I am gonna try to make this as short as possible. But it is a very difficult story. I am the mother to a 19 year old college student. I have been married to a man for 15 years and we have been together for 17 years, we have a son together. So there are four of us. My children are 2 ½ years apart. My daughters father has never been apart of her life until now, but I will further explain. I have always been a hands on mother and very attentive to their needs.
We noticed problems with my daughter about the age of 8 that she was having trouble with school and some of her friends but nothing really dramatic. My son was a gifted kid, but my daughter struggled. My husband and I did what we could to show her that she could do anything, we gave her a lot of attention. About 9-10 she started being very bad, her school work was suffering, she was talking back to the teaches, she was lying, she was almost uncontrollable. I am an old school mom, with old school ways, punishments and spankings. She hated most of the kids in school. She was very irritable and moody. Eight years ago it was so bad that my husband slapped her one day for talking back to me. I put her on punishment. A few days later her and my son called to tell me what she said was a secret. She told me that my husband touched her. I told them I was on my way. Enroute my son calls to me that she lied about it because she wanted him gone from the house, he slapped her and she was mad. I told my son not to worry and I would handle it I was on my way. I get there and she explains that he touched her and she was upset. I said okay and we went downstairs, of course I contacted my husband and told him he better get home. I confronted him on the phone then before my son called to tell me what she said. She did confess that she lied and that she was angry with my husband for slapping her. We then discussed with her did she know exactly what she was saying and what could happen. We had a very long talk with her about the magnitude of it all. She understood, but it did disturb us. Before this her teacher had contacted us to tell us that she had written some letters about her and friends, and me. That she wanted to kill us and why she hated all of us. The teacher gave them to us but I threw them out. We decided to send her to a therapist. She would go every other week. After about 4 months the doctor asked to have her tested for ADD, I talked with her teacher and my husband and we decided against it. (Big Mistake). I didn’t want the label, the medicine, I just didn’t want it for my daughter. But I found later she was even lying to the counselor about things. So I took her out of therapy and just tried, along with my husband to work with her ourselves. We did and from then on it seemed things worked out better. My husband retired and was able to listen to my daughter when she needed someone to talk to. My husband and my daughter were bonding, although she still had friend problems, school problems. In the 7th grade we had her see the school counselor. Her and her brothers relationship was never close but what siblings were. She continued to see different counselors and continued to struggle in school. She continued through the years to be very moody, extreme moodiness. But my husband and I made a pact to always be there for her and talk to her and calm her down. She was always very angry as a child.
Now she is in college. My husband and I loved that she was going but I still had doubts about her making it in school but we encouraged her and also encouraged her to get counseling at school. She had horrible disagreements with friends and also with teachers who would not give her good grades. I was so upset one night she called me ranting and raving, like she was going to snapp, I started to drive to her school in my pajamas. My husband and I finally calmed her down at 2 in the morning by talking to her. We were the only ones that could talk to her. 2nd semester began and one month into the semester she became argumentative with me and we would have it out. The next month she told me that she had been in counseling and that she was sexually abused by my husband. She said she knew that she lied but it really happened. I was very upset. That all went into she would come home and talk to us about it – to calling and telling my father to telling everyone at school and their parents to calling DCFS because my son is 16. All in a matter of 5 days. I was completely devasted. My family is torn apart. My father hates my husband, mother mother semi hates my husband, my brother is supportive of my husband. My sister believed my daughter until she started seeing and hearing things for herself and 3 months later apologized to me, my husband and my son. DCFS of course cleared my husband and told me that I should think about getting my daughter some help because when she talked to her, her stories were very inconsistent with what was reported. Also over the months I have found from three different people that she gave 3 different stories of what took place with my husband. I have letters and birthday and fathers day cards with things of loving and appreciating my husband, with her telling people in my family that he has always been a great father better than her biological father and now she spends time with him and I couldn’t get her to do that before. Me, my husband and my son are in therapy. I am now a basket case but doing better. My therapist is the one that said it sounds like she is bipolar. I starting researching and everything they say it describes my daughter as a child and now. She is a different person, she is distant with certain ones in the family. People she hated, she now likes and the people she liked, she hates now. I am still trying to understand. My mother doesn’t understand. My father doesn’t want to, her father has mental history in his family-his sister and he wont listen to me. What do I do and how do I get her to get help, the right help. Her counselor at school is not seeing her but because she thinks it is abuse, she says she is the way she is because of abuse and has since sent her to an abuse group. I have asked that she get help but she thinks nothing is wrong with her. As a mom you go back in your head to see if you missed something in the past and the only thing I have missed is to not give her the proper treatment she needed and all the different episodes she has experienced. Any suggestions, any help, I just want my daughter back.