When adult children desire to individuate and develop autonomy, they may struggle to trust their choices and may fear being unable to withstand mom's influence. Often, to avoid feelings of criticism or incompetence, the daughter will pull away.
Consider getting your child into therapy where he or she can discuss the beliefs that has turned him or her against you. Try not to take your child's behavior toward you personally, and instead work to build an even stronger loving and trusting relationship with your child so that he or she feels safe with you.
If your mother shows a lack of empathy or understanding for your problems while expecting you to drop everything to help her manage her problems, that is a sign of a relationship that is unhealthy. As an adult, you can help your mother more than you did as a child, but that help and understanding should flow both ways.
Just Why Do Mothers and Daughters Fight So Much? People often attribute this battle of wills to the complicated nature of the mother-daughter relationship, mental health issues, personality clashes, overly similar personalities or worse, the age-old sexist theory blaming it all on hormones!
Psychologists call it individuation and, although painful for parents, it is normal and healthy for your child. As uncomfortable as it might be as a parent, your child's distance from you is actually right on track: the teen years mark their transition into the adult world.
She wants more control over her life.
Teens have a natural urge to gain more independence. Along with that desire comes a lot of frustration when they push up against parental rules and boundaries. A daughter may become resentful that she can't have as much freedom as she wants, and may punish her parent.
She Doesn't Have Healthy Coping Mechanisms
If your daughter doesn't have healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with strong emotions, she's likely to lash out at others. This means that whenever she's going through something, she will effectively make life miserable for those around her.
Toxic daughters, however, are usually more indirect with their aggression. They show passive-aggressive behaviors like giving you the silent treatment, not returning your calls and texts, and 'forgetting' to do what you asked them to do.
Emotionally absent or cold mothers can be unresponsive to their children's needs. They may act distracted and uninterested during interactions, or they could actively reject any attempts of the child to get close. They may continue acting this way with adult children.
Key points. Teens pull away from their parents due to a biological instinct to separate themselves in preparation for adulthood. If a teen pushes their parent away, it is often because they feel secure in the relationship and therefore take it for granted temporarily.
Reasons for the detachment may be due to intergenerational and personal trauma, an absence of emotional intelligence, mental health issues, substance use and abuse issues, fragmented problem solving and conflict resolution skills, and a variety of other challenges.
The reasons behind disrespectful behavior include the perfectly normal and healthy process of your child growing up and away from his identity as a younger child. Teens naturally seek more independence as they get older, and mild disrespect is one way that independence gets expressed.
Teens want to feel that they're more in control of their relationships and lives. They're striving for an increased sense of independence. These feelings often translate to disrespectful, rebellious behavior. According to an article by Psychology Today, children can sense parental stress and will react negatively.
The research showed that 6% of adult children in the study reported a period of estrangement from their mothers, compared to 26% who said they were estranged from their fathers. But for most adult children, the estrangement is only temporary – 81% of estrangements with mothers end, as do 69% of those with fathers.
Some of the overt signs that we notice is that the girl is being bossy and controlling, and not accepting authority. Parents start to walk on eggshells and are afraid of the next outburst, so they give in. The child might try that power outside of the home in their school relationships.
Point out Ungratefulness
When you hear your child say or do something that shows an ungrateful attitude, point it out. Be specific without being insulting. For instance, avoid saying something like, “Stop being a brat.” Instead, say something like, “Complaining about not getting more presents is ungrateful.
When your child says hurtful things to you, it's usually an expression of frustration or loss of control. Parents often forget that kids are communicating with brains that are not fully formed. The mean words are their way of expressing feelings rather than describing their actual feelings about you.
Kids complain for lots of good reasons: to blow off steam, to connect with us, and because they feel powerless. Other times, the complaints might mask an underlying emotion that needs to be released.