ASD and Empty Nesting-Accepting the Relationship With Your Child is Not the One You Wanted
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Anonymous
| It seems like you are interpreting symptoms of your child's disability as deliberate, personal attacks on yourself! She is not your father! |
Anonymous
If both have untreated ASD then neither the daughter nor dad would be deliberately attacking her. However if someone gives you feedback - stop yelling pls, don’t raise your voice, don’t attack me for helping you late at night - and you don’t or can’t internalize how to adapt, then boundaries get set by the target. Get treated, get professional help. Separately, with these genetic disorders, it can be quite triggering, and depressing, to see a child showing symptoms that an elder parent had. Get professional help and support groups to better cope with that reality. Hang out with healthy functional people too. Be YOUR best self. |
Anonymous
+1, manipulative and emotionally abusive. |
Anonymous
| You need to put yourself into an email/text time-out. Your behavior towards your child via these channels is inappropriate. |
Anonymous
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I know this is all upsetting and stressful and I think getting help from a professional is the right thing. You need to consistently take the high road and also better understand where your adult child is developmentally when it comes to social interactions and emotional maturity.
As parent you want to be a safe space with boundaries. you can have limits about how you are spoken too, but setting a boundary to have zero contact until Fall Break sounds extreme and will push your child away more. You need some coaching in figuring out how to set enough boundaries you manage your own sanity, but not so much you risk estrangement. |
Anonymous
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How is she doing in college? Socially and academically?
I have an adhd daughter, age 21. She left college after a year. Couldn’t handle academics or social. My DD is sweet and cute but odd. And very very lazy. She was also the cutest kid up til a few years ago. Just lazy and isolated now. And did I mention lazy? I feel her future is bleak. She does work pt at Starbucks and goes to CC and that’s just how it’ll be for a bit. Ugh. She has so much potential. Be thankful if your dd doing ok in college. That’s something. |
Anonymous
Moving on? Is the student paying their own bills? |
Anonymous
Sending an 18 yo to a glorified 4 year vacation is highly atypical of human history, you will agree? Throughout all but the most recent past, this 18 yo student would either had been a parent or self-sustaining member of society, or both. It is this extremely weird college period where children are play acting adults - i.e. making all decisions but not supporting themselves - that creates this extremely weird dynamic even when everybody is NT and all relationships are otherwise ordinary. There is no way I could have spoken disrespectfully and cruelly to my own mother while she was still paying my own bills. I would just have been cut off. But here we are advised to take a beating because "the child has moved on". "Let them grow up" - but don't forget to pay their bills! |
Anonymous
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You're at college to learn marketable skills and knowledge, try out some internships, and get a job or into grad school (to get a job).
Also make some friends, explore a new city, network, confirm your major/job track, etc. Stop making a BFD about it. No one's "acting like an adult" at age 18-22 unless they have a kid, a job, and pay all their own bills, healthcare, transpo costs. |
Anonymous
Exactly. Child wants to constantly criticize their parents for being too involved or this and that and for "expecting" to be treated with respect all while said parents are still paying all their bills. Child is being a jerk. I'd just not reach out and only pay the necessities. They can get a job to pay for everything else. Children aren't entitled to parents money after 18, including college so I wouldn't be so quick to bite the hand that feeds you kid. |
Anonymous
I suppose the problem is that you consider college a "glorified vacation", and perhaps it is one, when students get admitted not based on their intellectual abilities, but who can pay. It certainly was not intended as one and is not one in many other countries, where admittance is based on merit. As you can see, turning higher education into indoctrination camps has its cost. And you obviously must have been too stupid to attend one, if that's how you understand college. And you must be the poster who also holds inheritance out as a carrot: you must do as I say or you'll not get my MoNeY. You know what, then stop paying the bills. I'm sure this DD will figure out her own ways as many have before her. In the end, everybody's sick and tired of such "mothers" with your endless drama. People like you are disrespectful, cruel and with mental issues, and your adult children cannot wait to never hear from you again. That said, this DD was not disrespectful or cruel in responding to crazy emails and texts in any way, the best thing to do with the crazy is to ignore. Nobody owes you anything. |
Anonymous
Actually, they do. Children owe parents a great deal. They literally owe their lives. And most of their life experiences. Hopefully, they will pay it forward. |
Anonymous
You're just crazy, right? |
Anonymous
I find your attitude is common in twenty and thirty somethings and they all feel that their parents are required to provide endless support and money even to adults, have zero expectations of respect, not ask any questions, and all while being the blame for all their problems and acting as their child's emotional dumping ground. |
Anonymous
No, I am just regular normal. I owe my parents so much. |