her bedroom has such an awful smell after a few days that you can smell if half way up the stairs (hence why DH and I go in we don’t tidy it just remove dirty washing, crockery and empty the bin). She would just wear dirty stained clothes smelling of BO if we didn’t wash them. Or wash something in the bathroom sink and leave it soaking wet to dry on her bathroom carpet as she sometimes does with knickers and bras (and wear it damp). Dreading the summer holidays but she is off to Uni in Sept. We keep asking her to do the basics every day and explaining why but she just ignores us.

@SeulementUneFois no but I am at a loss on how to move forward with her. We are older parents as well and I don’t want to be doing this for very much longer.

She goes mad when we have been in her room so I have said if you open the blinds, make bed, put clothes in wash and empty your bin etc etc so your room doesn’t smell we won’t have to go in there. Its not just us my son mentioned about the smell when he was home from Uni at Christmas. I have tried just closing her door and leaving it for several days but it just gets worse.

Im sorry if this is an insensitive question but as a parent of a younger daughter, is there anything you all wish you’d done differently? Any advice?

Joining you. We've had a turbulent few years now.

When you give birth to a beautiful daughter you have many fears, but never do you fear that this child that you adore and nurture with every fibre of your being will one day turn into someone you don't recognise and totally break your heart.
Tbh I think I'd be less heartbroken if dh had an affair and walked out.

My advice, after a couple of years of much upset and conflict that got us nowhere is:

Ignore as much as you possibly can. Teens are looking for conflict. You don't have to join in.

If they're happy for their room to be a bio hazard, so be it.

Detach and do what makes you happy. This is a new period in your life. Go out, have fun, do new things, spoil yourself.

Sending love and support to you all 🫂

Go out and have fun doesn't work when you have a self-harming suicidal child, unfortunately.

One of us always has to be here, then of course the one who has been to work needs to come and take over the watch.

It's like having a newborn but much much worse. And I'm so selfishly sad and angry because I thought with older kids I might start to get a tiny bit of me time. Recently I got headhunted for the most amazing job, but it requires time and hard work and travel, and tbh I don't think it's good for family life, but I need it so badly, for myself.

Quite. It's not at all normal for teen girls to be like this. I hope you find something that helps both of you soon.

Thanks for the comments.

We don't have anger or conflict - we have radio silence. She is 14 (just). She has a peer group of 5 friends - one was transgender but is now non-binary, another two are transgender, two of those three are gay, another one has no particular label, another one is a boy. They change these identities and self beliefs so often I can't keep up. DD used to say 'i'm the only 'regular' one'.

She says she has anxiety, she says she has panic attacks - i've never seen any but she says they only happen in school, so we got her help via school from the school therapist. He won't divulge of course, but what he would say was 'i'm not worried about her'. I asked him if I should be considering a referral for ND type disorders or her MH, and he said he could see 'no evidence of that'.

She self harmed last year, but I would say more experimentally (she said her peers talked about it so she wondered if she should). This was, she said, driven by the stress of tests at school. The therapist covered this in sessions.

She accidentally left/dropped a notebook in my car a couple of weeks ago. Shes's a prolific writer so I assumed it was more musings. It was. but at the back were pages of writing about how she isn't wanted, she's still hurting herself, she is stupid, she hates herself, she hates me. She says she wants to be a 'he' like her other friends are. All her peers have huge issues, not just the things above - self harming, eating disorders, you name it. And I honestly feel it's just contagious - shes jumping on the bandwagon. If there isn't a trauma going on, she doesn't fit in. There is so much angst, and so much hyperbole.

She won't talk to me. She doesn't even want to be in the same room as me.

One week she will be asking me to curl her hair and she'll watch a favourite film with me, the next she's not showering, not washing her hair and living in a filthy tip. Then I think it's all normal teen stuff, till I realised she was wearing double bras - presumably to flatten her chest - what's that about? and writing about hurting herself again.

How much of this is real? How much should I worry about? How much is just normal or because her mates do it? Are these peers an issue? why is she so attracted to these types of friends?

I have another DC who is the most biddable, loving, carefree child. I feel like DD is a stranger to me, and I just don't know what to do for the best.