Trials and Tribulations of Being a Parent to an 18-Year-Old Daughter

At the age of 20, I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. I left her father during my fifth month of pregnancy because he was mentally abusive towards me and I felt I could give my baby a better life without him.

I became a single mother at 20. I was very scared because I had no prior experience with babies. I had never held or changed a diaper until my daughter was born. It was a very scary time.

As a baby, she never cuddled and hated to be held, she had colics until she was three months old. I would call my mother or my best friend in the middle of the night to bring us driving around to calm her. During those times, my best friend and I fell in love and decided to raise my daughter together.

Things between us were great at first, but as one year turned into two and then four years later, things fell apart. Our relationship became toxic and I was left with nothing again besides my four-year-old daughter and some furniture—not even enough to fill an apartment. Luckily, I met a great man online who saved us from being on the street. He took me back to my home town. I got back on my feet and my daughter started kindergarten. She was abandoned by the man she called dad from the day she was born until the age of four. He told me "tell her goodbye for me, I don't want to be a dad anymore," and just like that, he was gone from her life.

Money got tight, so I applied for Social Assistance, and in order to receive help, I had to give my daughter's birth father's name so they could bug him for child support payments. He contested and said our daughter was not his. They did a DNA test and he found out that she was his. He got a lawyer and wanted visitation rights. Things were finally agreed upon and settled when she was six. He would see her every third weekend and take her to his city for a full seven days in the summer.

I dreaded every minute of it because my daughter was very peculiar and and didn't like a lot of things. She especially hated to be touched. We only found out years later she suffers from SPD. He visited her a couple of times for a few hours at a time and summer came. He picked her up for their seven days together. I cried so much, I was sure I would never see her again. I was distraught. He took my baby.

Four dys later he brought back my daughter and said stuff came up, and we never saw him again. Once again, the man she called daddy abandoned her. Luckily, through all this I was still with my hero who I met through the internet. We had a son together. Our daughter called my fiancé daddy but she wasn't very nice to him, and as she grew older, they continued to argue. One or the other were usually right, but they could never agree to disagree and someone always had to be right.

Our daughter overcame so many obstacles, and she made high marks in school and she worked hard, but she still had to battle her weight, bullies, and her brother. He has a lot of problems like tantrums and hitting and soiling his pants. He's pretty much hell to live with and when he got angry, he went after his sister. She would often egg him on though because she would smirk when he would start to get angry.

My guy and I got married ten years into our relationship and we went through a lot of hardships. Things got better and we moved to a nicer home, the kids got better, things and life went on. At the age of seventeen, our daughter was a senior in high school with honors but had only one friend at school who wasn't always nice. Our daughter was lonely and spent a lot of time in her room playing computer games.

She met a man online. She 17 and he 23. She misled him at first about her age, but finally told him but he didn't care about her age. He was in love and so was she. She couldn't stand to be touched, but she wanted this man. She encouraged him to move across the country to be with her. I was livid. I couldn't believe my beautiful and smart daughter invited this predator to be part of her life. She informed me she was moving out to be with this man.

I was floored. I never saw this coming when I held her as a baby and she didn't want to be touched, I would have never guess also because she had recently said she was a lesbian and maybe wanted to be a man. He changed everything. She moved out and with him, my husband and I tried to see her at least once a week. Months went by and I often heard her tell me disturbing things about this man. He was mentally abusing her.

Today he hit her. We ran to her side, brought her home, and then she begged us to go back to him.

We begged and pleaded and promised her the sky not to go back. We tried ultimatums, but she didn't budge. Now I'm sitting here writing this feeling helpless and like a horrible mother because I can't save my baby girl.

Those are my trials and tribulations of having an 18-year-old daughter.