Let me start by saying my daughter and I have a wonderful relationship as well as the relationship with her father. She has always been open with us when it comes to school, friends, how she’s feeling, if she has questions about anything. She always tries to keep the lines of communication open between us so much so that she voluntarily told she tried drugs but didn’t enjoy it and does it do it to this day. Our daughter has always been a bit shy and quiet.She isn’t into going out to house parties, she doesn’t drink or smoke, and doesn’t like to be out late or cause mischief.
Recently (August), she told us that she met a man when she was out at dinner with a friend. She said he kept giving he glances and smiles and later on him and his friends approached her and her friends. My daughter and the man exchanged numbers and have been talking ever since. The only problem is he’s 25. Apparently he is very wealthy, he’s offered to take her out to dinner and has even bought her a pair of designer glasses and SLR camera (which has been something she’s been wanting for years but my husband and i never bothered to buy her,i’ll admit) We told her no when she asked if she could go to dinner with him. We told her to give him back the gifts, she told us he won’t take them back and said they were gifts for her. She’s now telling us that he’s really nice and that we’re blowing it out of porportion. She used to tell me what they would talk about but now she isnt saying anything or telling me anything more about him.
She also goes out to her best friends more often. She also now hangs out with her friends more often also. I know this because she lets me or her father drive her to her friends, she’ll call us from there every hours or so like we ask her to.
She used to love staying home and didnt mind spending her nights at with me and her father. But now i don’t like how enjoys spending more time with her friends, and this 25 year old she’s friends with and these new guy friends she’s having. She told she’s is not dating any of them and has no intentions to date them, and that she is not sexually active.
How do I handle this situation? And could my daughter be telling me the truth?
(she graduated high school this year with honors and works at our family business)
I would be skeptical of her saying that she is not sexually active with him (hey, don’t all children lie to their parents about this?), but the age difference doesn’t seem per se problematic as long as their emotional maturity levels match. It is a little on the extreme side for the 21st century, but I think it could work out. It isn’t anything to get panicky over unless a sex crime is potentially being committed or something (e.g. if he is her doctor). I’d recommend getting to know him more so you can see if he seems like a good boyfriend or not.
She’s 18. An adult legally. You need to learn to let go. You might as well do it now, it won’t get easier. She has the right to move out and stop telling you anything. The more gracefully you let go now, the better your relationship will be as she continues to mature.
She sounds like a pretty normal eighteen year old girl to me. At this age – even before this age, actually – friendships tend to take on a lot more importance. It would probably be weirder if she were spending a lot of nights at home with you, to be honest.
Sounds to me like she’s just growing up. With the exception of dating the 25 year old, I was doing most of what you describe at 14, and I think it’s more than normal for an 18 year old to be spending more time with her friends than her parents.
Even dating the 25-year-old isn’t really a dealbreaker. That’s not a horribly large age gap IMO.
You say that she asked you if she could go to dinner with the guy, and you also mentioned that you asked her to call you every few hours when she was out with friends. This is appropriate for a 15 or 16 year old. 18? She’s an adult; she shouldn’t be asking her parents for permission to see people, nor should she be required to call home every few hours. I can see calling home if she’s going to be out later than expected or spending the night away from home, just so you don’t worry, but really, she ought to be making her own decisions at this age. Plenty of 18 year olds live on their own, or in dorms, after all. They’re not asking their parents permission for these kinds of things.
I am 10 years older than my wife. Whooptie doo. She is not 12 and he 20. She is an adult.She wants you to support her. You want to control her.
When you fell in love did you want to be around your parents?
Nothing I read in the OP seemed to fit with the phrase “changing for the worse”. I think the title should have been “18 yr old daughter growing up?” to which my answer is “Yes. Let it happen.”
Ease up a bit. Invite the guy over to the house for a family dinner and get to know him. And accept that your baby is moving on with her life - or would you rather she live with you forever and ever?
She is growing up. Some girls don’t come out of their “shell” until about that age. The fact that she was spending more time with you rather then her friends after the age of 16 shows how strong your relationship with her is and its really nothing to worry about.
Im 25 & still active in a sorority (FWIW im also still in school). The girls entering the sorority- and guys entering fraternities that we are close with- are coming in between the ages of 17-19. I am with these people on a weekly- if not daily- basis. Age gaps of less than 10 years tend to not be as big of a deal as you get older.
If she was away at school you would have no idea what she was doing. But instead she is still living under your roof, still working at your family business, and still asking your permission to go out, date, etc etc. You should be happy with what you have and also be happy that she is gaining a social life. Being sheltered when you hit the real world isnt going to help her any.
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes downstairs to the kitchen
Clutching her handkerchief.
This is what I see happening if you continue to fight her on this one.
[ul]
[li]She’s 18, they drive her to her friend’s house and she has to call every hour.[/li][li]She works in the family business.[/li][li]There is a certain formal nature to the writing in the OP.[/li][/ul]
I’m going to go out on a limb and say they are either recent immigrants to the US, or not in the US, and from a more traditional background.
Consequently, IMHO their expectations would be very different from a typical American or Western European family in terms of their children.
That said, I would advise them to not be so worried. Nothing they describe (including dating a 25 year old) suggest anything to be concerned about. Unless, of course, their goal is to prevent their child from growing up an becoming an independent adult.
Yeah, that tends to happen when you can smell the disapproval 10 miles away. Talking to someone about something they’re invariably negative about sucks, especially when it’s something you’re enthusiastic about. Even more especially when that person is negative and suspicious about your enthusiasm. A very, very large portion of having a kid who can and will talk to you about anything is making sure that talking to you about the harder subjects isn’t a miserable experience.
As others have pointed out, she’s not a child any more. She’s a young adult, and she doesn’t need your permission to go on a date or hang out with her friends. Furthermore, it sounds like she’s a good, smart, responsible young woman; you did a good job raising her, and now it’s time to trust in the job you did and let her make her own (generally good, smart, and responsible) decisions.
I agree, it sounds like she is simply growing up in a normal fashion. Are you from a cultural or religious background where young women do not date and work towards independence in their late teens?
25 years old is quite a bit of an age gap, especially since she seems quite sheltered, and there is the additional power imbalance of his money. But there really isn’t a ton that you can do about it at this point. The presents do seem kind of strange- pricey gifts at an early stage of the relationship are usually a sign something is a bit off. That said, they have been seeing each other since August- that’s long enough for it to be a fairly established relationship. You can’t prevent this. If there is a negative lesson to learn here, it’s one that she will probably have to learn the hard way. Maybe if she had been encouraged to explore relationships a bit more when she was younger, she’d have enough experience now to handle this.
You do realize that at some point she will become sexually active, right?
I’m having a hard time getting past the fact that she’s 18 and has to check in with her parents every hour or so even when hanging out at her girlfriends’ houses. My 13 year old doesn’t have to check in that often.
+1. If you trust her in the way that you should- given she has told you about previous trials with drugs - honor student- doesn’t really go out ..etc etc this really shouldn’t be necessary.
As long as my mom knew where I was and that I wasn’t running late getting home I didn’t need to check in.
----Is the OP still reading?
As others have said, she is an adult and doesn’t appear to be doing anything out of the ordinary. I think what surprises me as I read your post, is that she didn’t rebel before she became an adult. Perhaps she was simply unpopular and now that she has a social life, she wants to take full advantage of the experiences she didn’t have in high school. There is nothing wrong with that. It seems to me, you and your husband are the problem and you need to learn to let go of your grown daughter and let her live her life.