<p>Going along with what Modadunn said…</p>
<p>There are one or two kids that I know of in our (upscale) community who are stellar students, on student council, school newspaper, etc. Amazing achievements, yet it is widely known among the students that they both have a problem with heroin. Not saying that your daughter is involved with drugs, but you should absolutely try to rule it out. I’m just not sure how one does that exactly.</p>
<p>You say that you are 95% sure drugs are not involved, but (a) you haven’t tested her and (b) her behavior has radically changed. These are signs. Take her to be tested and have her evaluated. Just because she is 18 doesnt mean you have lost all parental control. If seh is heading off to college next fall, you are running out of time. If you or your H are employed, check to see if you have EAP benefits. If you really dont think you can get her to therapy, you should go yourself and work on parenting issues. God luck.</p>
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<p>Yes. Yes, that’s right, you would. And that’s the least of it. You only have a few more months with this child. There are no do-overs in parenting.</p>
<p>This is a kid who is crying out, begging, pleading, in the only (inarticulate) way that teenagers can plead – “BE MY PARENT. Set some limits here. Stop me, I am hurting. Help me.”</p>
<p>Kids want limits. They don’t want to feel that you don’t care enough to disbelieve their lies. </p>
<p>(next time she physically fights you to go out, call the police. They might not do anything because she is 18, but the fact that the police show up might be a wake-up call for her)</p>
<p>thumper, alwaysamom, and anxiousmom,
While first posts like this often do raise an eyebrow, I just want to mention that sometimes regular CC members who have a major family problem, have used another name to get help with that problem so as to not be as identifiable with their regular member name. I have seen this many times on CC for a one time personal issue type thread. Also, the member’s own kid may also be a member on CC and the parent doesn’t want the kid to notice their post. I happen to believe this thread is a real situation. In any case, just pointing out a pattern I have seen on CC in the past that may be a possibility once again.</p>
<p>I agree with others that some professional help is needed. This girl needs some limits as she is now out of control and is being afforded trust where she has not earned it. She also needs consequences. If you found evidence of plans to skip school…she should not be driving to school. She has gone out at night and created unsupervised parties and thus she should be grounded. And so on.</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to be judgmental, if I really felt it was a parent that’s posting I would be a lot more sympathetic. I found the writing to be very contradictory - drug was involved, no it wasn’t (was it , or wasn’t). How many parents in their right mind would let their kid out the door 4 days after physically restraining the kid?</p>
<p>“NSM, we tried counselling last year (when the boyfriend was being snuck in). But it didn’t seem to work, and then became too expensive. We don’t have $$ for counselling as we have 3 kids in college now.”</p>
<p>Your D’s life is at stake. There’s every indication that she’s on drugs. Her changed behavior is frightening and dangerous.</p>
<p>You are the parent. She is living with you. You get to set the rules. If she doesn’t abide by them, she gets to move out and support herself.</p>
<p>She’s definitely not ready for college no matter how high her grades are now. Sending her away to college would be like begging for her situation to get worse. College won’t magically save her.</p>
<p>If you want to help your D, you must make getting help for her a priority, and you must be willing to be a parent and set firm rules and firm consequences.</p>
<p>Actually, a friend of my older D definitely had some psych issues that grew and grew throughout HS, but the administration could only see athletic and academic performance and ignored all the signs until it was ALMOST too late. He was smoking pot and cutting and yet, still was pulling straight A’s and was starting on the football and lax teams. Finally, since my daughter was being sucked into some sort of psychological vortex as his confident, I called his mother (who proceeded to tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about) and said, you are more than welcome to shoot the messenger who is me, but I know what I know and I would hate if it was my kid and no one gave me the opportunity to be the parent.</p>
<p>His brother and sister went to Notre Dame and Stanford respectively, he ended up in and out of rehab at least twice and ended up graduated from the State U (which is a fine school but not exactly the alma maters of his siblings). However, now he is a contributing member of society, is quite the talented artist and apparently is also a counselor to troubled youth. That they spent his college money on him in this way was money well spent in my opinion.</p>
<p>Thanks for your replies. I did create an account so that I could post this problem, because we are ashamed and live in a small community so I also want to protect D’s privacy. Ironically, we are known as the “strict” parents, at least that’s the message we get (even from one other parent- even though she clearly does not know the whole story).</p>
<p>I am in a strong moment of pain and I appreciate your guidance.</p>
<p>Your child is presenting you with difficult choices that you don’t seem to want to make.</p>
<p>Sorry, no easy way out.</p>
<p>1) Sell the car and cancel the insurance. Plan your life around driving her where she needs to go (not wants to go).</p>
<p>2) Spend the money from the car and insurance on about a year of counseling (it will take at least that much).</p>
<p>3) Plan on her commuting to school as you do not want her going away in the state she is in. This fix will take more time than you have and don’t depend upon it being done by September. It has taken many years to dig this hole.</p>
<p>4) Generally a failure of this magnitude takes has involved both parents (something is missing in the relationship that neither seems to have addressed), so both will need intense involvement in the solution. 3 legged chair needs all 3 legs.</p>
<p>5) You need to examine the issue of trust from your perspective. You seem to have an “all or nothing” approach with her. The events here where she fails seem to be completely without control. Then you wonder why she fails. She has figured out that you do not follow up on supervision and takes your message of trust as a green light to act out. You need to give her the opportuity to make “minor” mistakes where she will be caught with certainty. </p>
<p>All in all I think you are in denial that you need to take additional time from your life to correct this situation. It is your lack of committing additional time that created the problem in the first place. You say that you are a good parent, but what exactly does that mean? You give her a car and let her drive it to a nice school, but don’t provide the necessary supervision and guidance necessary for her to manage these priveleges. That isn’t parenting IMHO, that is enabling. Not pleasant to hear, but necessary.</p>
<p>I can give you some advice and have had experience with a struggling teen and know many stories almost identical to yours from friends and acquaintances. I would also give about 95% probability to drug use. My neighbor across the street could have written your post, and it turned out that the daughter (also a hs senior) was on countless prescription (not hers) and street drugs. It is hard to lose control of a teen, and the teen is a master of manipulation and I understand how easy it is to want to trust them again.
Unfortunately, since your daughter is 18, your options are limited. I am afraid a residential program might be needed, but your daughter will have to agree to this. My experience is that local therapy/counseling is simply not enough when a situation gets to this point. I would suggest that you register for the site <a href=“http://www.strugglingteens%5B/url%5D”>www.strugglingteens</a> dot com and see what ideas you might get there. A good local therapist is key, of course, because someone has to give you a good read on what is really going on. Unfortunately, this “read” frequently comes from a hospital or a police department.<br>
If your daughter is not willing to cooperate with you and get some treatment, you will need to kick her out if she won’t follow your household and parenting rules. You can expect some stealing and further damage to your property next.</p>
<p>Trying to force an 18 yr old to get help when she isn’t amenable is a losing proposition. Try of course–as a parent you have to try. But I can’t see her saying “Oh Mom, I’ve been so silly. Can we all just go to therapy and get along?”</p>
<p>Find support, whether informally or as part of a therapeutic or even 12 step group, and set down some very clear rules about what she can and cannot do at yr home, and also, how long she can stay at your home. </p>
<p>And yes, whie I think about it, no matter how smart she is, going to college in this shape is a very bad idea.</p>
<p>My own kid hasn’t had these kind of wild episodes, but is incredibly lazy and unproductive in school, and did cut a class or two earlier (although we seem to have put an end to that for now). I still have not allowed him to drive and he is eighteen. I keep telling him he can show me some responsibility and then I will set him up for driving, or he can set it up himself. He travels by bus. I have also had one big altercation with him, and I did threaten to call the police. So I have similar issues although he has not yet shown a “wild” side, just a lazy side. And he’s had counseling, and I also am fairly certain he is not on drugs. I am a recovering person myself, and am very vigilant on that. </p>
<p>That said, two things strike me -</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It is amazing to me that people on here seem to think this type of stuff is so uncommon. Yes, it should not be permitted in the parents home, but at 18 or 19 most kids are away at college. What do most people think the little angels do when they get there? Haven’t they seen Jersey Shore or Spring Break videos? Didn’t they live in dorms themselves? Talking about “whizzing pants” on a Facebook page? Come on. Using expletives? I bet there are a lot of people on here that use expletives. Drugs and the sexual riskiness - yes, that’s a problem. </p></li>
<li><p>Sometimes, there is just nothing you can or could have done, except remove enabling (giving money, cars, etc.) and offering support. You can kick them out, and sometime that helps. Sometimes it solves your problem and makes their problem worse. And sometimes they come back and rob you and trash your stuff and your problem is worse I’ve seen it happen).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am concerned when I hear you speak of the fact that your daughter is a stellar high school senior. I would not send this child away to college. The money that you would spend on college should be spent on therapy and possibly drug rehabilitation. Please read my post regarding pulling my daughter out of college. I believe that my daughter was headed for a disasterous time as I believe your daughter is. There is an excellent rehab program in N.Y that you could PM me for info.</p>
<p>gomom55 -
I was struck by your comment that your friends say you are strict parents. It makes me wonder if your friends are undermining your resolve to do what your gut tells you to do? Like restraining her from going out, and then a few days later letting her go out… like accepting the boyfriend even though you think he is a drug-using bad influence. We don’t like to admit it, but we parents are also susceptible to peer pressure. It is hard enough to provide strict supervision to a needy teen without having our friends tell us to ease up, we’re over-reacting, etc. </p>
<p>I may be off-base here, because you didn’t go into this explicitly in your posts, so forgive me if I am out of line, but maybe it would be helpful if you gave some scrutiny to your support network.</p>
<p>I agree with oldfort also. I expect that you hzve the same daughter you had two
years ago but changes in expectations, peer group, i dont know what have made parenting
harder work .
But if you have been as inconsistent her previous 17 years as you have been recently, no wonder she is having a hard time.</p>
<p>There is (likely) drug use and other risky behavior here. The horse is out of the barn and without some buy-in from the girl, tweaks in parenting style alone (while probably necessary as part of the overall process here) aren’t going to fix this.</p>
<p>I am so sorry for your pain.</p>
<p>Many people here have mentioned possible drug use. I would also seriously consider the possibility of mental illness. That is what first crossed my mind. Is there any chance of getting her to see a doctor or psychiatrist?</p>
<p>Counseling for her and you, driving her around, making her needs the constant, unremitting and only concern of your life, residential treatment are expensive and time consuming–but cutting costs in these areas can well prove to be far more expensive, if not actually destructive or fatal. </p>
<p>Work on calmness, always calmness, in word, deed and manner. She may well “disgust” you, she may seem like “scum”, she may seem “tawdry”, but stay away from such words. Be factual: “it isn’t safe to let you go out”. Repeat as needed without giving ground or becoming upset when she screams back at you. “I’m sorry, it isn’t safe.”</p>
<p>From what you have said, I agree with the others who said that she should not go away to college. At the moment, college is not a safe option for her. If she wants to go to college, though, that possibility perhaps can be a lever to get her to see a psychiatrist and otherwise get the help that she needs.</p>
<p>ADad raises an important point: the possibility of mental illness. The daughter of one of my friends had a radical behavior change, and it ended up she had a brain tumor, one that fortunately was benign and operable. However, before it was diagnosed, the D had become verbally abusive and threatening to her parents, and had had to be involuntarily hospitalized as a danger to herself.</p>
<p>Both schizophrenia and bipolar disorders tend to have an onset in late adolescence, more reason to continue doing everything you can to get professional advice. More reason, too, not to send your D away to college.</p>
<p>I dont know why people ask for help and then plead" oh thats too expensive! Thats too inconvienent!"
weeell, if you want to lose weight you have to stop eating the junk food, if you want a daughter that doesnt consistently test your boundaries, you have to give her some.
Boundaries that is- consistent ones.
And i agree about the name calling, that has to stop.</p>
<p>You say that she’s a top student, so how does she have time for this behavior? Is she taking AP or honors at her school? Is she doing community service? Does she play a sport? Many kids are too exhausted after 5-6 practices/games per week to do anything more than eat dinner and relax - a movie out is about as exciting as it gets for my kids.</p>
<p>Aside from all of the limits that need to be set and enforced, she needs less free time. Insist that she get a part-time job or get involved in ECs.</p>