Mom of Teen Boys
New Member
Thanks for sharing. Interesting to read two different ways to handle the initial situation. This really proves that no matter what we do, or don't do, they will do what they want, right?!?! So frustrating for all us parents. We can only each do the way we think is best and hope they can make good decisions in the end. I don't know too many teens that make good decisions though! Lord help us all to get through this.I could go on and on about hiding places for drugs. I think the worst was when we set the condition that my son had to be breathalyzed twice a day to stay with us and passed his breathalyzer with flying colors. Basking in his father's praise, but I could see he was going downhill. Son eventually took off in a nonsensical decision to bike cross-country and we found hundreds of poppers in the trunk of his car. He had been inhaling them to get high yet test clean on a breathalyzer.
I did want to say one thing about wishing we had done it differently. I have wished so many times that we had come down like the Hand of God on him when he started. We too hoped it was just a phase, so we tried to keep the lines of communication open. When we saw that he was different from other teenagers and came down hard on him, we didn't get much support from his "cool" aunts, who thought that a little pot and beer were no big deal. We should have stopped that too.
I have so many regrets about not giving him what he needed. I SO wish we had been more like parents and less like friends. At the very least, I SO wish we had made it so (#M* hard for him to experiment that he would have turned to other things instead of drugs.
But we never know how things would have worked out.
My son's ex-girlfriend, at the same age, got caught smoking marijuana. Her parents put her in drug "boot camp," random drug tested her, put her in the strictest Christian school they could find, took off her bedroom door, searched and stripped her room, enrolled her and them in individual and family counseling, and took away her cell phone.
That ought to do it, right?
The last we heard, a couple of years ago, she was addicted and homeless on the West Coast.
I will never understand an addict's way of thinking, but I do believe that we can only do the best we know at the time and hope they make the right choices. There aren't any easy answers.