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Looking for prayers
| Mon, 03-27-2006 - 10:32am |
I lurk around here quite a bit. I am mother of four, DSS 14, DD 13, DSS/DSD Twins 12. We have full custody of DSS 14 and my DD 13. The twins come for visitation but will likely be moving in with us this summer. I've been raising my stepchidlren for 9 years, so they are very much MINE.
I am being confronted with the trials of parenting teens right now and really need some prayers. I will share my story below, because 1. I need to get it off my chest to help me make sense of it all and 2. I'd love any advice from BTDT parents.
Yesterday (Sunday)


I wish I could help you more. Hopefully someone else will post something more helpful, but it sounds like you are on the right track.
P.S. Congratulations on your pregnancy! I have a 13 year age difference between my two kids (13.5 and 9 mo.) They are both a blessing, but the baby has been so much fun, and very refreshing while we are raising the teenager.
Raising teen-agers definitely has given me a stronger faith as I find myself praying more than ever.
I know this may be a little late but I can tell you how I handled it when I caught DD drunk and she lied to me about it. DH and I confronted her several times and she denied it off and on for two days. Her b/f finally convinced her to just give it up. We explained to her that we understand kids make mistakes (drinking) and hopefully she learned her lesson (for the most part she did) by getting drunk. Since it was a first offense for the drinking, we didn't punish her for that. However, the lying could not and would not be excused. She was given a major chore to do for each time she had lied to us about it. She had some new friends that she had been hanging out with that I feel impacted her decision to drink. Since I didn't know those kids, she was expected to invite them over for dinner with the family to give us a chance to meet them. We continued with the major chore route for lying to us and know she tells me more than I really want to know sometimes.
Good Luck and I hope all goes well.
Thanks.
We confronted DSS last night with evidence I had found in his room. He claims it was a cigar he and his friend found. To me it's not that he smoked that made me mad. I know kids get curious and make mistakes. I was more upset that he lied when we asked him why his room smelled like smoke.
Anyway..needless to say he is now grounded. We had quite the talk with him last night, focusing more on the lying than anything.
Thanks everyone.
I am curious, when you posted: "I hope DH follows through with the consequences he's laid down", what exactly does that mean? What ARE the consequences? In my experience, it's a bad plan to think that you actually have control over what your child is doing when he/she is not in your presence. If your DS is smoking cigarettes, he will do so when he's not with you or when you're not around. Grounding, in my experience anyway (as well as some other parent's I know) has never worked as a deterrent for smoking cigarettes. So, do you/H intend on tackling that? And enforcing it?
We openly discuss smoking pot and drinking alcohol all the time and always have. I truly believe that if you're honest and up front about your personal feelings about these issues, you will eventually develop an open relationship that enables you to discuss these things without that parent/child confrontational and adversarial feel. When my kids tell me about a friend who smokes or drinks, I don't go off, instead I listen and maybe make a comment about his well being rather than condemn the friend. We want our kids to be able to come to us and tell us this stuff, right?
Having discussions about these issues will help to remove the distrust that your DS has when confronted by you or your H. He's obviously afraid of what yours or your H's reactions will be. It seems to me that he's not doing anything outside the normal curious actions of most teens his age. IMO, a simple discussion is in order at this time and that's it. If you find further evidence and can without a doubt confirm that it was pot he was smoking, then it may call from some restrictions, more lectures, etc., but since this was a first offense, I wouldn't do anything more than talk with him about his actions, his lies, his friends, etc.
I hate to jump in like this and "highjack" the post, but I need your advise on this issue since you mentioned it.
Last night while straightening up dd's room I found a note between her and a friend. It was mostly about boys, but dd mentioned in it, "Last Saturday I was drunk and called the boy I like..." I felt this "evidence" was fair game since I found it on the floor in her room along with school papers, etc.(hopefully encouraging her to keep her room clean in the future if she doesn't want me in there.) I calmly confronted her with the evidence (I was able to keep my emotions completely in check, amazingly). Of course, she denied it was true; made up some lame excuse about lying to her friend because that is what she does all the time. Now, I know she's lying, but how do I prove it? I would like to also punish solely for the lying, not so much the drinking (if it was just once, and it did not happen at my house). The only place she would have been on a Saturday night other than home was H.'s house, so my next stop is to confront H.'s mother. She's just the type who would think it prudent to let teens drink at home for "safety" reasons.
I had a talk with her about how lies always do catch up with us, and how if she expects to be driving in a couple of years she better start being honest with me now....any other ideas?
I think you did what you could with what evidence you had. I would definitely be snooping her room in the future if I had suspicions that she was drinkin regularly.
I don't know for certain if I would say anything to H's mom...only because if she's the type that would allow drinking by underage kids in her home, then she'd likely turn a deaf ear to your concerns anyway and possibly complain about it to her dd who in turn will tell your dd.
The bottom line, for me, would be that your dd knows that you know and that you'll be keeping a closer eye on her from here on in. She needs to know that you find her drinking alcohol unacceptable. Should you o on a witch hunt to 'catch her' or prove to her that she was lying? I don't think so - she knows already, as do you.
I agree with you, and I guess right now all we can do it talk and make my concerns known. I just wish I knew when and where so I could limit her comings and goings but turns out I'm going to be able to do that anyway. I can always find another reason to limit her time away from home, and it's usually her grades.