My teenage daughter has been telling people she grew up really poor. She says things like “I could never hire movers, that’s just an entirely different socioeconomic class than what I grew up in” or deflects with “I have a single mom on a teacher’s salary, I can’t do the things you guys do.”
I grew up in a very immigrant household where “you should be grateful for all of the sacrifices I’ve done for you” was beat over my head daily, and I’d like to avoid that mentality as much as possible, but lately it feels like she’s been taking me for granted.
For context, her mom and I have never lived together - the situation there was very complicated, and it’s part of why I’ve never been the daily-presence parent. However, I’ve been present for her emotionally and especially financially.
I’ve been one of the key people she freely opens up to during the hard stretches, especially when things get rocky with her mom. I’ve always tried to show up for her in that way, whether in person or virtually. I try to always paint her mother in a positive light as much as possible (something I’m sure is not reciprocated), and I’d never share what her mom did to me when we were together.
On the financial side: even before anything official existed, my family was sending money - during a period when her mom had explicitly said she wanted nothing from “a family who couldn’t even raise their own bastard kid (hi!) right.”We sent it anyway because it felt like the right thing to do, while her mom withheld her from us for whatever reason.
Once the support was formalized, I paid what was required and then some. And for the past few years, that’s been the state maximum. I also obviously carry her on my health insurance, cover her medical bills, pay her car insurance, and split major expenses 50/50. If you do the math, her mom’s salary + the additional support is greater than what I actually make. Her mom has a much bigger house (in a lower COL area than me, to be fair) too.
To top it all off, my parents are well off, and while I obviously get benefits (hand-me-downs, especially) from that, they’ve never give me money outright, even at my most poor; her grandmother though gives her random cash whenever she does basically anything, which skews her value of money even more. We even offered to cook food for her so she can eat home-cooked food every day instead of eating at sit-down restaurants all the time on school nights, but she didn’t really want that. She has the spare money (as a teen!) to not even worry about things like gas, taking herself and her friends out, Doordashing a lot, etc.
So the “grew up poor” and “currently living with a single mom and we’re not well off” thing genuinely confuses me. I’m not saying her day-to-day life with her mom was lavish - teachers don’t make a lot, and her mom has been through 2 divorces, and I get that that stuff isn’t easy. But there’s been consistent support from my side her entire life, and that doesn’t seem to factor into the story she’s telling herself and others.
Recently, I pushed through being sick with the flu and a getting a “pre-PIP” so I could take her on a spring break trip she had insisted on to visit a long-distance significant other. But we barely connected the whole trip, and there was no acknowledgment at the end of it, not even a small “thanks”. I know I don’t do it for the thank-yous, but it would’ve been nice. She doesn’t know that the reason I got a new job now is largely because of the impending PIP, not because of the traditional “new job” process.
What’s actually getting bothering me isn’t the money or the logistics. It’s that I’m starting to feel invisible. Like I’m a funding source with a face, and her entire identity is built around a scarcity narrative that doesn’t account for my role in her life. I’d love to show up for her in the ways she and her teenage friends actually notice - a yearbook dedication, a tribute in a program - but those opportunities never make it to me; the invoices do, but I’m intentionally excluded from any of the joy by her mom.
And I think what’s been weighing on me is that my daughter and I used to be close. Genuinely close. I can feel that distance widening and I’m not sure how much of it is just normal teenagehood and how much of it is something worth addressing.
Has anyone navigated this? How do you gently challenge a narrative your kid has built her identity around - without making her feel invalidated, and without just quietly disappearing from the story of her own life?