HH, your post hit home just now. Especially this:
"And yes, if he is not in a rehab or out of your house you are allowing it, because it is happening and you are aware of it and you continue down the path of that is all he is doing so we are keeping the family together."
I just got off the phone with my father who tried his best to help us through our issues with our son prior to his stint in the group home and is trying again to help prepare and guide us, now that our son will be coming back home in several weeks.
He made the remark to me that, THIS TIME, we have to "be the parents," something he emphasized to us on numerous occasions before my son's arrest. I remember feeling frustrated and baffled by that comment because we were TELLING our son in no uncertain terms, AS his parents, that his marijuana use and other poor choices were resulting in unacceptable chaos in his and our lives, and that we wouldn't tolerate it. Yet, we WERE tolerating it by basically doing nothing but posturing (as I see it now and he must have seen it at the time.)
If we had it to do over again, we would have done what my father urged us to do--accept the fact that, despite the love and concern we had for our son and the road he was traveling, we were simply incapable, at that time, of helping him and allow someone else who COULD help him to take over.