Did your impossible child get happily married?

amother

DarkRed ↓

Yesterday at 4:13 pm

amother OP wrote:

Looking for some light here ladies.

My daughter is 15, has pretty much always been combative, defiant, difficult to parent, and now as a teen is also rude and moody.

We receive parenting therapy which has helped us with boundaries but still she is hand-wringingly hard. I think the most frustrating part is that she doesn't see herself and how she comes across, and therefore always feels the victim.

A big concern for me is that she won't be able to sustain a marital relationship, that she will fight with her poor husband and never take responsibility for her mistakes.

Do you have a happy ending story for me please?

Is she on medication and receiving therapy? My daughter was just like yours but we started the medication and therapy for her as well as therapy for both my husband and myself (separately, not couples therapy) around a year ago and have seen tremendous results. There have been and likely always will be uos and downs for my daughter but she’s learned so much about self regulation, her emotions, tools she can use it’s been amazing. And it’s only working bec she’s in the right cocktail of meds.

amother

Oatmeal

Yesterday at 4:14 pm

Our various types of kids get put into a certain mold in the system that is catered to one specific type of kid. Thats why so many fail it.
When they get married, they kind of have freedom to be at their own speed, get the type of job they like, do their own schedule etc, and they becomes successful and happy at life.

amother

↑ DarkRed

Yesterday at 4:15 pm

amother Oatmeal wrote:

Or because they’ve never been taught self regulation, they continue to have difficulty as a married person. Don’t use marriage as a band aid. Get your child all the help and more now so that she can enter adulthood with better coping tools.

amother

RosePink

Yesterday at 4:32 pm

amother DarkRed wrote:

Marriage may be the wrong word to use but I agree with the previous poster that many individuals that seem to be challenging in a child and student role can do very well as adults once they gain more freedom and independence. These children march to the beat of their own drum and do not do so well under authority figures. Once they are allowed to be independent, they can flourish and be very successful.

giftedmom

Yesterday at 4:38 pm

amother Fern wrote:

My parents would’ve probably written this about me at 15. The thing is that in reality I wasn’t impossible, I was simply in pain and very misunderstood.

Me too. My mom told everyone I won’t be able to sustain a marriage.

amother

Babypink

Yesterday at 4:56 pm

amother Amaryllis wrote:

Um I think I was the difficult/impossible one... Bh married now!

That's what I was thinking about myself! Lol

(But honestly I don't think I was as bad as my parents thought I was. And not bec I was playing the victim, I just think I had the most personality and my parents didn't know what to do with me lol)

amother

Navy ↓

Yesterday at 8:48 pm

I have this with my 18 yr old DD. Most intelligent smart, best student. She gives me gehonim. Unappreciative, disrespectful and thinks she knows best. I always wonder if she can get married. Whenever I hear of good girls getting divorced I think of my DD. She literally is one of the best girls in school..

LovesHashem

Yesterday at 8:56 pm

bigsis144 wrote:

I desperately need this, it’s been recommended to me after both of my sons were diagnosed with ADHD + autism.

How do you find someone who specifically deals with neurodivergent kids and the challenges they present?

I’ve read so many books on parenting that left me feeling broken and confused, and even had a professional therapist blame me for my kids’ behavior.

She have autism parenting coaches as well.

amother

Khaki ↓

Yesterday at 8:57 pm

amother Navy wrote:

Sounds like what I was as a teenager. Don’t worry about the marriage, worry about how your relationship with her will progress when she is an adult…

amother

Scarlet ↓

Yesterday at 9:15 pm

My impossible cousin who was hated by all teachers and was always getting into trouble was the first one to get married and have kids and yes she is happily married, that's all she really needed!

amother

↑ Khaki

Yesterday at 9:19 pm

amother Scarlet wrote:

My impossible cousin who was hated by all teachers and was always getting into trouble was the first one to get married and have kids and yes she is happily married, that's all she really needed!

Sounds like all she needed was get out of her childhood house. I also married earlier than most of my friends and relatives. My home growing up was a disaster but of course itself all about „what kind of a child I was“.
OP, think about whether it’s the child‘s personality or „how hard it is for me to parent“. Because these are two different things

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 9:27 pm

amother Fern wrote:

My parents would’ve probably written this about me at 15. The thing is that in reality I wasn’t impossible, I was simply in pain and very misunderstood.

My daughter certainly also feels misunderstood. When I mentioned once that she has a rebellious streak she was shocked and said I don't get her at all!

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 9:29 pm

amother Bronze wrote:

I was the most difficult child and I got married first. B”H did very well. Just like the other poster said, I was very misunderstood (like I was popped into the wrong family by mistake). Now we are all close and everything is fine B”H.

Can't believe you said this, this is us too. We are basically a nerdy, quiet family with this one partying, wayward child. She always says she must've been switched at birth!

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 9:32 pm

amother Seagreen wrote:

My mother thought I was impossible. In reality, she was triggered by my personality because it's too similar to my father's. I am bh very happily married. I get along wonderfully with my dh. My relationship with my mom also improved once I moved out of the house.

So happy to hear this. I do sometimes feel like she might benefit from being away from us, like a boarding school situation, but nothing like this exists where we live. She does really well at camp.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 9:33 pm

amother Aster wrote:

Yes
Now she says she doesn't know why she was so oppositional.
Anxiety was definitely a component and she got married later so she had a chance to mature.

Anxiety is such a strong component. She gets much more difficult when things are chaotic, unknown, etc.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 9:35 pm

Movernshaker wrote:

There are a few different aspects therapists look at in parenting. I'll just mention a few.
1- teaching skills
2- how do you parenting in general, how does it apply in the current situation
3- what have you tried and why isn't it working, is there anything else to include
4- how were you parented and are you trying to compare to that
5- what's the child's struggle and how can we tune in to that
6- how can we make changes without the child feeling that fingers are pointed to him/her.

I'm sure there's more.

Correct. Also how to manage the situation so the child in question doesn't steamroll the entire household.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Yesterday at 9:37 pm

amother Mimosa wrote:

My MIL often says my husband was “impossible”, but I honestly don’t know what that means.

MIL is a very “children should be seen and not heard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps” strict and old-fashioned personality. Her father was in the US Navy and then owned factories after the war, and she has high expectations of all her kids.

DH is likely on the spectrum, and extremely professionally competent and intelligent. Definitely has a lot of rigidity about certain routines and foods, and it has taken a decade and a half of work on our marriage for us to be able to communicate better. I was always feeling irrational and inferior about having emotions compared to him.

MIL said he had major anger issues as a teenager, and BH I never saw that, if anything, he was frustratingly stoic and unforgiving of my very human and normal needs for validation, support and empathy for far too long.

I'm so glad you are working through this. There is definitely some spectrum behavior in our daughter too.