I sit here, the second Sunday in a row not knowing where my daughter is. Last night we said good night to her as we left for an evening out with friends, expecting to see her when we returned by 10:00 p.m. She had been out late the night before, and understood that she did not have car privileges. She seemed content to stay at home with our dogs, and have a lazy Saturday night. Around 8:20 p.m. she sent me a text that her "friends" were picking her up to go to a party. No other details, no idea who she was with or where she was. Around 12:30 a.m. I asked her where she was and who she was with; she simply responded that she wouldn't be home. She finally told me she was in St. Paul and that was the last communication I had with her.
These are not feeling that I am happy to be having on a regular basis; my stomach is in knots wondering where she is, who she is with, is she safe, is she coming home? She seems to have no sense of remorse or regret for acting this way toward us, and even acts as if we are the villain expecting her to communicate with us and respect our wishes. Parents have little recourse available to them in a situation like this; basically we were told one option we had was to suspend her drivers license and that was about it. She is embarking on life choices that are so risky and dangerous not only to herself, but potentially to others. Any consequences we seem to employ at home are laughed at and disregarded. As broken as my heart is right now, I also feel it hardening toward this child. If I have a Teflon coating around my emotions for her, maybe it won't hurt so much when she disappears, lashes out, and continues to make this life together a battle.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Parenting is TOUGH
No one said that being a parent would be easy - and in the past 11 months we've faced some of the toughest parenting of 20 years. Let me start by stressing how much I love my daughter, what a wonderful loving, caring, silly young lady she is. She is not a bad kid, she is just prone to making bad, impulsive decisions. I know we are not alone in facing this struggle, thousands of parents each day are battling with teenage children, and many of them in much more challenging situations that what we are. I am not writing this for pity, but rather to share our honest story in the hopes that other parents with great kids who struggle with the same issues do not feel ashamed and alone.
Our daughter is a great kid - I will continue to say that. The advent of a driving permit, new friendships, and the continuing battle with impulse control due to ADHD caused her to begin making some dangerous and risky decisions. To name a few: taking the car out on several occasions on her own (no license...just a permit), in the middle of the night; not coming home at night, leaving us to wonder where she was; sneaking friends into our house in the middle of the night; dabbling in alcohol and drug use cover the majority of incidents. One of the nights she took out a car, she hit something, causing over $3000 of damage to the front of the car. She still doesn't remember what she hit or where. We try to run a fairly tight ship with discipline in our house, and ask for mutual respect and honesty. Our children have attended private, parochial school since kindergarten, understanding that this is a privilege and our household behavior expectations reflect that. When things started to spin out of control with our daughter, we used the threat of attendance at her private high school as a bargaining chip. Continue this behavior, and she would no longer be attending her beloved school, especially when there are public and charter school alternatives available for her.
After two weekends in a row of not coming home (with telling us she was on her way home), we had enough and called the police. Let me tell you, this was not something that I did easily. My hands were shaking the entire time on the phone, my voice quivering, tears flowing as I had to tell my story three separate times to 911 dispatch operators. After I had made the phone call, I reached out to one of my daughter's friends, found out where she was, but was still determined to have our daughter meet and talk with the officer when he arrived at our house. He arrived about 15 minutes before our daughter finally came home, and handled her like the professional that he is. He didn't yell at her, but made her options on continuing this behavior very clear, told her she was f*ing up her life, and unless she wanted to find herself in jail some day, she better stop. Our daughter was silent, listening, seeming to take it all in. When the officer was done speaking to her, she asked him if he would be taking her to jail now. He replied no, but told her that her name was now on a national list of runaways, should this happen again when she was found, she would be instantly taken to a police station.
We made the decision that afternoon to pull her from her private high school, and began to explore other options for her to finish high school. There was no yelling by either my husband or me, lots of tears, sobbing, and pleading from our daughter (she even enlisted some of her friends in a plea campaign for her to stay at her current school). We remained firm in our decision.
While some of our family was supportive of our decision, other members have not been -- going so far as to hang up the phone on my husband as he tried to explain the reason(s) for this decision. Some family members think we are being too harsh with her, expecting her to be the role model that her older brother was. Again, I ask that they spend the past eleven months in our shoes -- the constant fighting, defiance, willful disobedience from a child. Watching them make decisions that could have permanent and devastating consequences for themselves, our family, and worse others. We've taken away car keys, cell phone but she has still managed to find a way to sneak out and engage in these risky, dangerous behaviors. We love our daughter, so much that it literally hurts. The easiest thing would be to let her continue engaging in these behaviors and have her deal with the inevitable consequences. But I will repeat, we love our daughter. That was never an option for us, as tempting as it may have been at times.
Parenting is tough, and it is only through the grace of God that we get through it each day.
Our daughter is a great kid - I will continue to say that. The advent of a driving permit, new friendships, and the continuing battle with impulse control due to ADHD caused her to begin making some dangerous and risky decisions. To name a few: taking the car out on several occasions on her own (no license...just a permit), in the middle of the night; not coming home at night, leaving us to wonder where she was; sneaking friends into our house in the middle of the night; dabbling in alcohol and drug use cover the majority of incidents. One of the nights she took out a car, she hit something, causing over $3000 of damage to the front of the car. She still doesn't remember what she hit or where. We try to run a fairly tight ship with discipline in our house, and ask for mutual respect and honesty. Our children have attended private, parochial school since kindergarten, understanding that this is a privilege and our household behavior expectations reflect that. When things started to spin out of control with our daughter, we used the threat of attendance at her private high school as a bargaining chip. Continue this behavior, and she would no longer be attending her beloved school, especially when there are public and charter school alternatives available for her.
After two weekends in a row of not coming home (with telling us she was on her way home), we had enough and called the police. Let me tell you, this was not something that I did easily. My hands were shaking the entire time on the phone, my voice quivering, tears flowing as I had to tell my story three separate times to 911 dispatch operators. After I had made the phone call, I reached out to one of my daughter's friends, found out where she was, but was still determined to have our daughter meet and talk with the officer when he arrived at our house. He arrived about 15 minutes before our daughter finally came home, and handled her like the professional that he is. He didn't yell at her, but made her options on continuing this behavior very clear, told her she was f*ing up her life, and unless she wanted to find herself in jail some day, she better stop. Our daughter was silent, listening, seeming to take it all in. When the officer was done speaking to her, she asked him if he would be taking her to jail now. He replied no, but told her that her name was now on a national list of runaways, should this happen again when she was found, she would be instantly taken to a police station.
We made the decision that afternoon to pull her from her private high school, and began to explore other options for her to finish high school. There was no yelling by either my husband or me, lots of tears, sobbing, and pleading from our daughter (she even enlisted some of her friends in a plea campaign for her to stay at her current school). We remained firm in our decision.
While some of our family was supportive of our decision, other members have not been -- going so far as to hang up the phone on my husband as he tried to explain the reason(s) for this decision. Some family members think we are being too harsh with her, expecting her to be the role model that her older brother was. Again, I ask that they spend the past eleven months in our shoes -- the constant fighting, defiance, willful disobedience from a child. Watching them make decisions that could have permanent and devastating consequences for themselves, our family, and worse others. We've taken away car keys, cell phone but she has still managed to find a way to sneak out and engage in these risky, dangerous behaviors. We love our daughter, so much that it literally hurts. The easiest thing would be to let her continue engaging in these behaviors and have her deal with the inevitable consequences. But I will repeat, we love our daughter. That was never an option for us, as tempting as it may have been at times.
Parenting is tough, and it is only through the grace of God that we get through it each day.
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