SOLD! For little to nothing

[dstc_99]

So today I was on Facebook and I have ​

difficult child

as a friend. I noticed she has been trying to sell a printer online. This was probably the second or third post I had seen but all the other stuff was for little items. I was concerned she might be meeting with strangers to buy the stuff and thought I would give her a call about being safe. Just to be nosey I pulled up the Facebook page first and saw she has the brand new laptop we got her for college on there for sale. I was NOT happy. We are still paying for the dang thing!!! Its a freaking 1500$ computer.

Anyway I called ​

difficult child

and it didn't go well. I guess I should have started the convo a little better instead of saying "what is going on?" She immediately ripped into me about calling my brother and telling him about her decision to drop out. I explained that I didn't do that her father did. I also explained that he only did it because his conversation with her was so negative he wanted her to have someone she liked to talk to. He thought my brother would be a good person since she and he have a good relationship. Lets just say things went downhill from there. She got mad because her father had transfered the money she was blowing out of her savings account without asking her first. I explained he was concerned because of her anger towards him and the GI BIll that she might blow it and then have to pay it back. I explained that we were simply trying to keep her from going into debt. That we support her decision to move and that we love her we just didn't want her to go into debt so early in life.

As usual I got the whole don't contact me and the BIO Dad is more caring than you are spiel. She said a lot of angry hurtful things. Told me to shut up and then hung up on me. I immediately decided it was time to wash my hands of this. I am done! I transfered the money back to her savings, stopped her alotment every two weeks and texted her to let her know. Now to figure out what else to do to make this stop.

I sent her a text letting her know her money was back in her savings and that we were stopping the allotment. Within minutes I got the call demanding to know why we stopped the allotment. I said the allotment was based off of you speaking to us and treating us with respect since you no longer want to speak with us and are obviously not going to be respectful I turned it off. difficult child then went on and on about how I am so overdramatic! LOL I discussed it with her father last night and we are going to make a decision about the allotment together.

Oh yeah and remember how I doubted that the boyfriend she was going to be moving in with knew about all this stuff? Guess what I am pretty sure he was in the car with her and heard the conversation. Which means she didn't go back to school after the weekend and stayed with him. I don't think he liked what he heard because I immediately got a text saying "You ruined my relationship" "the one thing that makes me happy and you ruined it." Nope she ruined it by acting like an ass and being irrational. Anyway I just replied "i.m sorry" and left it at that.

​

 

[susiestar]

I am sorry things are so rough. I cannot fathom the disrespect, nor selling a computer for so little. She clearly has no idea how much trouble she will be in if she is mis-using GI Bill funds. Would it be possible for you to buy the computer from her on her sale and then return it or sell it to help make the payments that you still owe? I would be tempted to do that, or to make her give it back or report it as stolen if it was purchased under your name and she was given the use of it. Just thoughts. I hope that you can do something nice for yourself to de-stress.

 

[scent of cedar]

You cannot make right choices for your difficult child. The only thing you can do is tell her what the right choices are. That is small comfort, when the choices come home to roost.

You are right in cancelling the allotment.

This child is not doing what she agreed to do.

The thing that happens with difficult child kids is that they feel entitled to whatever it is they want at that moment. For some reason, they are able to throw us off track, too. Given the nature of the phone conversation you had with her, whether her boyfriend of the moment is upset or not is not something a normal child would have had the guts to bring up. Your difficult child is in trouble. She is going a wrong way and she will not listen. There will be consequences. I think you need to hold a hard line. Tell difficult child ahead of time what you are going to do.

What is this, about selling the computer you bought her for school? How dare she.

How did that get swept under the rug in favor of the boyfriend thing?

You still have to be in there, parenting her the best you can. That is your responsibility. I hear that you are doing that...but your difficult child is all over the place. You are her mother. You don't need anyone else to talk to her about what she is doing because she will be less upset, that way.

I always did feel wrong and foolish where my adolescent difficult children were concerned. I don't know how they do that to us, but it's horrible. Parents of normal children do not have the same kinds of things happen to them that we need to face, routinely.

How are you and husband holding up?

Cedar

 

[dstc_99]

Thanks guys!
Susie-She is actually trying to sell it for $1000 which is not bad for a used one it is just the fact that she absolutely had to have it. I went into debt to get it and now she has no problem with dumping it so she can drop out of school.

Cedar-husband and I were hoping talking to people she cared about would help. Guess we made the wrong decision there but since we weren't getting anywhere we were ready to ask for help.

 

[recoveringenabler]

dstc, one major item on the difficult child profile list is not caring a hoot for what others give to you..........they don't seem to understand gratitude or appreciation and often will disregard the gifts we give them without a second thought. It's so common it's almost predictable. I don't know why but after allowing that to make me angry or hurt me, I think it best simply to stop giving.

 

[dstc_99]

Yeah that is an issue I have with both kids! I am really working with easy child to teach her to treat her things better. difficult child always took better care of the things until she got older and then it seems like she just has no respect for anything. She still makes herself look gorgeous but the car and everything else is a pit!

 

[scent of cedar]

District, I didn't mean to come off sounding so sharp and know-it-all. What I was feeling was defensive of you. What I sound like is someone attacking you. I'm sorry, District. The last thing any of us needs is a post here that reads as critical of choices already made.

Forgive me?

Cedar

 

[dstc_99]

Cedar- I didn't read it that way at all. I actually love that this is a place I can come and get honest advice. Plus sometimes it is nice to have someone on my side being defensive for me. It seems to rarely happen in real life. LOL

I promise I took no offense and no apology is necessary

PS: I actually love it when people tell me things straight up. People laugh but my favorite people on boards are the ones the MWM and you who tell people how they see it and don't try to make it a warm and fuzzy. Life isn't always warm and fuzzy sometimes we just need a little kicking.

 

[scent of cedar]

I think what's happening is that I see myself in your responses to your difficult child. Like you and your husband, there was literally nothing we didn't do, and no one we didn't talk to or ask for help...and our difficult child did the same kinds of things yours is doing.

And our friends and families (and our own image of ourselves) went from believing we were the best parents to offering help for, and advice about, difficult child.

Or to demanding to speak to the nurses and counselors at the first dual diagnostic without us present. That would have been my mother-in-law. Whew! What a blow to self-identity that was. But we not only allowed it, we encouraged it. We went from strong, certain people who knew what was what to people who listened to people we wouldn't have had coffee with tell us what was what.

My own mother? As I have posted before, shot back, instantaneously, upon learning that we had taken difficult child in for evaluation, the sneering comment that I must not have been such a good mother after all, had I. All I could say, the evidence being what it was, was that I guessed she was right. That I had not been such a good mother, after all.

They were wrong, of course.

Even my nasty, self-serving, know-it-all mother was wrong.

But we didn't know that, then.

Anything, to help difficult child.

My mother ended all contact with difficult child at that time. Refused to discuss her, other than to tell me how rotten her future was going to be, and where she was likely to end up. And, in my so-dysfunctional family of origin, difficult child had been my mother's Golden Child.

It was pretty nasty.

My responses to your posts probably come off so angrily because I recognize myself in you and, as I heal, I am finally acknowledging how awful it felt to go through it, for me, and for my husband. It really was horrible. Maybe this means I am beginning to reclaim that territory of the heart, too.

Good. I have been alienated from myself too long.

:O)

The thing is, we didn't know the problem was something in difficult child, and that she couldn't help it, until difficult child was finally diagnosed, at 38 years old. So, we truly believed we like, broke her somehow, in the process of raising her. But we couldn't figure out what we did. That theme, that whole trying to fix things without the first clue as to what went wrong, that feeling that I was stupid somehow, not to have seen this coming ~ and not to have been able to fix it, once it did ~ has dominated my life.

Here is an interesting thing: I went back to school to see whether I could do it ~ to prove whether I was stupid in some way that hadn't shown up until the difficult child challenge. And here is a secret thing: I chose a Catholic private school to learn whether I was evil. To learn whether I had done something horrible to difficult child that I couldn't remember, like in the spooky movies about moms who do horrible things to their children when no one else is around.

Strange, huh?

I graduated *** Laude and with other honors ~ one of them a scholarship paid through the Sisters. Which answered the evil thing.

And in my secret heart, all I had to say about any of it is that I must not be stupid in the scholastic sense. And that, if I were evil, if I had done something horrible to difficult child that I couldn't remember...surely, I would have been found out, in that Catholic bastion.

I was in therapy there, too. At one time, I had a therapist I paid to see, and a therapist there, at the private, Catholic university.

That outside validation by people who would KNOW is still important to me, at some level. Makes me feel like crying, to remember the gratitude I felt then, to KNOW I probably wasn't evil.

As I said, I was in outside therapy at the time too, and realized evil is live spelled backwards.

And it turned out I wanted to live.

So, that's what happened, to me.

Cedar

Here's the thing. I know this is like, way too much information. But I cannot be the only one who came away from the wreckage of her life a wreck herself. So, maybe my story will help someone else.

Plus?

This site is anonymous.

:O)

 

[dstc_99]

Probably the best thing about this site and having experienced my mother's mental health issues is that I am able to realize it isn't all me. Just like you I spent years as a young child thinking my mothers issues were all my fault and then when difficult child got so bad I was convinced it was my parenting. Now I realize it isn't me. I am sure I have done a thousand things wrong but in the long run nothing I have done has caused this to happen.

My mother plays her cards differently than difficult child. She goes to all the Dr's she can and gets all the "help" she can but doesn't make any effort on her side. She loves to quote things the Dr tells her while she drinks her third glass of wine from a 15oz wine glass. She loves to tell me about eating healthy while she orders dessert. Her methods are generally manipulative.

difficult child is so similar it is almost scary. The only difference with her is that "nothing is wrong with her" and she refuses to get help. Everyone else is the problem. She manipulates to no end but will never admit to it. She just uses anger to do it while my mother uses pity.

Thankfully after going to therapy and reading this board I feel much better qualified to detach. Now I just need to do keep doing it.

*PS: I am positive you are not evil and I am Catholic! LOL

 

[witzend]

I'm FB Friends with M but he can't see my timeline. I'm pretty sure I can't see his either unless I go poking around. For me, it's safer that way.

Then again, I don't pay for school or computers or long term things like that anymore, either.