Well, I have no doubt that my son is doing what he needs to do because he has to do it at this point in time, and that certainly could be called manipulating the system.
However, he is following the rules, participating in group and individual counseling, and keeping his "status" which allows him privileges including every-other-weekend home visits.
As far as the drug story, unfortunately, I also have no doubt that it's true. This is a next door neighbor whom my son has known his entire life. Her mother and I had just that very afternoon had a discussion about her recent marijuana use with another girl up the street. These were the two girls he spent some time with.
We were given no rules regarding his home visit other than that we could not remove him from the county, he had to be in by 10:00 p.m., and he could visit only those friends whom we trusted. Quite frankly, we don't "trust" any of the neighborhood kids any more than any other teenager he knows. We decided to put our trust in him (as much as possible) to do nothing to jeopardize his chances to come home to visit as it was made quite clear to him that if he tested positive for anything, he would not be coming home for visits.
I have to point out that the house my son is in is not specifically a drug and/or alcohol rehabilitation center, although drug and alcohol counseling is part of the program they use which includes victim's rights, anger management, and so forth. All the boys are there because they have comitted some sort of crime from stealing cars to breaking the terms of probation accompanied or not by drug and/or alcohol use, and they counsel them on those issues as well. From what I've seen so far, it seems that most of what they're pushing along with the above is getting the boys their high school diplomas and teaching them independent living skills.
The visit issue was resolved with a phone call from the program coordinator who told us that, since our son will now be allowed every-other-weekend visits home, he would like him to be more involved with the other boys during their weekend activities as some of what they do is community-service-oriented.
