Adult Daughter Stealing from Me, Therapy Not Helping

[Anonymous]

I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

[Anonymous]

Jesus the way you write about your daughter is awful. Did you ever do anything to help her growing up?

BPD is notoriously difficult to manage. You can try to family therapy and see if having a 3rd party can help you all work through things, but it may be best to just get this money issue sorted and then take a break from each other's lives. She doesn't like you, you don't like her.

[Anonymous]

Text her that the police have been contacted and that charges will be laid for the theft, unless the money is returned in 24 hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jesus the way you write about your daughter is awful. Did you ever do anything to help her growing up?

BPD is notoriously difficult to manage. You can try to family therapy and see if having a 3rd party can help you all work through things, but it may be best to just get this money issue sorted and then take a break from each other's lives. She doesn't like you, you don't like her.

It's comments like these that are unhelpful. Of course I love my daughter, but any parent would be frustrated and angry to have $12k stolen from them from an adult child.

I love my daughter. I don't like her as a person, because her temperament, values, interests, and way of relating to others are deluded and entitled. But like any parent, my love for my child is unconditional. That's different from respecting an adult child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Text her that the police have been contacted and that charges will be laid for the theft, unless the money is returned in 24 hours.

She already knows that the cops have been called. Our lawyer said that defense will be difficult because she can claim that we gave her verbal permission to use our credit card.

[Anonymous]

Guess no birthday or Christmas gifts for her for a looooong while - just a card. I would not have her back in my home until repaid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jesus the way you write about your daughter is awful. Did you ever do anything to help her growing up?

BPD is notoriously difficult to manage. You can try to family therapy and see if having a 3rd party can help you all work through things, but it may be best to just get this money issue sorted and then take a break from each other's lives. She doesn't like you, you don't like her.

I kind of agree with this. Also your actions are probably going to make it even harder for her to get a job if you are making it so she has a criminal record.

I feel your frustration, but right now you are adding fuel to the fire in more than one way. You need to figure out what you want, both for you are your daughter, that is achievable. It is hard to step away from your anger when you feel mistreated but your actions now seem to be focused on feeding your need to be right more than seeking a pathway to turn down the temperature and achieve long term resolution.

[Anonymous]

You are the one who said in your other thread you required her to go to church every week as a condition of paying her college expenses, right?

You just set forces in play to get her arrested and made a known felon and have ruined any chances of her getting many kinds of jobs, forever. All for under $20k. Compared to college, that's not much. And if you objected to college as not being cost effective, well this is the nail in the coffin.

What's your plan? Have her meekly dependent for life and a good little churchgoer?

And btw she is ADHD, has slow processing speed, and BPD but neurotypicsl? Riiiight. That has familial components ya know.

Yur a real peach.

[Anonymous]

Did you take the parent part of DBT? It doesn’t sound like it and DBT really doesn’t help unless there is change in the whole family system. It is a very different way of parenting as your daughter needs something different than what your son needed. And it takes a lot of humility to look at your parenting and see that some of the things you did that may have been good parenting for any other kid, did not work that way for her and she has resentments.

I’m sorry about the money and I agree that you should set a hard limit here by contacting the police. But if you ever want to have any kind of relationship with your daughter, I recommend finding a really good DBT program and doing the family skills component and family therapy.

[Anonymous]

Your original post is so condescending and tone deaf that it's hard to believe it's real.

No wonder your daughter stole from you. You have nothing but contempt for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jesus the way you write about your daughter is awful. Did you ever do anything to help her growing up?

BPD is notoriously difficult to manage. You can try to family therapy and see if having a 3rd party can help you all work through things, but it may be best to just get this money issue sorted and then take a break from each other's lives. She doesn't like you, you don't like her.

If you have never dealt with an adult child with this sort of personality disorder, cut OP some slack. I get the disdain she has.

[Anonymous]

I think you need to be able to acknowledge that your daughter’s childhood experience was. It the same as your sons. If your daughter has adhd and BPD then I am sure she was also challenging as a child and teen. How you interacted with her and the relationship you had would have been very different from a well behaved son. What kind of help did you get her throughout her life? ADHD and BPD don’t just suddenly appear. I am curious as to what help you got her when she was young?

[Anonymous]

You seem worried about your bank's fraud process in response to your DD's theft. In my experience, your anxiety is unfounded. You need to take a deep breath and keep working with your bank.

I don't know about BPD. But people with inattentive ADHD are not neurotypical.

I suggest you take a DBT-C course for parents. You have a lot to learn about DBT.

I suggest you withhold judgment about your DD's therapist until you learn more about DBT.

Don't beat yourself up about your past decisions about your DD's college major. It will cause you to take your regret out on other people.

You have a lot to learn about validation. Your post here and your posts in your other thread (https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1304814.page) tell me you don't have the first clue about it. It's fine. You can learn. If you are open to learning. If you do a DBT-C course, this will be included.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I posted this on another thread, but it devolved into nasty attacks and insults. I hope this board will be a bit more kind.

DD is 23 and living with a college friend in another part of the country. She is neurotypical, other than a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder that were given two years ago. She took a 1 year leave of absence after her freshman year of college due to “mental health issues” (I suspect her annoying, entitled personality made her lonely and have no friends at school).

During this 1 year leave of absence, she attended a DBT group. This arguably did more harm than good. I think the therapy fed into her selfish personality, and she began ranting to us about how we “weren’t meeting her emotional needs” because we did a few things in her childhood that made her angry, even though we were paying for her ENTIRE college tuition + room and board. Apparently the DBT therapist told DD that we have a “dysfunctional family.” Of course, this therapist wouldn’t tell us why

DD graduated from college back in May with an English degree. That was the WORST mistake of my life. DD can’t get a real job (of course she can’t, she was an English major…), so she worked as a barista in the city where she lives but got fired last month for not making drinks fast enough (she has slow processing speed and inattentive ADHD so I’m not surprised by this). She’s applied to ~150 jobs but has been rejected from all of them despite several interviews.

She’s currently in therapy right now, but therapy has made her WAY worse. DD is resentful of me and DH for not “validating her feelings enough” as a child and a teenager. This isn’t really true — we were caring, attentive parents, and DS (who is two years older than DD) doesn’t feel this way towards us — he is kind, caring, and appreciative of us as parents. He is also totally self-sufficient (works in tech in SF), and has never asked for a single penny from us since the day he graduated college.

Over the weekend, we found out that DD had withdrew $12k from our bank accounts over the course of the past week (which we didn’t know about until Saturday). When we called her to demand that she give the money back to us, she yelled at us over the phone that “YOU NEVER RESPECTED MY BOUNDARIES AS A CHILD OR AS AN ADULT. WHY SHOULD I RESPECT YOURS?” and then refused to give us the $12k back.

We NEVER gave her permission to use our credit card. We weren’t even aware that she knew the CC number until now, but apparently she wrote down my CC number when she was back home from winter break last year without me noticing. She withdrew all of this money in cash from a bank because she was able to guess our PIN number (my mistake — it’s the same as our garage PIN).

She told us that she plans on using $10k to buy a car and the other $1k for a writing conference she was accepted to. She plans to use the last $1k to buy plane tickets to her roommate’s mom’s house over winter break… because she yelled at us over the phone that she “doesn’t want to come home for winter break because she never feels respected at home” (another example of her ridiculous personality).

We are currently in the process of disputing this charge with the bank, but our bank requires us to make a police report to dispute CC charges. We filed a police report last week. We also reiterated to DD back in May (right after she graduated with a useless English degree) and over the phone last week that I did NOT want to help her buy a car or pay rent because I do NOT plan on subsidizing any adult child of mine.

Please help. We are in desperate search of guidance. Therapy hasn't helped (the DBT group made her entitlement worse), and merely made her focus on the injustices she perceives she faced as a child and a young adult from us. She is unemployed and stealing from us to pay her rent -- and her therapist has never seemed to challenge her on this.

OP, I understand. I have a similar situation with my 22 yo daughter, although she has never stolen from me. But I recognize a lot of the things you are talking about — the borderline, the mental health treatments making things worse, the victim attitude including the bit about “you didn’t validate my feelings enough.” And the bullshit from the therapists who, honestly, helped facilitated a lot of this. They suck. The mental health hospital and residence programs and group therapy did not help. Frankly it was like my kid was drawn to these other kids who had genuine trauma in their lives — abuse, deaths of siblings or parents, etc. And so she started fantasy narratives that her own very privileged life was similar, complete with fabulism. She would tell people we didn’t feed her (one school counselor asked if she should call CPS and my kid did a 180). She would tell people her mother hit her (she never did). And then, yes, it became this constant complaint that she wasn’t validated enough.

It sucks. You were not a bad parent. I am not a bad parent — my other daughter is not this way and she was treated exactly the same as her sister (they are two years apart). You and I spent thousands of dollars and sleepless nights trying to get help. This behavior goes with the personality disorder. It’s very hard but try not to take it personally. I do understand the subtext of disdain with which you talk about her in your post — I love my daughter but can only tolerate her in small doses now because of her behavior. It sucks.

My own therapist advises trying to set boundaries. I don’t know what to about the theft — I pray I would never take to do that (although I have nothing to take anymore). The obvious thing is to walk off money so she can’t do it in the future. I wouldn’t involve law enforcement as that will just make her life awful. Family therapy might help but I don’t know how that works logically now and i think therapists by and large are awful and do more harm than good.

So, I am sorry. Protect yourself financially and emotionally. Try to grey rock and set boundaries.

Good luck.

I highly doubt you treated two kids with completely different needs and issues and personalities exactly the same way. That never holds up to scrutiny. Parents are human and it isn’t possible to treat two completely different individuals the same way, nor would it be appropriate. I think this is where many parents have blinders. Raising challenging kids can be hard but when parents are u willing to accept that and seek out help or support because they insist they are a good parent and are treating all the kids the same, the struggling child loses out. They often need a different approach and they need parents who acknowledge that and seek out help to figure out what is best. The digging your heels in and insisting you were exactly the parent she needed - which is exactly the same parent her siblings needed and that her own experience of her own life is wrong because you did everything right shows a problem.