Long Road
Hi Mark:
I cannot believe how quickly we have begun to turn things around in our house -- THANK YOU!! We have a long road to travel, but I think you have given me some very important tools to work with.
Regards,
C.
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Online Parent Support
I cannot believe how quickly we have begun to turn things around in our house -- THANK YOU!! We have a long road to travel, but I think you have given me some very important tools to work with.
Regards,
C.
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Online Parent Support
This is all so bizarre...
Mark:
I had an incident with my daughter last night.
She is 16 and dating a 19 year old, I am not happy about this, they were dating two months before we knew about him. She was lying and saying she was out with friends.
My husband, G___, who has been emailing you, MOVED OUT AND LEFT THE KIDS AND I LETTERS JUNE 13th. He has only seen our children a few times since. He is in the midst of an affair. He has NEVER been on the same page about any of this.
A___ came home late again from being with the boyfriend two nights in a row. I want her home at 11:00. Last night it was 11:30 when I called her and said they had been swimming in the common pool in her boyfriend's subdivision and they lost track of time. This whole thing disturbed me as most pools like that close at 10:00, no supervision, showers and dressing rooms unsupervised etc. She then walks in at 12:00 with an attitude, wet hair and Wendy's french fries, no biggie that she is late.
I confronted her about the inappropriateness of being alone at that hour, her lack of respect for me or the rules. I took her cell phone away and she went nuts. She was cursing at me, F FF FFF and when I went to SPANK her butt, she grabbed my arm, bruised me arm and spit her french fry "chew" in my face.
I then told her to get into the car that I was "taking her in" …it is now about 12:20 A.M. A few miles down the road, a sheriff's deputy was next to me at the traffic light and I rolled down the window and said that I had an "out-of-control" teen in my car and I wanted him to speak to her.
We pulled over at the next available moment. He talked to me alone, then her. She copped an attitude with him and readily confessed that she spat at me and bruised me. He handcuffed her and put in the patrol car and talked to me. We have a zero tolerance for domestic violence. She is at JUVY overnight.
I had mixed feeling about pressing charges, but she has pulled stuff like this many times before. G___ never backed me up on anything and is very non-confrontal. We have TWO very out-of-control teens.
My daughter has:
-seen four different therapists and walked out of most of their offices
-she was taking Prozac for depression and stopped taking it on her own last fall when she "felt" better
-she is very bright, STATE TEST SCORES ARE HIGH, but the grades are very poor
-she pulled a knife on me in eighth grade because she bought a shirt with a big skeleton on it and I did not want her to have it. We had the police at the house and I did not press charges.
-April 12th this year, she snuck out of the house in the middle of the night, she took her Father's vehicle without permission (she had her license, but we had not let her drive alone yet nor was she insured yet) …said she was picking up a friend of hers who was drunk at the friend's cousins house. At 5:00 A.M., this was a school night/morning, she came in our room fully dressed and said she did something terribly. She had taken the vehicle, parked it precariously hanging out of someone's driveway at a carriage home, it was towed for $200.00 and she had taken a cab home. She was grounded for two months, cell phone gone, she paid for the towing out her job earnings. Mind you this was grand theft auto and a major curfew violation.
-a few weeks later on a school day I went to wake her up. She was not in bed, called her cell, she was around the corner in our subdivision, said she could not sleep and a girlfriend I do not know picked her up. She then was escorted to the alternative schools and talked to by the deputy.
In eighth grade, almost three years ago, she had a major hatred for the school bus driver and many run-ins with him. He told her to sit in the front as she had been harassing a girl over her buckteeth, etc. She refused to move before departing school. An administrator was called in to get her to move, she did, but as soon as the bus pulled away, she said ‘F You’ to the bus driver and went to the back with her friends. Upon departing the bus at her stop, as she walked past the bus driver, she ripped his sunglasses off his face and threw them outside. He did not press charges for battery but she did get punished at school with out of school, alternative school suspension and 50 hours of community service.
One day this spring, between the two car incidents, she and I got into it about her behavior. She came after me and bit me threw my clothes, on the upper arms and my upper breasts. I had bruises all over and I told the last therapist that she walked out of.
Several years ago, she did not get her way about something and proceeded to have a tantrum in the car and bit her inner arm at the wrist in attempts to manipulate me and possible injure herself. I drove her directly to The David Lawrence Mental Health Center and she spoke to a counselor about her "poor life and how she could not do anything."
It is a mess Mark and perhaps the overnight experience last night will bring about change …school starts tomorrow. Being a single parent now, I have to get these kids in line.
Our 15 year old has similar issues.
HELP …please. I will talk with you today or tomorrow. I was a middle school history teacher before I had her and this is all so bizarre, I don't even know where to begin.
Thank you!
D.
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Online Parent Coaching
Parent states: "I've been the worst parent..."
Hi Mark…I am SO upset with myself...major slipback. A month or so ago, my son asked if he and a friend could come to my house for the night (he had been living with his dad for several weeks) and "thrilled" that he wanted to come here, of course I said yes!! Well, from that point on, he has had as many as 5 kids here for the night and one has actually moved in with us. Here is what has happened.I caught my son and the "live-in" sleeping with 2 girls. I had gone out of town twice and didn't get back ‘till the next morning. Yesterday, my son got very mad at me and started throwing my stuff around, breaking things, calling me names and basically attacked my whole being. He also threw something at me and hit me. This all happened in front of 2 friends who cleaned up after him. I told him to get out, which he did and is now back at his father's. I called the police but didn't get much satisfaction, I didn't really want to press charges but basically scare him. I really don't think he has mental issues but more behavioural.
I'm so sorry that I dropped the ball because it made ME feel good to have him and his friends want to be around here. I couldn't even see what was really going on and now what??? He'll be 16 next month and honestly I'm so afraid for him. Last week he was punched by a person driving his vehicle and I'm sure that he provoked it somehow by being a smart-ass even though all of his friends said he didn't do anything. It was wrong of the person to assault him but one of these days, I'm afraid it won't be just a punch. I've been the worst parent Mark. ~ T.
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Hi T.,
Wrong! ...you haven't been a bad parent -- quite the opposite. You're TOO good. But being TOO nice and TOO good doesn't make you a bad parent - you're just an easy push-over.
When parents are TOO nice, they get nothing but disrespect. As I said in my eBook, "free hand-outs of stuff and freedom create disrespect."
You should strongly consider filing a battery charge so that you do not send the wrong message to your son ( i.e., if you intimidate, threaten, and cause property damage as well as personal injury, then people will be afraid of you and you will not receive a consequence). This is a bad message!
Do not beat up on yourself over this one, but I hope you don't let him off the hook. Receiving no legal consequence over this matter may cause him a good deal of problems in the long run (e.g., he may feel like he can bully whoever he wants and someday run into someone who beats the crap right out of him).
Mark
==> My Out-of-Control Teen: Help for Parents
How can i tackle this phone issue?
QUESTION--
My 17-year-old has girl friend that i have never met. He talks on the phone to her anything from 3 - 6 hours a day at any one time. He will call her around 10 pm - 11 pm and they will talk until 5.00 am in the morning. We have told him that is not acceptable. He will sleep most of the day. He is so disrespectful when we confront him about this and defiant. He does not see that there is a problem. How can i tackle this phone issue?
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RESPONSE 1--
This is an eternal problem in all families, it seems. I have tried limiting calls to certain hours -- say between 8 and 9 PM (wouldn't *that* be great?) Nothing has been particularly successful in my household; all curbing of this problem seems to involve monitoring on the parents' part.
I have chosen not to provide my daughter with her own phone because (aside from the extra expense, which I can do without) that just gives her unlimited telephoning freedom and I don't see that as a solution to the problem. She does use the cordless phone in her room and when that gets out of hand, I disconnect it by taking the handset to the office for a while. This works quite well since under those circumstances her privacy is reduced.
Placing a "phone restriction" is sometimes helpful but again implies that I monitor it. During phone restriction she is not allowed to talk on the phone at all. If this rule is violated, I take away a privilege, like TV watching or getting together with her friends.
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RESPONSE 2--
My daughter is alone three hours after school. After her 1 chore (one for each day of the week-listed on calendar) and homework is done she can talk on the phone until bedtime. I am not a phone person nor do I get calls. This didn't work. Grades went down, etc. I now take the phone with me to work. If there is a problem she can go to 3 neighbors. Callers have complained that I must have "daughters" because the phone is always busy. My daughter's solution is to pay for call waiting. Not! She needs to spend more time studying. I have also limited her calls to 30 min. with 1-hour wait between calls. I let the answer machine pick up the call. We need more family time together and I am working hard at it. The phone is a barrier.
Online Parent Support
My 17-year-old has girl friend that i have never met. He talks on the phone to her anything from 3 - 6 hours a day at any one time. He will call her around 10 pm - 11 pm and they will talk until 5.00 am in the morning. We have told him that is not acceptable. He will sleep most of the day. He is so disrespectful when we confront him about this and defiant. He does not see that there is a problem. How can i tackle this phone issue?
````````````
RESPONSE 1--
This is an eternal problem in all families, it seems. I have tried limiting calls to certain hours -- say between 8 and 9 PM (wouldn't *that* be great?) Nothing has been particularly successful in my household; all curbing of this problem seems to involve monitoring on the parents' part.
I have chosen not to provide my daughter with her own phone because (aside from the extra expense, which I can do without) that just gives her unlimited telephoning freedom and I don't see that as a solution to the problem. She does use the cordless phone in her room and when that gets out of hand, I disconnect it by taking the handset to the office for a while. This works quite well since under those circumstances her privacy is reduced.
Placing a "phone restriction" is sometimes helpful but again implies that I monitor it. During phone restriction she is not allowed to talk on the phone at all. If this rule is violated, I take away a privilege, like TV watching or getting together with her friends.
`````````````
RESPONSE 2--
My daughter is alone three hours after school. After her 1 chore (one for each day of the week-listed on calendar) and homework is done she can talk on the phone until bedtime. I am not a phone person nor do I get calls. This didn't work. Grades went down, etc. I now take the phone with me to work. If there is a problem she can go to 3 neighbors. Callers have complained that I must have "daughters" because the phone is always busy. My daughter's solution is to pay for call waiting. Not! She needs to spend more time studying. I have also limited her calls to 30 min. with 1-hour wait between calls. I let the answer machine pick up the call. We need more family time together and I am working hard at it. The phone is a barrier.
Online Parent Support
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