<p>I have a 30+ year old, and there would be a major problem if I found out he brought pot into the house. Or if my nearly 90 something year old mother did. Or a gun, or other illegal drugs, or an uninvited guest without asking first for more than a casual “come in for a moment”, and any number of other things. They are simply the rules of the house. Yes, there are lesser things that I let go, or remark upon with varying intensity, but there are certain things that fall into a category of its own. I don’t even want to get into discussion of cannabis or whether the dirinking age is a sham or carrying a gun is safer than not, or whether a random person I’ve not met is a alright guy.</p>
<p>We went to college reunion this spring with DH’s former roommate and he was the best man at our wedding. Heavy druggie in his day, and spent a lot of time with the same. Vastly successful and well balanced now, and actually he did get through life without his drug use noticeably affecting him adversely. But as he went down the roll call of his former buddies, many of them did not do so well. Far worse than those of any random grouping you could make. </p>
<p>With pot, the dregs stay in your system often for drug testing result to be positive longer than say alcohol, and i would not believe that OP’s son one instant that he does not drive high. He lied straight in his parents’ faces and in a situation that made it clear that it was important, and what he did was quite deliberate here. He bought the stuff, enough for later, stashed in in a container that one doesn’t just pick up anywhere. Transported it to the house. And you are going to believe, that, oh no, he wouldn’t drive under the influence. Pah. I wouldn’t let him drive this summer and he would have to have a clean drug test test before driving my car for a while thereafter. I know three families with guts wrenched up right now because their kids came up positive for some substanced after some driving infraction or accident. All “good” kids. One was active in the drive safe program for the community, which netted him a small artiicle in the local news when he gut busted.</p>
<p>I like the idea of making him see a counselor while in college. It’s not punishment. It might be useful treatment, and it might just be annoying (the torture method, which I prefer).</p>
<p>And we often see comments like this here:
We only know what you say about yourself and your family, and we draw conclusions about that–just as you did with respect to the OP’s family situation. That’s all we can really do.</p>
<p>I think the arguments about which is worse for a teen brain are specious. </p>
<p>You have a developing part of your body. In what universe does it sound like a good idea to expose a developing part of your brain to a substance which actively changes the chemistry of your brain. </p>
<p>Teenage brains are engaged in active learning which happens with synaptic growth and pruning. If during the phases of active growth of your prefrontal cortex (teen and young adult years) you regularly expose your brain to cannabis, or to alcohol… your brain learns… to be addicted. </p>
<p>Cannabis impacts memory function for up to a week after use. If I am paying $60,000 for my child to attend university, I am going to think that cannabis usage is not a great idea, actually. The article specifically says they looked at brain tissue… not function. For me, function and performance seem relevant!</p>
<p>My comment related to the issue of the relative concern for alcohol versus cannabis. I feel parents need to give a clear message to adolescents. Neither are a good idea. </p>
<p>I am not going to know if they are smoking pot. I am going to know that the message I give them is not ambivalent.</p>
<p>Stating “facts” of what marijuana does to memory and the brain is specious. For every study done on rats, not humans, as below states there isn’t clear evidence what it does to human not rat brains. </p>
<p>The fact is that in some families smoking pot is or is not accepted, in others drinking is or is not accepted. All you can do is impress your desires on your student and hope they follow your lead. If you have been consistent in your parenting style, perhaps they will. </p>
<p>I made the mistake of looking at this thread again.</p>
<p>“We only know what you say about yourself and your family, and we draw conclusions about that–just as you did with respect to the OP’s family situation.”</p>
<p>Hunt, look at my posts. Can you show me ANYTHING that I said about myself or my family situation?</p>
<p>And oh, by the way. I drew NO conclusions about the OPs family situation. She described a situation and asked for opinions. I gave an opinion based on the facts that she provided–no more and no less.</p>
<p>OP never asked how to enforce her house rules or punish her son for breaking them. Only how she might “get him off on the right foot” at college and “get him back on track”.</p>
<p>To that I would say, a return to the counselor may help. He’s been there before and you have a month before he’s gone to work with him/her on this.</p>
<p>Setting down some rules about your support for college may also help - since you won’t know if he’s smoking pot or not (unless you make drug tests a requirement of college tuition payments or something) perhaps it’s best to lay down rules that you can enforce, to do with grade expectations and discipline issues that may arise at the U, for instance.</p>
<p>A very good question Marian, post 126.
Like you, I’d like clarification. Certainly the poster you quoted did not say the 30+ lives in the house, just as the poster did not say the 90+ mother lives in her house, either. Cpt only mentioned bringing something into her house.
Like you, Marian, I think a person living in a household might have more leeway about invitations than one that doesn’t live in the household.</p>
Well, what I was really commenting on was your attitude, which you made pretty clear in the post I quoted. Surely you aren’t suggesting that this isn’t really your attitude? You felt that you could opine about what it was “about.” You aren’t the only person in this thread who espoused the attitude I was talking about, either. Why it makes you angry to have somebody disagree with you about this, I’m not sure.</p>
<p>In general, all of our kids have ouside lives we know very little about. That’s assuming our kids ever go out of the house unsupervised.</p>
<p>In our extended family, Thanksgiving and family reunions are when all those old stories come out. My dear mother in law had no clue what her children were up to as teens. My own parents were more savy, but even they didn’t know most of what we did. Family teens at various times smoked pot, drank, escorted parties out the back door as parents were parking in the driveway, went out the bedroom window at night, were caught by the police while toilet papering trees, spent a night in jail for urinating in public while drunk, stole all the lawn ornaments in a neighboring small town and set them up on the chamber of commerce lawn… You get the idea. Between my siblings, my husband’s siblings, and his step siblings, there are twelve of us, and every one of us did SOMETHING (illegal or merely naughty) as teens, almost none of which our parents ever knew about until many years later.</p>
<p>I am absolutely sure that my own time will come, when the stories will come tumbling out, and I will be <em>shocked! Just shocked!</em> at what my darling, sweet, smart, nice kids were actually doing.</p>
<p>A little stash of pot in his room? Pshaw, just wait till the really good stories come out ten or twenty years from now.</p>
<p>Eastcoascrazy,
I remember the night when my in laws learned about their children/children-in-law as well.</p>
<p>My father in law reiterated the send off he had given said children on their way out the door to college: “There are drugs, alcohol and sex. I recommend the latter.” (this was the pre-AIDS era…).</p>
<p>Hunt, this thread should not be about me and you, so this will be my last post. That having been said, I appreciate the fact that you now admit that you decided to make judgments about my personal and family life with no evidence whatsoever. I would also that, while I gave my opinion on the situation (which I thought is what the OP was asking for), I made no judgment on what anyone else said until characterized my approach as</p>
<p>“a prime example of what I’m talking about–it’s about you, and your feelings, not about your kid’s best interests.”</p>
<p>I have no trouble with people disagreeing with me. I do have trouble with people like you taking personal shots at me simply because I disagree with them.</p>
<p>People with a very strict, black-and-white attitude, and who think about offenses in terms of how they show disrespect to them, are often very defensive about it, and take personal offense when somebody disagrees with it. I think it’s probably part of the same mind-set. What that says about their families, I don’t know.</p>
<p>I was recently at my mom’s and she was saying to my visiting uncle she couldn’t believe I did “x” (where “x” was going to bars in the East Village or something along those lines when staying over at a friend’s house whose mom was much more lenient than mine) as a 17 year old. I looked at her and started laughing, because I’d been doing “x” since I was 15…however my own 15 yo daughter was there so I didn’t explain my laugh at the dinner table :)</p>
<p>After reading all of these posts, I think it is absolutely hilarious how naive, uniformed, and irrational a lot of you parents are, mine included. Oh, I’m a college student and many my around my age would say the same too.</p>