Don’t bail out daughter having tantrum over cash

I have an adult daughter who got into a physical fight with another woman. My daughter was charged. Now she wants me to pay for a lawyer. I have always bailed her out of situations such as drug smuggling in St. Martin, financial difficulties with boyfriends — you get the picture. This time, I’ve said no. Now she blames me for refusing to pay for the lawyer; she says she can’t get out of the country, get a job working with vulnerable people, etc. She has “disowned me.” It hurts. However, enough is enough. I am retired, but have a good pension; am I wrong to refuse her?

The worst thing a parent can ever experience is having their child die before they do. A close second, however, would be situations like this, where a mother has to watch her grown-up child behave appallingly.

You say your daughter “disowned you.” Well, a person can only “disown” something that she thinks she “owns.” So the problem is not that she’s disowned you now, but that she thought she owned you before. She thought you were her personal ATM, spitting out cash whenever she needed to get out of self-created messes. And now, the Green Machine is busted; she’s punched “withdraw cash” and for the very first time, you’re not asking “how much?” Now she’s having a little temper tantrum and spewing venom on you.

So yes, it hurts. But you’re doing the right thing. You likely should have done this long ago; a few months in a St. Martin clanger might have brought her to her senses. But that is water under the bridge. All you can do now is exactly what you’re doing; make clear that from here on, she cleans up her own messes. This doesn’t mean you should cut her off from all contact, of course. Continue to be in touch, spend time with her if she’s willing and so on. Make sure she knows you’re at the other end of the phone. Support. Comfort. Encourage. But: DO. NOT. GET. SUCKED. IN.

She’ll continue to play the same “guilt” card she’s used many times before. She’ll blame you for bad parenting. She’ll tell you all the terrible things “you’ve caused in my life.” She’ll say anything she needs to, because deep down, she believes you’ll take the bait and cut a cheque.

Don’t do it.

I’d love to say, “It’s not your fault she turned out this way.” But I can’t do that, because I simply don’t know the factors that have gone into shaping her. None of us fully understands why our kids turn out the way they do, for better and for worse. What I can tell you, though, is this: Right now, it doesn’t matter how she became the person she is. What matters is that she learns to stop leaning on others and start accepting responsibility for her own (often bad) decisions.

You’ve taken a necessary first step to help her in that task. Hang tough.

And as for the fact that she can’t work with vulnerable people, that’s just as well. If she can’t get the dough from you, she’d likely put the screws on some other old gal with money. Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca