<p>^^^^Yeah, there is something to be said for healthy boundaries between parents and children.</p>
<p>All my kids went through periods where they hid and lied about things they knew I would not agree to. It made for some trying periods with a couple of them. We are now at a point where they are all very honest with me. Sometimes I feel they share way too much. What gets awkward is at times they share things with me they don’t want their Dad to know. </p>
<p>Missy pie- I have been in your shoes. It is painful to watch someone you love be so destructive. I have 1 who smokes. She knows I hate it. I used to constantly remind her how much I hated it. How destructive it is to her health. She eventually told me that she knew the facts and would quit when the time was right for her and she didn’t plan on smoking indefinitely. I came to realize that I was doing damage to the relationship by always bringing it up. She is respectful of her young cousins and her grandparents and will not smoke in front of them. I do notice she smokes much less now. She does not smoke in our house or our cars. She knows that is not an option. She gets her health insurance from her work.
In your case I think you can set boundaries for your home, your vehicles and your money. You can set boundaries of not smoking around you. To forbid it all together is to force her to lie.
More serious drugs and destructive behaviors. If a child drives your car you can take the car away. Not as a punishment but as the responsible thing to do. To not provide a car to someone who could hurt innocent people.
My stance became- I am willing to support you as long as you do the next right thing. If you have depression and anxiety or addiction I am willing to help you get help.
Also I know to not make threats of punishment I am not willing to follow through on.</p>
<p>The big problem is not so much how to handle confessions and truths of the past as much as those for the future. Really, how honest can kids be when they are fully involved in things they know you do not support, cannot support (they may be terrilbly harmful, illegal, dangerous, bad) and they know they are not going to stop. They don’t want to go to counseling or whatever. They are going to do those bad things. </p>
<p>I know a man who is a drug dealer. Yes, he sells to younger kids. He also is involved in a lot of nasty business that makes the drug dealing an attribute. His parents, whom I’ve known for while, his siblings, are very nice people. They love their chlldren very much. They get one lie after another from this kid and feel that as he fesses up anything in the past, they want to start afresh for the future and believe him. My son who knows him from earlier years told me that the guy likes his life style just fine and is not going to change but would never be honest about this to his parents as he wants contact with them and benefits from them, but even if the condition for it to continue is for him to stop, he would not. He’d lie and take the chances that he not get caught or his parents don’t find out. </p>
<p>That is the terrible truth that some of us might be facing. That our kids are NOT going to stop or refrain from behaviours that we cannot support. It’s not to the best interest of such kids to state that as there will be a loss of benefits, and a decrease in the all important hope we all have for our kids, so most of them are NOT going to be honest when that is the crux of the matter.</p>