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Dear Care and Feeding,
Ever since our adult daughter was diagnosed with ADD, she’s been playing the victim of the whole world. We used to have conversations with her; she now says she doesn’t understand us when we speak to her and gets us to repeat phrases. She’ll even say, minutes after we’ve said something, that she just “processed” what we said. She has always been sensitive, but now any time we make a comment about her, suddenly it’s OK that she’s sensitive and “needs time to deal” with her hurt feelings. Every fault of hers is because of this illness, which means she has no faults: there’s an excuse for everything, including things from her childhood.
Suddenly my husband and I are villains because we disciplined bad behavior and basically parented her instead of letting her do whatever she wanted. No parent makes perfect choices all the time, but we were never cruel or unreasonable, and the parenting choices she points out are all normal ways to train children not to throw tantrums or be lazy. She also has not been a child for many years, so I don’t see the point of her being angry with us for actions we took years ago. This sort of thing comes up constantly in casual conversation, both when we’re reminiscing, and she feels the need to point out what she considers our failures, and when she gets “overwhelmed” out of nowhere and starts acting like a child. It seems that she is regressing back into the child she would have been if she’d had parents who didn’t care about her, and her hurt feelings are being enabled by the psychiatrist who diagnosed her and is treating her.
What’s most jarring is that this is coming out of nowhere. She used to be normal, but now she gets emotional like a child, or acts like she can’t do things for herself. We are tired of this new behavior and victim mindset, but anything we say about it just reinforces the idea in her head that we didn’t try to understand her “different” way of doing things. The “difference” seems to be putting all the responsibility on everyone else to follow her random demands (if we don’t, she asks us all to stop what we’re doing so she can do her ridiculous exercises to “regulate,” or she simply leaves). It’s impossible to talk to her anymore. It seems like we raised her right, but as soon as she found someone to validate her victim complex it has undone everything she’s learned. We’re at a loss, and would appreciate any advice on how to talk to her, since the way we’ve been doing it for decades is apparently unacceptable now.
—Mother of the Victim of Parenting
Dear MotVoP,
Your defensiveness about “normal ways to train [emphasis my own] children,” your (smug) certainty that you “raised her right” despite her attempts to let you know what troubles her about her childhood (about which, by the way, there is no statute of limitations), your referring to her efforts to take care of herself as “ridiculous”—and a whole host of other things I will not repeat back to you, but I urge you to reconsider—suggests to me that if anyone is “playing victim” in this relationship, it’s you. Stop talking. Start listening. If you don’t, you are going to lose your daughter altogether.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/09/extended-family-wedding-party.html
Ever since our adult daughter was diagnosed with ADD, she’s been playing the victim of the whole world. We used to have conversations with her; she now says she doesn’t understand us when we speak to her and gets us to repeat phrases. She’ll even say, minutes after we’ve said something, that she just “processed” what we said. She has always been sensitive, but now any time we make a comment about her, suddenly it’s OK that she’s sensitive and “needs time to deal” with her hurt feelings. Every fault of hers is because of this illness, which means she has no faults: there’s an excuse for everything, including things from her childhood.
Suddenly my husband and I are villains because we disciplined bad behavior and basically parented her instead of letting her do whatever she wanted. No parent makes perfect choices all the time, but we were never cruel or unreasonable, and the parenting choices she points out are all normal ways to train children not to throw tantrums or be lazy. She also has not been a child for many years, so I don’t see the point of her being angry with us for actions we took years ago. This sort of thing comes up constantly in casual conversation, both when we’re reminiscing, and she feels the need to point out what she considers our failures, and when she gets “overwhelmed” out of nowhere and starts acting like a child. It seems that she is regressing back into the child she would have been if she’d had parents who didn’t care about her, and her hurt feelings are being enabled by the psychiatrist who diagnosed her and is treating her.
What’s most jarring is that this is coming out of nowhere. She used to be normal, but now she gets emotional like a child, or acts like she can’t do things for herself. We are tired of this new behavior and victim mindset, but anything we say about it just reinforces the idea in her head that we didn’t try to understand her “different” way of doing things. The “difference” seems to be putting all the responsibility on everyone else to follow her random demands (if we don’t, she asks us all to stop what we’re doing so she can do her ridiculous exercises to “regulate,” or she simply leaves). It’s impossible to talk to her anymore. It seems like we raised her right, but as soon as she found someone to validate her victim complex it has undone everything she’s learned. We’re at a loss, and would appreciate any advice on how to talk to her, since the way we’ve been doing it for decades is apparently unacceptable now.
—Mother of the Victim of Parenting
Dear MotVoP,
Your defensiveness about “normal ways to train [emphasis my own] children,” your (smug) certainty that you “raised her right” despite her attempts to let you know what troubles her about her childhood (about which, by the way, there is no statute of limitations), your referring to her efforts to take care of herself as “ridiculous”—and a whole host of other things I will not repeat back to you, but I urge you to reconsider—suggests to me that if anyone is “playing victim” in this relationship, it’s you. Stop talking. Start listening. If you don’t, you are going to lose your daughter altogether.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/09/extended-family-wedding-party.html
no subject
To the LW’s daughter: Hey, go you. I’ve found that using jargon like “regulate” tends to turn people off, and just saying things like, “Give me a minute” gets better reactions, but like, it’s not a major issue.
To the LW: It’s interesting; when you are given the chance to understand your daughter better, to have more fulfilling conversations with someone who is now better able to understand herself, you reject it because it’s not fitting your expectations and because it’s not getting you what you want.
I have questions about your focus, because you don’t compliment your daughter at all; there’s no mention of what she was like as a kid, and no discussion of what she was like to live around, other than talking about disciplining her. Were there any hints of this as a kid? Think about that, because if this came out of the blue, it certainly should be making you think about how observant you were.
My advice on how to talk to her? Listen when she says she’s not getting what you’re saying. Give her space. When she goes back to previous things you said in the conversation, roll with it. It will, after all, mean that you’re having better conversations with her, where you have fuller understanding between each other. Try and work with the kinds of “different” things she’s doing, because they’re not coming from nowhere, and while they’re new, she’s trying to show you new things she’s discovering about herself. Exploring these new things with her will take you further than being defensive. Ask yourself: is your pride worth alienating your child over?
no subject