When did you know that you and your child would not have a good relationship when they became adult?
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Anonymous
| DD is 15, I already know we won’t be close or have a relationship. Grant it she is going through the teen years but I don’t think she’ll ever fully mature, grow out of ALL her insecurities, and jealous personality. I do hope she will but I’ve always been perceptive of people. I tell her ai love her, support her but I am tired of the battles. Sounds terrible but i can’t wait for college, I’m afraid that she won’t go away to school nor move out one day. She is that insecure, draining. I accept her the way she is now and am slowly learning how to remove myself from emotional, reactive, insecurities. I’m just trying not to hate her. Help me.. |
Anonymous
| Life is long, OP. She is in a tough season and it sounded tough on you too, but she's not a fully formed person yet! |
Anonymous
This was not a helpful response, sorry. What I mean is, you need to get through today and today sounds really hard on you both. But take this acceptance about the future off your mind if you can. Things may be so, so different in 10 years or 20. Maybe not picture perfect, and maybe stepping away from a specific vision will help you, but do take comfort that these hard years are a gateway to something unknown and different. My kids are young but I saw this happen with my parents and brother. He's the same person, he just mellowed so much in his late 20s and stopped blaming them for everything and taking his insecurities out on his family (which started in his teens), and now they're on much better terms. |
Anonymous
| Why is she so insecure? Work on shoring up that foundation |
Anonymous
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Wow.
I was expecting this to be a story about a 28 year old or something. And I was still prepared to come in and say (with a close personal experience at my back, not me but a relative) that you never know what the future will bring, you should leave the door open, accept your part (no matter how small) in the conflict, and hope that things evolve positively. Your daughter is FIFTEEN!! This is an incredibly hard time for her and you. And you're thinking about writing off any potential for a good relationship when she's in her 30s?? That's a vast over-reaction. You need to take a deep breath and make "this too will pass" your mantra. It's totally reasonable to be psyched to get her off to college and out of the house. "Spoiling the nest" is a thing. All the negative traits you see right now (jealousy, insecurity, emotional, reactive) are ALL products of being a teenager. Maybe she'll grow up to be insecure and jealous as an adult, but at worse you've got a 50/50 shot. Probably better. Do not write this poor child off! My evidence: a close family member was TERRIBLE to his parents in high school. Rude, mean, evasive, I would even say cruel at times. Completely out of control. Purposefully hurtful. Very immature. And honestly, that lasted until his mid 20s! Well, guess what? He grew up. He's in his 40s now and very close with both his parents. The fact that some parents would have written him off in his teens makes me so sad. |
Anonymous
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You sound like my parents who wrote me off in college because I "changed" and wasn't the perfect kid any longer. To be clear, I was still a young adult any parent should be proud of (good grades in a hard major, active throughout the campus, lots of friends) but I struggled for the first time in my life in college. It wasn't easy for me all of the time. I also wanted to try things that didn't agree with - living abroad for a bit, staying in my college city over the summer, etc.
We no longer have a very close relationship because of them and their behavior. |
Anonymous
| You're in the thick of it. Yes, it's draining, but this time will pass. It may not be until she's in her late 20s, but she will come around and be a more fully formed human capable of empathy and self-reflection. Don't write her off, but you can absolutely set some reasonable boundaries for yourself so that she doesn't drain you so much. |
Anonymous
| Yikes OP. Hopefully your DD does get away from you. |
Anonymous
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My mother would have said the same as you OP when I was 15. We had never gotten along and were really different people and our dislike for each other peaked in the 14-23 age range. It was tenuous well into my twenties and we will never be best buddy, call each other every day type people BUT we do have a great relationship that now works for both of us. I am sure she wishes we were closer but we talk often, see each other regularly and do things together. I don't know that I would say we relate as mother-daughter but definitely as family.
What changed everything was that when I was 23-24 my mother called me one day. She said she had loved me but had never liked me but realized that was because she had never gotten to really know me as a person. That our conflicts in childhood had shaped her view of me and that she had really struggled to ever see me as anything other than this difficult, obnoxious, problem child. But that in the last few years, everyone else talked about me completely differently to how she saw me and she also looked at what I was doing with my life and realized she didn't know this person at all. She apologized and asked if she could get to know me. |
Anonymous
| Not sure I'd want to have a relationship with a mom that is writing me off at the age of 15. |
Anonymous
| Were you perfect when you were 15, OP? |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
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Op you need to get into therapy and work through some of these issues for the sake of you and your DD. You sound exhausted. The teenage years aren’t easy but you need to dig deep and parent your kid through this. I wonder what kind of cues she is picking up that are feeding into her existing insecurities. You’re only human- if you really feel this way, your DD knows at least some part of it.
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Anonymous
| You sound like a narcissist |
Anonymous
*Granted, not "grant it" |