I used to be trapped in an abusive relationship with my 11-year-old daughter. After screaming rows and violence, I lastly discovered what was accountable. So many moms with ‘poisonous’ kids have the identical drawback: OLIVIA KESSEL

For years, I was treading on eggshells in my own home. The most minor issue could unleash a wave of violence against me, an emotional explosion volcanic in its intensity.

My body bore the proof: bruises, scratches, even bite marks.

Despite such abuse, I knew I could never leave. Why? Because it was at the hands of my own daughter, Alexandra, then just 11 years old.

I dreaded even the most mundane interactions, never knowing what comment or request might set her off. I had to beg her to perform basic tasks, from showering to packing her schoolbag, knowing I would face her wrath for doing so.

The toll Alexandra’s behaviour took on me wasn’t just physical. I existed under her control, unable to even go out in the evenings if she didn’t want me to. On the few occasions I tried, she made her feelings volubly clear.

Our home was a pressure cooker, and as a single mother I felt I had little release. After all, who could I tell? I couldn’t face the prospect of their judgment – of both Alexandra and my parenting.

In short, I was trapped, living in a state of utter despair and shame.

It was like having an abusive partner – and I do not say this lightly, having been in such a relationship in the past.

There was one huge difference, however.

While abusive men choose to behave in such a manner, I know now that Alexandra couldn’t help the way she treated me.

Because just before her 12th birthday, after navigating years of her aggression and meltdowns, we discovered they were caused by her then undiagnosed ADHD.

I was relieved to have finally found a cause and, crucially, a possible solution. But it had taken so long, and caused us both so much trauma – something I’ve since discovered we have in common with many other families with ADHD girls, due to delayed diagnosis.

I’m a doctor who has worked across the medical spectrum, from general practice to infectious disease control. I have hosted a parenting podcast, for which I have interviewed hundreds of experts about neurodiversity, since Alexandra was eight. And yet even I didn’t realise that Alexandra, now 14, could possibly have ADHD.

Until her diagnosis in 2023, I had a stereotypical view of what ADHD was. To my mind, it was something disruptive ‘naughty’ boys had, characterised by them bouncing off the walls, fuelled by endless energy. It wasn’t furious adolescent girls screaming abuse at their mothers.

And if even I was labouring under this misapprehension, there’s no doubt countless other distressed mothers are currently facing the same situation, unable to work out why their relationship with their daughter is so toxic.

I now know that emotional dysregulation – often displayed as flash anger and a rollercoaster of aggression – is one of the most common signs, seen in between 25 and 45 per cent of children with ADHD.

Yet in girls, this dysregulation often doesn’t raise its head until puberty, as was the case with Alexandra, transforming my sweet, affectionate daughter into someone very different.

Thankfully today – with the benefit of her diagnosis, medication and, vitally, the changes I have made to my parenting style – Alexandra is a happy, peaceful, bubbly teenager.

Alexandra was born in 2011 when I was 39. I had always deeply wanted to be a mother. My relationship with my own beloved mum, Jackie, was one of the most precious things to me, and I knew I wanted the same emotional connection with a daughter of my own.

When Mum died in 2010, I was devastated. My marriage had ended seven years previously, and my longing for a child – and the ticking of my biological clock – only intensified.

Mum had left me some money and I decided to use my inheritance to fund IVF, conceiving Alexandra using a sperm donor.

It was a sometimes agonising process, but all that melted away the first moment I held Alexandra. She was just perfect.

Then, at nine weeks, she was diagnosed with meningoencephalitis, a rare and life-threatening condition in which you have meningitis and encephalitis, which causes inflammation of the brain, at the same time.

It was terrifying. To look at the MRI scans of your child’s brain, seeing the changes wrought in black and white, transforms you for ever as a parent.

I wondered what the impact of this illness might be: if she would ever be able to talk, dance or have anything approaching a normal childhood.

She was left with mild cerebral palsy, which today has left her with reduced mobility in her left leg and some reduction in fine motor skills, but was alive, still the same child I so loved.

As she grew up, Alexandra was lively, affectionate, fun. Yes, she had tantrums, but didn’t every little one? As my first child, I had no one to compare her to.

Rather than being hyperactive, Alexandra could sit quietly for hours as long as she had activities to keep her engaged, be it her sticker books or colouring. I now know intense hyperfocus is a little-known attribute of ADHD, a complete mental absorption that takes over everything.

I first thought there might be a problem when she started school, and would sit crying in the classroom, although she never had meltdowns outside of our home. It soon became apparent she wasn’t keeping up academically.

Witnessing her distress was heart-wrenching.

Aged eight, she was diagnosed with dyslexia, a condition we share. I had at last, I thought, an answer to what was holding her back.

It became apparent she needed to go to a private special school for more support, and I self-funded this move while battling to get her an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP), which would legally entitle her to tailored educational support.

This process became so arduous that I borrowed money so I could enlist solicitors. That was when I started my parenting podcast to help others with neurodiverse children navigate the system.

When her EHCP came through in August 2022, when Alexandra had just turned 11, I thought we could finally move on.

But managing her dyslexia, and even the long-term impact of her meningoencephalitis, was in many ways easier than living with her undiagnosed ADHD. At least they didn’t usher in an unpredictable torrent of violence – one which, in my darkest moments, led me to even strike her back as she hit me.

Between Alexandra’s tenth and eleventh birthdays, our home in Henley-on-Thames became an emotional minefield.

This, I’ve since learnt, is common as children with ADHD grow up, particularly girls. Before puberty, many girls with ADHD struggle quietly, their inattentiveness or emotional fluctuations dismissed as personality quirks or normal developmental challenges.

However, as puberty begins, hormonal changes frequently make their symptoms more pronounced. This is because ADHD is thought to be linked to dopamine levels, the brain chemical that helps with focus and emotions. And oestrogen, the female sex hormone, plays a significant role in how dopamine is regulated.

It was during this crucial year of development that I first started thinking something was wrong, that Alexandra’s behaviour was outside the normal tantrum zone. When she had a meltdown, I tried telling her off and being stricter. But it became apparent this wasn’t working. My anger just made hers spiral further out of control.

The escalation was gradual but relentless. What began as occasional flashpoints slowly became the rhythm of our days. Not one explosion but several, each one draining what little reserves we both had left.

A simple request that she shower and wash her own hair – she was old enough now, surely – could erupt into a 30-minute standoff, ending with a slammed bedroom door painfully catching my fingers in the frame. She needed me, desperately, in ways I hadn’t yet recognised; I, equally desperately, wanted her to be independent.

It all made me frightened for what this was doing to us and our relationship. That I had battled so hard to have Alexandra only intensified my heartache. I had wanted a child so badly. Yet here we were, at war.

There were many things Alexandra simply wouldn’t do, no matter how much I begged. Homework was a constant battleground. Turning off her iPad was another reliable flashpoint.

More exhausting, though, was the fact she wouldn’t go to sleep without me sitting in the room with her. She was 11, going on 12, and still, nightly, I was left trying to creep out of her room, silently, like mothers of toddlers do.

It became a nightly two-hour ordeal; the negotiations, the tears, the reappearances at the top of the stairs, the impossible-to-settle brain that simply would not switch off. When she did finally sleep, she woke repeatedly. And then she was up early, already in a state of heightened emotional turmoil.

It meant I could not find a babysitter who could manage a night with Alexandra. Even my father refused.

Going out, making plans with friends, dating – all were an impossibility. It only made me feel more trapped. My exhaustion was so embedded I had stopped recognising it as exhaustion. It had just become my normal.

But I knew something had to change. One bleak Monday morning, after a night in which I’d had to carry Alexandra back to her room three times, come 4.45am I had given up and we both settled in front of the living room TV. At 6.25am, it was time to start getting ready for school.

Deep down, I knew what was coming. Alexandra clung to the remote as if it were her last tether. ‘Please, Alexandra, just give me the remote,’ I begged. ‘It’s time to get ready’.

She screamed no, her legs thrashing wildly. Every time I came close, she kicked out. It was like trying to catch a feral cat.

I tried to get her dressed and realised, with a lurch, she was now too big for me to attempt it.

As I found myself wrestling the remote from her hands, she lashed out, biting my arm, hard.

I looked at my wound with shock as she bolted, her screams echoing down the hallway. ‘I am not getting ready! Are you listening to me?’ she cried repeatedly.

Eventually, exhausted from the battle, she agreed to let me dress her. I managed to get her out of the door to school.

Afterwards, I stood shaking, wondering how our relationship had come to this.

I had a daughter who seemed to save all her self-control for school, then come home and fall apart. Teachers told me she was wonderful; kind and creative. I felt like I was going mad.

At that time, I could not have described this moment to anyone. Not to my father, nor friends, nor colleagues. It was the kind of moment you absorb alone, in silence, and file away somewhere you hope no one ever finds.

I did not know then that every bit of Alexandra’s aggression was down to her anxiety caused by her undiagnosed ADHD. The violence was not defiance. It was a child who had no other language for how she felt.

My frustrated reactions to what I perceived as a child not trying hard enough – the repeated requests, the rising voice as I asked ‘Why can you not just…’ – were just fuel on the fire.

Throughout all this trauma, I had been hosting my parenting podcast, listening to parents of ADHD children describe experiences exactly like mine.

Initially, believing Alexandra did not ‘fit’ the mould of ADHD, I didn’t join the dots.

But after that terrible Monday, I asked the question I had been avoiding: could Alexandra have ADHD? When she was diagnosed by a private specialist two weeks later, shortly before her 12th birthday, it was a moment of both relief and grief.

Relief, because this was real; her struggles were not imagined, not my failure. And grief because of all the years we had spent without this map to guide us.

When I told Alexandra, her response was the same. Finally, she had a name for something she had always felt but never been able to describe. She was not broken. Her brain just worked differently.

We have both since learned that children with ADHD have an emotional age significantly behind their chronological age. They are typically up to 30 per cent behind their peers in so-called executive function development, which covers everything from cognitive skills to impulse control. As such, a 12-year-old with ADHD may be functioning emotionally at the level of an eight-year-old.

I had been holding Alexandra to standards she was neurologically not yet equipped to meet, the gap between what I was asking of her and what her developing brain was capable of widening every day.

I started doing simple things to help her. Putting Post-it notes on her mirror with one task per note: get dressed, brush teeth, brush hair, make bed. She could crumple each one up when she was done. Simple, visual, satisfying.

I bought two of everything – a water bottle, stationery – so one set could stay at school. I stopped asking her to remember the things I had always taken for granted and started building a world that did not require her to.

Then there was the medication. When Alexandra started on her ADHD drugs, everything changed. She was calmer, more focused. One Saturday, a couple of months after starting her medication, I sat reading while she completed a homework assignment independently. I watched in disbelief. This would never have happened before.

A clinician also prescribed melatonin to help her sleep. Within days, she was dropping off within ten minutes. She stayed asleep. She woke up rested. It was life-changing for us both.

Now, Alexandra and I enjoy a wonderful relationship. If only I had been able to get her diagnosed sooner. Because in the bad years, the violence and upset led me to wonder if I could really continue being her mother.

I’m not alone; some mothers have told ADHD children they are going to have to put them into foster care because they can’t care for them any more. Others have had to call social services to help manage their child’s violence.

I still feel enormous guilt at being a doctor who missed her own child’s diagnosis. It’s why I’m so determined to raise awareness about all the symptoms of ADHD, particularly in girls.

But Alexandra and I are happy again. Recently, a friend asked with a wry laugh if I was enjoying my daughter being a teenager.

Yes, was my ready answer. Compared to what came before, the supposedly tricky teenage years have been nothing but a joy.

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Adapted from Beyond the Label by Dr Olivia Kessel (Robinson £16.99) out on May 7. © Olivia Kessel 2026. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid to 09/05/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.