<p>I agree with ADad that this is the time to listen as opposed to giving advice. It seems to me that it’s pretty huge that she suggested lunch and that she expressed her feelings to you on this. You could easily be perceived to be defending the boyfriend if you address the content, when she just wants you in her corner (kind of like how many women complain that they don’t want problem-solving advice when they tell their husband they are upset, they just want support.) The gift and its meaning is the content, the process here is that she’s reaching out to you when she’s upset. Try to stay focused on that process.</p>
<p>I’d see this as a plus. She is confiding in you. She cares what you think. And maybe, just maybe, she has second thoughts about this guy (which would make you happy based on what you have shared before). Everything you said about the gift does make sense but maybe she wants you to commiserate with her (even though you think the gift is within reason). If you liked the boyfriend and thought your D was being unreasonable about the gift, you could share what you did. But considering she is questioning something the boyfriend did, this may be an opener to her re-evaluating the relationship and that would not be a bad thing in your view! Anyway, your D having a lunch date with you is a positive sign. Talk about what she wants to do …school/not, work/not, live on her own, relationship status, etc.</p>
<p>We had an early lunch and got home before the heavy snow started. The day went well with some talk of the plans and her boyfriend. I will fill in with more details after the snow shoveling…2 feet out there.</p>
<p>ADAD, could you teach my husband the art of reflective listening? lol.</p>
<p>In fact, you could probably make a living at teaching large groups of men to be good listeners. I would sign up my husband, Dad, brother and boss.</p>
<p>It is a skill I learned in college during my teacher training and I use it all the time in my personal life. Unfortunately, it is not always reciprocated by the others around me. :(</p>
<p>I only offer advice if it is asked for by the person doing the talking but the rest of the time is spent mirroring the persons concerns and feelings.</p>
<p>Hmmmm… perhaps she was hoping for a diamond ring, an official reason to move out?</p>
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<p>I think that is usually the case regardless of whether one has ADHD or not. I sure see that in my daughters, neither of whom has ADHD.</p>
<p>I took your advice and listened to my daughter during lunch. She did ask my opinion and I told her I understood why she had felt as she did. In regard to the gift she was hurt that her boyfriend picked something so inappropriate for both the seriousness of their relationship and the amount of time they have been together. My daughter was also insulted that the gift was inexpensive “as though he went to the store with a set amount in mind and choose the first thing he saw in his price range.” My daughter feels that the gift was a slap in the face since he spends alot of mony every weekend when he is out with friends going to the clubs and bars and hotel rooms in the city so they don’t need to drink after a night out. She is right about that and that has been one of the things that I noticed since they had gotten back together. He has become very sophisticated in his taste but only when he can benefit. I had once liked this young man very much but the year break up really did change him. He has become arrogant, and he talks only about himself and what intersts him. My sons who were all very good friends of his spent a night out with my daughter and him and they did not like what they saw. He has become very pompous and tells my daughter that she “should always look her best because they never know who they may meet that either of them may need to know for their future careers.” My sons just about had enough when they heard this but they are not confrontational at all, however one of them did say “do you think anyone regardless of their career is always dressed in their finest?” He and my daughter had gone to the city on one of the coldest nights this winter. My daughter looked fine wearing a pair of jeans and a nice sweater and shoes with a lovely coat and scarf. He told her he was wearing a suit. She was fine with that and told him to wear what he wanted and he was disapointed that she was not wearing one of her dresses and high heeled shoes. My daughter was not going to freeze while seeing the Christmas tree and store windows in the city. That was just one example. It seems like he is trying to be something that she is neither interested in or has a desire to be part of. My sons have done very well and not one of them would ever do such a thing when out with a young lady. They know to dress appropriately for the occasion. </p>
<p>As for her moving out. We discussed the situation and I told my daughter that we are in favor of her moving out and that we will continue to pay tuition providing her grades are what we consider acceptable. She has received some of her grades and apparently her work was accepted late although one of the classes she went down to a B when she was running an A all semester. As I mentioned she is not in a demanding major and the job prospects for this major will be very competitive. She needs to have a very high GPA just to get through the initial review of the resume. I am not expecting anything more than she has not already heard from professors and her department head. </p>
<p>Her plan is to look for a place and she will be responsible for the rent and utilities. The car will be hers while she attends school so that she could get to work and her field experience. We want to see her make it through school but I just don’t know the reality of that once she has the distraction of living with friends. I kind of figure that if she does this now she will at leat be with her friends and it is less likely that she will get a place with her boyfriend come May, although I am sure he will practically live either there or they will end up at his place (if he gets an apartment). The reality is that I can’t tell her what to do and she must learn how to handle these things on her own. It concerns me but I won’t be that far away that I wouldn’t know if she was O.K. </p>
<p>The time has come to let the chicks leave the nest but my daughter is my big concern. I was happy that she told her boyfriend that she would have liked the gift when she was 16 but that she expected more thought to go into a gift at this stage of their relationship. He is exchanging it today. This is actually a big step for my daughter because she would have kept that in and erupted with me. She did not do that so maybe some of that therapy is working.</p>
<p>Good for her! Maybe she won’t have to visit the “Awkward Gift Giving” thread anytime soon if she is already asserting herself and stating her feelings. Good job being a great listener, Momma-three.</p>
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<p>It sounds like you felt that the lunch went well and that your daughter has done some good thinking and has taken some practical, proactive steps. How useful did you find taking a more listening-oriented posture to be for you and for her?</p>
<p>It was good ADad…thanks for giving me the reminder. Sometimes I forget to just listen and tend to open my mouth too soon. This time I listened and made sure I understood what she was saying or asking before I spoke. I was really proud of the fact that she spoke up and didn’t take her frustration out on me. Her boyfriend must have been surprised that she told him what she thought, instead of her picking a fight about something silly when that isn’t what she is upset about.</p>
<p>momma-three: I am concerned about your perfectionism over grades. B’s are fine in college. Even non-demanding majors A’s can be difficult to achieve. Some courses are graded on a curve; some professors state that they will only award X number of grades.</p>
<p>If goals are unattainable (straight A’s) people give up and/or act out.</p>
<p>Had I made A’s mandatory for my two I would have made their lives miserable and achieved nothing.</p>
<p>My D is now in law school doing very well. She has gotten some A’s and some B’s which is what she expects. Yes, there are people at the tippy top of the class with straight A’s I’m sure. However, she tries as hard as she can within her neurology (some people shut down when they try to study too hard), and I’m sure she’s going to make an incredible lawyer, better than some at the top. Will they have more opportunities? Probably. But I am proud of her achievements.</p>
<p>Redux: as I recall the story of the grades here, there would have been A’s but by submitting things late they became B’s. The late submission was because the boyfriend came to town at term’s end. The parents saw that D had left the A-quality materials on the computer rather than submitting them on time.</p>
<p>It is so hard to accept, but she is making choices all the time here. IF she wanted all-A’s she’d have told the boy to take a hike for the weekend until her coursework was done. Then she might have straight A’s/no boyfriend (given how you describe him). </p>
<p>Instead, she now has B’s (because the prof took the work late) and a boyfriend who tells her how to dress for success, ridiculously, in the cold.</p>
<p>These are her current choices. She must keep making choices for the rest of her life. Listening is a wonderful Mom-modality because she can count on you to hear out her choices while in process, not as a finished outcome.</p>
<p>I really relate to this situation. The boyfriend might also grow up and improve a bit, and then you’ll like his choices better. Or you won’t. But perhaps she’ll learn to read his choices better herself. </p>
<p>Yay for listening.</p>
<p>Incidentally I always had better Mom-Daughter talks when we both left the house and ate out or just drank tea at a cafe together. Getting ME away from the familiar living room environment put us both on a level playing field, without the old triggers of childhood memories. She opened up more; there were no brothers and dads walking through, and I saw her in a fresh new light, mature as if I were meeting a friend. We were surrounded by cafe decor, neither hers nor mine. It wasn’t always possible, but when we could, communication was better in a cafe than home.</p>
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<p>This is great to hear. Thanks for letting us know!</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>[ADHD</a> Symptoms in Teenagers and Adolescents](<a href=“http://www.health.com/health/article/0,,20434607,00.html]ADHD”>15 Adult ADHD Symptoms and Signs)</p>
<p>For those of you who think that behavioral issues are not ADHD related. There are several kinds of ADHD. One of them is the impulsive kind. This kid should not be allowed to be overwhelmed. It is often a tipping point for all kinds of far reaching mental health issues. These kids have to be eased into adulthood…probably with medication, counseling and a high parental “pain” tolerance. Behavioral issues may take the shape of self-harm, promiscuity, smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, an irrational temperament, overspending, car wrecks, eating disorders, etc.</p>
<p>Or in the case of our daughter…ALL of the above! It took years of unwrapping what was going on here. Had we known what we know now, we would not have allowed this kid to be so overwhelmed. But she “handled it” so well so long. She was a 4.2 GPA student in all the hardest classes and a national champion athlete. One final “straw”, a personal trauma, threw her over the top.</p>
<p>So Momma…just be careful. And the idea of reflective listening…that’s a good one.</p>
<p>debrockman…My daughter could easily slip into some or all of the above mentioned problems which is why my husband is concerned about her moving out. She would be living about a half hour away which is close enough for us to see her often. Her jobs, home cooked meals, and the washing machine are here so that would probably encourage her to visit more often, at least initially. I am concerned as well but at this point in time this behavior needs to stop and I think once she is out on her own she will come to realize it doesn’t fly in the real world without paying the price. This kid is the learn as go kind and until she makes a few mistakes along the way I will continue to be her scapegoat. I wouldn’t mind so much if she was interested in listening to what I say but she isn’t most of the time…only when she asks what I think but otherwise I am viewed as knowing nothing.
I am more inclined at this point to have her move out simply because I don’t want her to fall in the trap of moving in with the boyfriend when he graduates. That is not the best thing for her right now. She needs to mature as a young woman on her own before she is in that kind of relationship and feels trapped. I would hate to see her marry someone just because he is all she knows, without developing a sense of who she is as a person. I saw a few of those marraiges back in my time and they didn’t turn out very pretty. </p>
<p>This is my kid that I am the most concerned about but the one thing I have learned about her is that she is selfish enough to put herself first, which when push comes to shove, she will look out for herself. She is still easily influenced when the pressure is on and that is the time that I know all hell breaks loose. Debrockman is right on when she talks about this characteristic of ADHD. For other people reading this thread I could tell you that stress is the time to particularily stay in tune to what is going on with your kid. The problems we have had with my daughter all revolve around times when she has too many things to do or high stress. For the kid with ADHD the stress level is different than for those without the disorder. My daughter gets stressed if she gets a call from one friend and another calls to ask her what she is doing. The summer breaks and winter breaks are always tough on her because there are too many social obligations that seem to stress her out. School is the other huge pressure and her inability to pull it together at either midterms or finals is the proof that she just gets so overwhelmed that she freezes. </p>
<p>Mythmom…I am not unrealistic in regard to her grades. I know what her workload is and am familar with her corse of study so I know that it is not one of the challenging majors. This should be a piece of cake for her and it obviously is or her grades would not have been A’s going into finals. She blew a 4.0 because she was stressed and did not organize herself or tell her boyfriend that she would see him when she finished up. She does not make wise choices but again she will need to learn from her mistakes…I just don’t want to see the mess we had when she came back from her LAC.</p>
<p>Momma-three – consider the type of job/industry the bf trying to get into after graduation? There are 1-2 industries in NYC (outside of modeling, acting where it makes sense) where there are well educated but naive young people who are convinced that their success rides on having the “right” look, clothes, being seen in the right restaurants etc. That means that only the things that are “seen” matter – since no one will know what he got the GF for Christmas, he gives it no thought. You and your D will see how this develops – it’s fine if this is a phase, but there are plenty in NYC whose 20s are spent putting on this show and trying to impress people; your D will eventually have to decide if she wants to deal with that.</p>
<p>Momma, in our experience, that was about the right distance of a safety net…about 30 minutes away. Sounds to me like a plan. Our daughter has done better out from under my direct daily supervision, too. It allowed me to be able to separate normal teen stupidness from impulsive scary behavior. But the phone calls from emergency rooms were always a little traumatizing. 
If you’re too close to it, you almost can’t evaluate improvement…and she is going to make some mistakes. Some of those mistakes may be very painful for her, but she will learn. My daughter is. She had me laughing so hard the other day telling me that she knows that everything we ever told her was right, but she would still probably never learn from other peoples’ experiences. Sounds like you have the kind of relationship where your daughter also feels like she can come to you. That’s very important. I will pray that your next Christmas is much easier. Ours was. Perfect grades, full-time load, good relationships with her family, lost the “bad for her” boyfriend, no new tattoos :), reduced car insurance premiums for driving without an accident, living within her allowance, adorable new boyfriend.<br>
They say ADHD kids often seem like they are about 3 years behind in maturity. I think that might be about right. But she’s catching up.
I said before…I have been studying the radiological evidence of ADHD…thinned cerebral cortex, that normally begins to look more “normal” at about the age of 25. There is hope.</p>
<p>My daughter just blew up that her plans for News Years Eve fell through. This is not the first time in fact it happens every year unless the party is at our our house. This year we figured all the kids had plans so we invited friends to our home. </p>
<p>Our daughter came down this morning in a rage with alot of drama and ended up getting very hostile. She immediately said “why do you need to have people over when we could have had a party here? You knew that the plans would fall through, and now I have nothing to do and no where to go.” It did’nt stop there and the rest gets pretty ugly. This kid is just so negative and hostile that I want to run away. My husband and sons were all here to witness this recent scene and one of my sons bodily picked her up and put her out the door and told her to go to work. She has me reeling again and now I just can’t believe that any kind of real conversation about moving out could take place. I was hoping that she would move out with our blessing and some assistance but this behavior just makes me feel like such a doormat. She blew off a couple appointments with the therapist and the doctor again and now those are bills that must be paid without going through the insurance company. Her bill is now well over $1,000 just for missed appointments. She just keeps sabataging every step forward we take, so that we are back to the drama that she wants to live with. It sounds easy to just ignore what she says and does, but I can’t ignore the disrespect and overt hostility. Could someone explain why she would continue to do this when we were making progress toward her moving out? I had mentioned that her car was on empty yesterday (old car) and that it was bad for the engine to leave it that way. That was the start of the scene. She replied “that I would just have to buy her a new car if that died because thats what real parents would do.” I am just so sick of this and I trully have no idea how one out of four kids could be this mean and entitled. My other kids can’t believe their sister is this way and they do not believe she is mentally ill, just plain mean. She is happy as long as life is going the way she wants but when it does’nt (such as the gift from her boyfriend that she did’nt like) she is a time bomb that can’t be reasoned with.</p>
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<p>An emotional explosion does not necessarily mean that she wants to discard everything. It could just mean that her emotions got the better of her at that moment. Probably it will happen again, if not many more times.</p>
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<p>Perhaps: “I guess that we disagree about what real parents do.”</p>
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<p>At those times, don’t try to reason with her; rather, maintain boundaries, do what you can to keep her safe, and wait. It did sound, though, as if she were open to speaking rationally with you about the gift–but later, not at the time. Maybe this latest explosion will end up the same way.</p>
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<p>Here is an idea to consider fwiw: cancel all of her appointments and require her to pay you a deposit for the missed appointment fee. Once she has given you the deposit, you will agree to make an appointment for her. If she then misses an appointment, you require an additional deposit before you will allow her any more appointments. If she is making appointments herself, this could get complicated, you may have to instruct the doctors that you will no longer pay for appointments that she makes herself; only you can make appointments. I’m not sure of the details; the main thing, though, if you like this idea, is that you will do everything in your power to prevent her from abusing you financially.</p>