Adult Daughter Stealing from Me, Therapy Not Helping

[Anonymous]

Why all the negativity about her doing an English degree or taking time off to look after her mental health or her choices about work / school? You seem very angry at her for everything. Those aren’t ’insane delusions’ but you have just as much disdain and hostility and criticism of those choices as everything else.

Why are you still in contact? It doesn’t seem like you like her at all in any way or have any parental love or positive feelings or concern left for her at all. If she already feels negatively about you as you say, just go no contact. Deal with the legal piece but move on with your life. She will experience it as rejection / abandonment but she already feels that way so no point in reengaging only to continue this cycle that both of you feel is harmful.

[Anonymous]

I have an adult son with serious mental illness. I have to admit the borderline personality disorder adult children are the most difficult for families, based on my coffee shop talks with parents. I have seen the nicest parents accused of controlling and mean behavior. It's just not what happened at all. I think the closest most people come is a workplace narcissist--have you had office mates that constantly lied and cheated on projects? Did you excuse them as neurodivergent and misunderstood? No?

OP, I would try and sit down and figure out what role is appropriate for you with this adult person. I don't think you can dictate going to church--we need to find religion on our own, and maybe she will return at a later date. Try and enjoy your own life--your child is not your responsibility, holiday visitor, etc. It's ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your DD felt angry or indignant or frustrated because she thought she could fly to the moon, would you feel as if it were productive or helpful to validate her anger? No, of course not. This is what validating my DD is like.

Only people with BPD children will understand.

"I know, isn't it maddening when you really want to do something and you have to come to terms with not being able or allowed to? I hate that too."

OP here. When DH and I would do that with DD (when we were enrolled in the intensive family DBT program), saying things like this just made her lash out at us even more and blame US for all of her problems. Not take accountability.

PP here. Relatable.

These morons have no idea, OP. Just ignore them. None of them have anything of value to say and a few of them are just nasty, evil, judgemental twats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your DD felt angry or indignant or frustrated because she thought she could fly to the moon, would you feel as if it were productive or helpful to validate her anger? No, of course not. This is what validating my DD is like.

Only people with BPD children will understand.

"I know, isn't it maddening when you really want to do something and you have to come to terms with not being able or allowed to? I hate that too."

OP here. When DH and I would do that with DD (when we were enrolled in the intensive family DBT program), saying things like this just made her lash out at us even more and blame US for all of her problems. Not take accountability.

PP here. Relatable.

These morons have no idea, OP. Just ignore them. None of them have anything of value to say and a few of them are just nasty, evil, judgemental twats.

OP here. I wonder if there's any way we could contact each other. Would you be open to emailing me if I posted a spam email here? It seems like no one I know IRL can relate to what we're going through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your DD felt angry or indignant or frustrated because she thought she could fly to the moon, would you feel as if it were productive or helpful to validate her anger? No, of course not. This is what validating my DD is like.

Only people with BPD children will understand.

"I know, isn't it maddening when you really want to do something and you have to come to terms with not being able or allowed to? I hate that too."

OP here. When DH and I would do that with DD (when we were enrolled in the intensive family DBT program), saying things like this just made her lash out at us even more and blame US for all of her problems. Not take accountability.

PP here. Relatable.

These morons have no idea, OP. Just ignore them. None of them have anything of value to say and a few of them are just nasty, evil, judgemental twats.

OP here. I wonder if there's any way we could contact each other. Would you be open to emailing me if I posted a spam email here? It seems like no one I know IRL can relate to what we're going through.

[e-mail]

It looks like I got Jeff to remove the one bothersome troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your DD felt angry or indignant or frustrated because she thought she could fly to the moon, would you feel as if it were productive or helpful to validate her anger? No, of course not. This is what validating my DD is like.

Only people with BPD children will understand.

"I know, isn't it maddening when you really want to do something and you have to come to terms with not being able or allowed to? I hate that too."

OP here. When DH and I would do that with DD (when we were enrolled in the intensive family DBT program), saying things like this just made her lash out at us even more and blame US for all of her problems. Not take accountability.

PP here. Relatable.

These morons have no idea, OP. Just ignore them. None of them have anything of value to say and a few of them are just nasty, evil, judgemental twats.

OP here. I wonder if there's any way we could contact each other. Would you be open to emailing me if I posted a spam email here? It seems like no one I know IRL can relate to what we're going through.

[e-mail]

It looks like I got Jeff to remove the one bothersome troll.

OP here. I just sent you an email from an anonymous account (that's not my actual name).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your DD felt angry or indignant or frustrated because she thought she could fly to the moon, would you feel as if it were productive or helpful to validate her anger? No, of course not. This is what validating my DD is like.

Only people with BPD children will understand.

"I know, isn't it maddening when you really want to do something and you have to come to terms with not being able or allowed to? I hate that too."

OP here. When DH and I would do that with DD (when we were enrolled in the intensive family DBT program), saying things like this just made her lash out at us even more and blame US for all of her problems. Not take accountability.

First, all people in DBT do that at first. That's why they're in DBT. Second, we don't know if you had an implementation problem or your DD wasn't a good candidate for DBT. If you're looking for BPD specific advice, maybe turn down the attitude, give more relevant info, and then get to the point with your questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having had a horrible mother myself, I don't have the emotional energy to read all four pages of this thread.

So I'll just say this: OP, it is pretty clear that you did not take adequate care of this child -- over the course of her entire life -- and the pain she is suffering as a result is really hurting her ability to live a stable life, let along a fulfilling one. Having paid for her college does not erase any of this. The fact that your son is doing fine does not erase any of this. Your daughter needs a strong support system and love and you have given contempt and potentially a criminal record.

You are a horrible mother. I hope she is able to get away from you for good and figure things out for herself.

Another thing that strikes me as delusional about this post is the idea that I "gave her a criminal record." It was HER decision to steal from me, not mine. SHE was the one who gave herself a criminal record! Not anybody else.

It will be hard for her to come back from this with a record, OP. I think that is why many of us parents here with SN adult children are hesitant to support you doing that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having had a horrible mother myself, I don't have the emotional energy to read all four pages of this thread.

So I'll just say this: OP, it is pretty clear that you did not take adequate care of this child -- over the course of her entire life -- and the pain she is suffering as a result is really hurting her ability to live a stable life, let along a fulfilling one. Having paid for her college does not erase any of this. The fact that your son is doing fine does not erase any of this. Your daughter needs a strong support system and love and you have given contempt and potentially a criminal record.

You are a horrible mother. I hope she is able to get away from you for good and figure things out for herself.

Another thing that strikes me as delusional about this post is the idea that I "gave her a criminal record." It was HER decision to steal from me, not mine. SHE was the one who gave herself a criminal record! Not anybody else.

It will be hard for her to come back from this with a record, OP. I think that is why many of us parents here with SN adult children are hesitant to support you doing that.

You are delusional! Full stop. Adulthood means taking control and accountability over your own actions. Not having mommy and daddy bail you out at every possible moment.

[Anonymous]

Ugh FFS. Either file the report, press charges and go no contact. Or work to fix your relationship and reframe your mindset about your daughter. The problem OP is you are still trying to control the outcome like u have your whole life, but you don’t have the cojones nor the compassion to move to either extreme.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh FFS. Either file the report, press charges and go no contact. Or work to fix your relationship and reframe your mindset about your daughter. The problem OP is you are still trying to control the outcome like u have your whole life, but you don’t have the cojones nor the compassion to move to either extreme.

OP here. Just to clarify, we already filed the police report and hired a lawyer to press charges. I suspect DD will stop contacting us once she ends up in jail. We already told her that we're not visiting her nor taking calls from her in prison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I really don’t give two shits what your arrogant ass thinks. You know nothing. Please shut up and sit down — your thoughts on this are not valid and you have nothing of value to contribute. You know nothing about me, my family dynamics, or OP. Zip it.

And your arrogant we are right and everyone else is wrong is why you have the adult child that you do. The inability to reflect or to have self awareness or to evaluate your own role in things and the insistance that the child is the problem and since day 1, it was all her. She is just a bad child, bad teen, and now bad adult and we are blameless is contributing to where you are now in life.

Excuse me, I instructed you to stop posting.

She is not a bad person. She has a mental illness and a personality disorder that is very difficult to manage. You have no idea what self-reflection I have done or am capable of. Do you really think for one moment that a parent with a kid like this doesn’t ask themselves where did they fail?

You are evil. Sit down, shut up and leave this discussion to people actually dealing with these things. Stop talking.

OMG, do you hear yourself? Calling this PP "evil" and then demanding they "sit down, shut up and leave this discussion"? I can imagine how awful things were for your poor daughter. You need to print out this entire thread and take it to a therapist. It's you who are spreading "evil."

[Anonymous]

I’m not surprised the therapists your daughter saw were incompetent. I interviewed a few therapists to deal with lingering childhood issues plus executive function problems, and I couldn’t believe how dumb of some of them were. I was limited to in network therapists so that was likely the reason they weren’t sharp, but I kept digging until I found someone who I believed had good sense.

My advice is keep looking for a good therapist and tell your daughter you will drop the charges if she agrees to seeing the therapist you pick, not the dumb grifters who validate whatever their patients say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I really don’t give two shits what your arrogant ass thinks. You know nothing. Please shut up and sit down — your thoughts on this are not valid and you have nothing of value to contribute. You know nothing about me, my family dynamics, or OP. Zip it.

And your arrogant we are right and everyone else is wrong is why you have the adult child that you do. The inability to reflect or to have self awareness or to evaluate your own role in things and the insistance that the child is the problem and since day 1, it was all her. She is just a bad child, bad teen, and now bad adult and we are blameless is contributing to where you are now in life.

Excuse me, I instructed you to stop posting.

She is not a bad person. She has a mental illness and a personality disorder that is very difficult to manage. You have no idea what self-reflection I have done or am capable of. Do you really think for one moment that a parent with a kid like this doesn’t ask themselves where did they fail?

You are evil. Sit down, shut up and leave this discussion to people actually dealing with these things. Stop talking.

OMG, do you hear yourself? Calling this PP "evil" and then demanding they "sit down, shut up and leave this discussion"? I can imagine how awful things were for your poor daughter. You need to print out this entire thread and take it to a therapist. It's you who are spreading "evil."

Both the OP (of both threads) and the PP you are replying to have exactly the same playbook. The golfe. Child who does what they are told when they are told and how they are told and who says yes mom when spoken to and is easily controlled…and this validates their view of themselves as amazing parents who did no wrong. The child who grew up to have their own opinions and beliefs and views is the spawn of Satan. Add mental illness to that and the mothers are horrified and needing to disparage their kids as much as possible or hence all the name calling and criticism and disgusting for their own children. And if even a poster doesn’t say what they want them to say, then the vitriol gets directed at them. I am sure they will connect and congratulate each other about being the greatest parents and how life is just unfair that their reputations are sullied by these horrid awful adult children who need to just disappear from their lives.

[Anonymous]

A n d we can just imagine what exactly the "lies" OP rages on about her child spreading about DH, the child's father, might involve.