Adult Daughter Stealing from Me, Therapy Not Helping

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Is that before or after the daughter goes to the church services OP requires her daughter to attend?

[Anonymous]

OP, I would like to hear more about this church of yours. I’m curious if it was just a very conservative southern (you said Alabama right?) church (which can be hard enough for a girl who is a bit different!) vs a semi cult. I was raised in a conservative church, not even the craziest of conservatives and I honestly feel lucky to have escaped as unscathed as I did (my sister was not so lucky). Men often love that environment, since it teaches they are in charge and women need to listen to them and serve them. I have a relatively good relationship with my parents but I don’t think it would be possible without my mom’s evolution as a person (largely in response to my sister’s experiences).


TBH I don’t know why you conclude that the therapy was a failure, it sounds like you did not actually give it a try if you could not agree with the therapist’s advice to *not threaten to cut off your child for failing to attend church”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OP why did you start this thread on the SN Forum? What are you looking for here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OP why did you start this thread on the SN Forum? What are you looking for here?

+100

[Anonymous]

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.

OP here. Yes, finally! Someone who gets it. It sucks not having a relationship with your own kids because they're insufferable to be around. But that's how my daughter turned out

OP again here. Yes, that's exactly what happened to DD. She started accusing us of "abuse" because we made her college funding contingent on attending church every week, losing 20 lbs (she had gained an unhealthy amount of weight her freshman year and was quite overweight), and calling us ~15 minutes two times a week.

We told her that she could fund her own college tuition if she didn't like our rules. But of course, since she's an entitled and selfish person, she refused.

This right here tells me you are a control freak. Young adult bodies change when kids live away from home for the first time. I can't even imagine my parents doing something like this and I struggled with weight most of my life.

[Anonymous]

OP you are ruining her future with the police report. How is she ever going to get a job with a record?

[Anonymous]

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.

OP here. Yes, finally! Someone who gets it. It sucks not having a relationship with your own kids because they're insufferable to be around. But that's how my daughter turned out

OP again here. Yes, that's exactly what happened to DD. She started accusing us of "abuse" because we made her college funding contingent on attending church every week, losing 20 lbs (she had gained an unhealthy amount of weight her freshman year and was quite overweight), and calling us ~15 minutes two times a week.

We told her that she could fund her own college tuition if she didn't like our rules. But of course, since she's an entitled and selfish person, she refused.

This right here tells me you are a control freak. Young adult bodies change when kids live away from home for the first time. I can't even imagine my parents doing something like this and I struggled with weight most of my life.

+1 I was always thin and then gained weight in college. Also once later in my 20s when going through a very tough time. I can't imagine how I'd have reacted if my parents threatened to cut me off for that.

[Anonymous]

OP, since we are talking privately by email, I recommend you ask Jeff to lock or close this thread and the other one. They aren’t constructive.

— BDVA

[Anonymous]

[img]

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."

They (and you) are internet strangers. I will put both of you in your place. I interact differently with my kid.

Zip it. You aren’t relevant here. You have absolutely nothing of value to share, and no valid insights.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[img]

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."

They (and you) are internet strangers. I will put both of you in your place. I interact differently with my kid.

Zip it. You aren’t relevant here. You have absolutely nothing of value to share, and no valid insights.

+100

Exactly this. If you haven't been in this situation before, you really don't have anything insightful to share.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OP why did you start this thread on the SN Forum? What are you looking for here?

She came for validation, figuring if she vented to enough people there would be some one who would tell her she was a good person and her DD was terrible and then she could dismiss everyone, including her kids therapist as “just not getting it”. Sadly she seems to have some one to fill that role.

Or they are both trolls (which is frankly the best case senario). Or “big daddy” would love to spend lots of time listening to OP but he’s dealing with a tricky financial situation and maybe she can help out by sending some Visa gift cards…

[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.

OP here. Yes, finally! Someone who gets it. It sucks not having a relationship with your own kids because they're insufferable to be around. But that's how my daughter turned out

OP again here. Yes, that's exactly what happened to DD. She started accusing us of "abuse" because we made her college funding contingent on attending church every week, losing 20 lbs (she had gained an unhealthy amount of weight her freshman year and was quite overweight), and calling us ~15 minutes two times a week.

We told her that she could fund her own college tuition if she didn't like our rules. But of course, since she's an entitled and selfish person, she refused.

This right here tells me you are a control freak. Young adult bodies change when kids live away from home for the first time. I can't even imagine my parents doing something like this and I struggled with weight most of my life.

+1 I was always thin and then gained weight in college. Also once later in my 20s when going through a very tough time. I can't imagine how I'd have reacted if my parents threatened to cut me off for that.

The label "control freak" already shows me that you don't have anything insightful to contribute. Name calling and insults are always the sign of a weak person.

BTW, DD was 170 lbs and 5'6'. That's almost obese. Losing weight became a medical emergency at that point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP you are ruining her future with the police report. How is she ever going to get a job with a record?

OP here. She doesn't have a job right now. Why does it matter either way? Felony charge or no felony charge, she's clearly too immature, entitled, and irresponsible to get (and keep) a job. Letting your OWN kid steal $12k from you and not pressing charges just breeds further entitlement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[img]

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."

They (and you) are internet strangers. I will put both of you in your place. I interact differently with my kid.

Zip it. You aren’t relevant here. You have absolutely nothing of value to share, and no valid insights.

If your DD ever finds this thread I bet it would serve as excellent material for her poetry. It is fascinating that you can’t see how much you are making it seem like every negative thing she says about you is 100 percent accurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OP why did you start this thread on the SN Forum? What are you looking for here?

+100

OP here. I posted here looking for clarity, guidance, support, and empathy from other parents who have difficult kids. Normally, this forum is the kindest and most supportive of all the DCUM forums. I'm surprised that it devolved into nasty insults and name calling, even as many posters have acknowledged the difficulty of raising a child with BPD.