My daughter with BPD has 2 young boys

[AllIcando]

I am so happy to have found you all! I have known my daughters whole life that something was different about her behavior. Now at 25 she was diagnosed. About a week before he cut me off she shared this diagnosis with me. About 6 weeks ago she got very angry about my husband, her stepfather of 16 years. They have always been at odds personality wise. He gets very anxious when she is around due to her unpredictable behavior/attitude. She told me that because I allow him to treat her poorly she wants neither of us around her or her 2 young boys. I have had a very close relationship with her for most of the last 3 years. Most of her life she favored her father over me and chose his side until recently. I have been very close to my grandsons since they were born. Now I am “a bad influence” on them and she doesn’t want her boys around disrespect and bad parenting. The night of this latest argument she told me her boyfriend of about a month was moving into her house with his 2 young kids. She she has cut me out of her life completely. She has blocked me from all social media and is quitting her job to avoid me. She will not respond to my text messages and refuses to have a conversation with me. She is in therapy, last I knew. I haven’t tried to contact her in about a week. I am thinking I should give her some space to calm down. I can’t imagine living a life without a relationship with my daughter and her children.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[CC43]

Hi there,

I'm very familiar with the dynamic because my BPD stepdaughter is a young adult too, and she plays the parents and stepparents off one another.  If she doesn't get what she wants with one parent, she'll punish them with estrangement and then turn to the other parent for support.  When she was younger, she used to swap houses frequently.  Fortunately, she lives on her own now, so there's less resentment and disruption with the house swap routine.  Having stepparents in the mix only increases the possibilities for finding reasons to be upset.

If you take a look at the boards, you will quickly see that the behavior of untreated BPD is fairly predictable:  volatile relationships, unstable living situations, estrangement, tantrums, using kids as pawns, job instability.  That probably doesn't make you feel better though.  However, I will say that this is NOT YOUR FAULT, it's BPD.  If your daughter has a tantrum, take it as a sign that she's very stressed out right now.  I find that the best way to handle a tantrum is to give her an adult time out, meaning time and space to cool off.  Try not to interrupt her time out!  Don't beg her to come back to you, or beg her to let you see the kids--that only perpetuates the behavior, because she sees she's getting a rise out of you, and that her "punishment" is working.

All the best to you.