For a change daughter wasn't involved!

MommaK

Member
So this week I planned to surprise both daughter and DS with a trip to a local pro baseball game. daughter fought going because she had made her own plans. daughter tried to pull a slick one by going to a boys house without asking. I made her come home and go with us to the game. After the game she went with my mother in law to spend the night there. This morning daughter got a phone call from a friends mom asking where the friend was and if daughter had spent the night where ever the friend was. The friends mom could not find daughter's friend. The friends mom ask several questions from daughter but daughter was not involved in this bunch of drama. I am so glad I followed my gut instinct and refused to let daughter go to the party and made her go with us to the game and then to stay with my mother in law this weekend. I feel if daughter had been allowed to go to the party or been at home I would have been trying to find her this morning like the friends mom was looking for the friend. daughter isn't going to like it but she will also not be allowed to hang out with this group of kids any more. I believe they are contributing to her problems. My next delimited is what to do with daughter this summer while she is not in school. I do not trust her to stay home while I am at work.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
She is 14. Trying to solve this with control isn't going to work. She will find ways to do what she wants to do, in spite of any controls you put in place. These are the teen years, scary for the best of kids and devastating for challenged kids.

The one thing I have seen work successfully is to provide a different life - fulfill some dream of theirs, give them something different to live for that naturally changes how their time is spent and who their friends are. Even then, it takes time.

If the only thing that changes is more controls, you have lost. Somehow, you need to win back her respect, her engagement, her attachment to you and your values.
 

MommaK

Member
Thank you, I have honestly been trying to do that, but have found nothing other than her friends that interests her more. Anything that cuts into time with she refuses to do. She does play softball and will even fight doing that if she thinks it cuts into time with friends. Softball is something she wanted to do knowing the commitment it brings with it.
 

Praecepta

Active Member
I think what you are doing - not letting her hang out with those bad friends - is GOOD! When I grew up in the 60's and 70's, parents used to do this sort of thing. Would be very strict if there were problems. And the kids pretty much turned out to be good kids.

Now that is gone and the kids in our world are a mess! I think we need more parents like you - Good Job!
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I'm putting in my two cents on what worked with my very sweet daughter who turned to bad friends and drugs from age 12-19 when she quit the drugs and her life changed again for the good (never lose hope).

The bad news us that nothing kept my daughter from her drug friends, although she was good at pretending that she was obeying. She cut school to be with them and also climbed out her window at night, when we were sleeping, to run the streets. Maybe alarms to wake us would have helped. I'm serious here. Somehow she found the bad kids and kept up with her friends and thus was before cell phones were much around...twelve or so years ago. We cut off her money and she got a job. I'm sure e she didn't use all her money in a good way, but in the big picture, it did teach her that if she made bad decisions, we weren't going to help her by funding her. We provided the basics, a car not included once we knew drugs were around and her friends were future criminals. It did end up that most did jail time and have not straightened out. She learned that after she got FB and was in another state, doing great, not able to relate to them anymore.

Until adulthood, this daughter had no passion and did not try to develop one. Socializing on the edge was her only interest. We had her in soccer, Scouts, band...she refused to do anything more than sit and not speak. A bible group threw her out when she stood up and yelled at a youth pastor for saying that being gay was a sin (I was actually proud of her for that, but couldn't make her go after that.) She also has told me, and since she's clean now, she has no reason to lie) that the parking lot of the church group was a hot bed of drugs. I guess many struggling parents tried to turn wayward teens toward church. Didn't work for us.

Daughter is very smart and probably would have excelled in a less rigid school environment, but I don't think anything would have stopped the drugs until SHE wanted to stop them. And she did, even quitting cigarettes.

Things I would have done differently if I had a do over: alarms and video cameras and turning in friends and even her if they broke the law. I actually did turn her in once. After that, the cops just knew her because she'd get nailed for being out after curfew...result of climbing out of window, puzzling us as to how she kept getting out. Call us dumb but hub and I had never been involved with bad kids or drugs. We didn't know what they do.

Now that there are cell phones, if my daughter were a wild kid today, in order for her to keep a cell phone on our dime, she'd have to have a GPS on it and we'd have to have access to her messages. Once I found a message in her room written to a boy she had met on the computer. She was planning running off to see him in another state. A phone number was on the letter. I called his parents. We stopped it. He was in college. She waS 15-16. Yes, we checked her room. You break the law, you don't have privacy.

Anyhow, I'm sure many parents think I was TOO strict, but I was terrified for my daughter and she did quit her friends and the drugs, and now she is delightful and we are very close. It's been so long that it almost feels like I'm writing a fiction story, but my sick gut reminds me it is true

Do your best. Be strong. Don't be afraid. Try anything to slow her behavior. If you think she may do drugs, think rehab.

Hugs and so much good luck to you. Hoping your child isn't as stubborn to your ideas as mine was when she was a teen. Drugs change your brain. I swear, she was somebody else while using.

One last suggestion: I don't know if you have a trusted relative or friend you c an trust, but I would refuse to leave her alone while you are at work. No matter how much she whines against a baby sitter, the worst trouble making time us when defiant kids are without anyone keeping an eye on them. I fortunately didn't work during my daughter's teen years. It helped a little. Just a little. She found ways.
 
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MommaK

Member
Part of her treatment that starts tomorrow involves substance abuse. I do not really worry about that at this time, though I should probably. She is the child that has to force pills down her throat like she would a dog because she hates them and can't swallow them, she is so afraid of needles she has a panic attack at the sight of them, and she has had sips of alcohol thanks to bio mom and despised it. Now I know all of that can change, but at the moment she refuses to take her ADHD medications and doesn't take them. I count them because I need to know if she takes them or not.

Per mother in law she was a delight most of the weekend and only had a couple of instances where she acted out in anger. I noticed last week tho that she is on an upswing right now. Any time she is on an upswing she is fun to be around because she is laughing and playing, but even then you notice it's far above what you would expect from a typical happy loving life 14 year old. Once she got home today from softball practice she was no trouble for me, but I noticed the still very high amount of exuberance and manic behaviors that are typical of her.

She ask at 10pm if we could go get ice cream. I not realizing what time it was said yes. When I looked at the clock a few minutes later and realized it was so late and that her and DS needed to be getting in bed for school tomorrow she began to argue that I should still take her to get ice cream because it wasn't her fault I didn't know what time it was when she ask. She began to become angry. Somehow I managed to stay calm and after 30 minutes she started to calm back down. I did promise to get ice cream with them after school tomorrow. She did not understand why I wouldn't leave that late to go get ice cream or why I wouldn't leave her here to babysit DS, who had gone to bed to avoid the arguing. She just kept repeating that she didn't understand why I wasn't going to get ice cream or why I wouldn't take her and leave DS here or wouldn't let her babysit him. He is 9 and was obviously already up past his bed time because I had lost track of time. I calmly explained that I had not realized the time when I said we would get it and if I had I would not have agreed to it. She still didn't understand or didn't want to understand or heck maybe some of both.

The way she sees things is everything is very black and white for everyone else, but it's all grey when it comes to her. Does that make sense? Like rules, everyone else has to follow them exactly or she raises 10 kinds of hell and expects people to comply. She doesn't have to follow them exactly tho, because it's different for her and she has a reason not to or an excuse why she cant.
 

Roxona

Active Member
Glad to hear you daughter wasn't involved in the party incident, and hope her friend was okay.

For summer...Are there any youth camps in your area. I know the YMCA has a jr. counselor youth camp for girls her age. I think it would be a good opportunity for her to have structure and learn leadership skills.
 
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