Wished I'd noticed your post earlier. We must be vying for the Helicopter Parent of the Year Award.


Your daughter's symptoms appeared after what was repeated bullying. A lot of my son's issues that were lying dormant, and probably would have remained dormant, appeared after bullying (teacher bullying).

I'd seen a documentary on television a few years ago, can't remember the name of it - where this girl and her family were making a chronology of their lives - what they'd not realised at the time was that the filmed chronicle would end up capturing one of the family member's autism in the making. You could see this one family member going from a girl who was just a little bit different (probably high functioning AS just under the radar) to full blown - you could see her rapid deterioration as a result of school bullying. By the time they realised what was happening, the damage was already done. She would continue to deteriorate from there.

It's really eye opening, if you've ever a chance to see it.

Ja, I've a lot of thoughts regarding the culture of bullying in the school system but that's for another time/venue.

Been there, done that.

Its why I'm on this forum. My son isn't the type to seek help, to look outside the box, to seek others' experiences, compare and contrast. Hence, I'm doing that for him. He's very verbal but written communication and expression just isn't there.

It's a natural biological function for parents to feed, protect then ready our offspring for the world. Its our job. The problem is, what happens when one of them fails to thrive. To what length's will one go?


Is failure, really not an option?


Are you so sure you are an enabler (yes, in this situation, but are you by nature controlling, etc)

If your daughter is your only child, it might be difficult for you to answer that question.

For us, we are 'lucky' in some respects in that we have a second child that we can compare our parenting styles to. A boy a couple of years younger who, in contrast to his older brother, is very self-sufficient, responsible (he gets up 5am, makes sure his parents are up, makes breakfast, gets the dogs out, gets himself to school) thrives in competitive environments, honors student, etc., etc. We feel guilty for so little time we've spent on him - its all gone to trying to help his brother.

We didn't "push" him to be like that. We did encourage healthy traits, independence, etc., but we encouraged that in his brother as well.

Same parents, same environmental variables, different outcomes (mind you, its early to say how it will all come out in the end).

The whole point of that being, yes, in hindsight, you are probably enabling and maybe you have done so from the beginning and you could have codependency issues across the board and ...

But if that didn't apply to the rest of your relationships, if you have (or had before the onset of your daughter's plight) a normal, non-codependent relationship with your husband, other children, etc.,.... you get my point.

I guess the real question - for us, as well as you - is not, are we becoming clinically codependent but rather at what point do we give up, let go, realise that the boundaries between our adult children and ourselves have blurred far too much and we begin to reassess and respond to calls for help differently. At what point must we understand that an adult has made choices and that we are not and cannot be responsible for those choices, as much as we would wish otherwise.

We haven't found the answer to that yet. If you happen to find it, let us know.

FWIW