Much has been said about the young kids who are learning from home during the pandemic, but older kids and college-aged teens who decided to not attend in-person school are also suffering. One 19-year-old is having a particularly hard time being at home, and armed with only the help of a therapist, she’s started to blame her parents for “ruining her life.” The only problem is, her mom doesn’t buy it — especially because her daughter is being vocal about having a huge problem with part of her childhood: the time she says she didn't get enough attention during the years when her dad had cancer.
The public health crisis has been rough on most of us, but this Original Poster’s (OP) daughter has depression too.
Her classes are all online, so the teen is stuck at home with the OP and her husband, the mom explained in the Am I the A–hole forum.
“My husband and I are both working from home so we are very involved with her day to day,” the OP wrote. “We do our best to engage her; family walks, game night, cooking together, but she is still feeling pretty down.”
Her daughter does see a therapist online, but her mom isn’t “privy” to how that’s going.
Recently, her daughter has been vocal about resentment over her childhood – specifically the time from when she was 12 to 14 years old. But it was during those years that the OP’s husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer and “was going through aggressive chemo.”
“I won’t lie, those were very tough years for our family,” she recalled.
Her husband has since recovered, but the daughter apparently struggled adapting to their new normal during that time.
“My daughter is an only child and was used to our full attention and engagement,” she explained. “It was a hard transition for her to have her father not be able to care for her like he used to and myself having to split my time between her and my husband.”
As far as the OP was concerned, they had a wonderful support system thanks to family and her daughter didn’t want for anything.
She didn’t have to quit any teams and she never missed school — even with her husband’s diagnosis they were able to keep things steady.
“I do acknowledge that emotionally there was damage so we did family therapy for a [few] years,” she wrote.
In short, the OP believed they’d weathered the storm. But years later, her daughter has let her know she was dead wrong.
The daughter was already in a bad mood, but then she exploded during dinner.
“I asked her what was going on and she went into this explosive rant about how many issues she developed due to us. Apparently we are responsible for her grades slipping, her relationships failing, her weight gain, etc.,” the OP explained.
And to make things worse, her daughter connected it all back to the years that her dad had cancer.
Her daughter even wanted an apology from her parents.
“You basically deprived me of a childhood,” she told them.
“My husband says ‘I’m sorry honey, I could have done better, and I could have done more for you,’” the OP recalled.
But there was no way an apology was going to fly out of the OP’s mouth.
“I shut that down and told her ‘No, you are not going to guilt your father into apologizing for having cancer. This is unacceptable. You need to accept that life is not fair and there is very little we can do about it. Go to your room and calm yourself down,’” she recalled.
After hearing that, her daughter told the OP to “go f–k myself.”
Obviously, dinner was ruined.
The OP and her husband are at odds over how to handle this. On the one hand, her husband doesn’t think it’s a big deal to apologize and wasn’t hurt by what their daughter said. On the other, “I think that she is looking for someone to blame for her current unhappiness and that we, as her parents, are easy targets. I also know that my husband already feels a great deal of guilt for putting our family through so much turmoil,” she added.
“I love my daughter and want her to be happy. At the same time, I do believe she is at an age where she needs to take on personal accountability,” she continued.
Is this mom wrong?
People in the comments thought her daughter really needed a reality check.
“Your daughter is an adult, and as you said, needs to learn that life is not fair,” one commenter agreed. “Your husband did not choose to get cancer, or the timing of it. Depression is awful, and I am glad your daughter is seeing a counselor, but it may be worth her visiting her doctor, and seeing if there is more that can be done. Hang in there, Mama, but do not feel guilty or let your husband feel guilty, either.”
Someone else agreed. “I totally agree with your great comment, it's time for the daughter to grow up. She's 19 and acting like a 14-year-old. She sounds very entitled to the point of satire. I mean expecting an apology for not being the centre of attention while her father has cancer? This is like an example from a textbook about narcissism and entitlement.”
“Is the daughter going to provide her parents with an apology for the harm she's caused them by being depressed?” another commenter wondered. “Obviously ridiculous and hopefully the daughter will grow up.”
A few people had empathy for what her teen was going through.
"Speaking from experience, a depressed 19-year-old brain is kind of like that," one commenter pointed out. "Like the worst hormonally-driven emotional breakdown ever, except it’s depression but being processed by a brain that thinks it’s an adult, but the frontal lobe isn’t quite fully grown yet, so serotonin levels are at the equivalent of the super tearful, 'the world hates me' phase in a drunken bender. Weird trivial things feel like proof positive that life is horrible."
Someone else agreed that the daughter is immature.
"I'm gonna go against the grain and say that she (the daughter) hasn't really had the opportunity to grow up. I don't think she needed family therapy with you guys, it seems like she just needed therapy for herself and that she still does," the person wrote. "The thing is, is that your daughter blames you for her depression which from what I can tell, is technically true due to no fault of your own but you also expected her to grow out of it. Depression isn't something you can just grow out of and it seems like you're expecting her to say, 'Hey! I'm 19, I'm grown up, I'm not allowed to be depressed anymore, I'm cured.'"
A third person put it this way:
"If your husband didn't mind then what was your problem? Plus just because someone has cancer doesn't mean they also didn't neglect their child or the child feel neglected. His apology might have been a way forward to them having more mutual understanding but you terminated that conversation rather than allow it to develop. She did not ask him to apologies for having cancer but for not taking care of her needs during that time. That is not the same thing and I think you are being immature in equating them."
In an update to her post, the OP clarified that she wasn't just putting a stop to her daughter's entitlement — she wants others to consider her husband's mental health issues too.
"I do want to say that, while the concern for my daughters mental health is encouraging, there is a rather harsh dismissal of my husbands mental health here," she wrote. "As a society I think men are expected too much to just suck it up and take it on the chin."
Her husband still has issues with his health and worries about his cancer coming back – stressors that would make anyone anxious.
"I value my daughters mental health, dont get me wrong, but I dont value it above my husbands," she added. "I thought what she said was extremely damaging to him and I reacted to that."
In the end, the OP wrote that she does "regret the harshness but not the message."
