Whew! This one may be a long reply but both of these can be answered at once.
[QUOTE=miamouse]
Maybe I’m missing something here, I’m really not trying to be an ass, but it sounds like you were happy to go out and be as irresponsible as you pleased as long as you didn’t have to deal with the consequences of ‘tough love’.
I hear about your mom and step father, I hear that Dad’s house was a port in the storm (admittedly, of your own creation, since Dad’s house had normalcy), I hear that it would not have been emotionally hard to be separated from him. But I don’t hear what the effects of your actions were on your Dad. How is your relationship with your Dad now as compared to then?
What would be your advice to parents be who have children who are doing as you did?
Would you take your own advice if you were a parent?
I think its easy to say that tough love would have made a person fall deeper into the hole. You are lucky you had the father you did, and that you were (it seems) an only child. I think if there were other kids in the picture to be influenced, tough love definitely would have come into play.
But then I’m a grumpy old parent. get off my lawn!!
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=ShibbOleth]
What will you do when your daughter runs away? Did you ever call to let your father know you were alive, or did he just have to deal with it?
[/QUOTE]
First of all - a teenager is still a child, and the choices made by immature, hormone addled brains are not always good choices. A child with emotional issues stemming from abuse will make even worse choices. I also think what works for one child may not work for another.
Also too, I would never presume to give advice to a parent of a bad teen, because every teen is different. I don’t have kids, but I have two nieces, and I think if either of them were having problems and my sister could not deal with it - I would like to be there for them - even just as a pad to crash at.
The closest to advice I would give is to seriously consider the emotional issues of the kid, their personality, and the risks involved in either kicking out a child or institutionalizing the child. What my dad took was a middle road between accepting but not condoning my lifestyle. He never gave any pretense he approved, and he did not give up, he did not enable my lifestyle, and he still imposed rules which I could follow and help stabilize me and was always there as an ear to listen, he treated me as if I was responsible for my own mistakes and decisions, and when I did get in trouble I had to deal with it myself. But through it all, he would emotional support me, and give me a place to sleep.
Personally I think my dad made the right choice in my case. But as I see it, my dad could have kicked me out and not heard from me for months, or he could be there for me, and provide a safe haven for when I did come home. I felt I was completely cut off from my mom, she had chosen the BEAST over me, and all the family I had in the world was my dad. My sister stayed at my mom’s and because I hated my mom, my little sister was angry at me. I rarely saw my sister because she only came over on weekends and on weekends I was almost never home I never saw her.
Sending a kid away to some sort of institution could help in some cases too, I tried that too. When I was 16, I moved into a youth shelter in Edmonton for two months. I didn’t want to be at home and I didn’t want to cause my dad pain anymore, but I wanted to be somewhere safe. A youth shelter is an institution with an institutional level of support for troubled kids. They try, but when someone’s needs are emotional, an institution is not the best place. Many of the kids although they live there and have to follow the rules in order to stay become more crafty at circumventing the rules. Kids in youth shelters (or for that matter, youth prisons, rehab facilities, or group homes) aren’t there because they are from happy homes. I came back home after a while.
I never have been much of a follower, many of my friends got much further into drugs, but if I tried something and I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it again - and peer pressure wasn’t an issue in either the shelter, or in my social group, but for a kid who is a follower I personally think an institution could expose a child to a worse element and they could learn to be better and sneakier at getting into trouble, and that is a risk one would have to take. I am sure that you’ve heard the saying that quite often the only thing criminals learn from going to jail, is how to be better criminals. From my experience and some of my friends - institutions of any sort, if a kid goes unwillingly could do the same thing.
My case was different, I went by choice, but even with weekly counseling sessions, group sessions, social workers, and the staff at the shelter, but still being a kid, what I wanted is to be loved - and there was no love in that place.
My dad tried hard to keep me together, and keep me from running away - and strangely enough there were some rules I didn’t break even through my roughest times, I never stole from my dad, I never left without telling him I was leaving, I called him frequently, and I never left the house messy (okay - a left a mess a few times). I didn’t get money from my dad - but if I needed clothing, he’d buy it for me. He took care of the basic needs, a roof over my had, some food to eat when I was home, and most importantly love. I would call once a week when I was gone, and I’d let my dad know I was okay. I had friends from worse circumstances who couldn’t go home, and more than once I would ask my dad if it was okay if I brought a friend to stay, which he would allow. When my sister would stay, I also would be on my best behavior, and I never encouraged her to smoke or do drugs, in fact if she would have asked - I would have never allowed her. Although my sister hated me, I loved her very much, and was very protective of her.
Three times I started grade 11, and tried to be “good”, my dad had told me more than once that I either would have to go to school, or get a job. I had even taken jobs phone soliciting and tried to be a good kid for my dad, but then an emotional storm would happen, and I would leave again. I sincerely didn’t want to hurt my dad - I loved my dad very much, but I know I hurt him. I wasn’t thinking most of the time, just reacting to my emotions. It was as if we had built a truce, where as long as he knew where I was, and as long as I followed those simple rules even though I was still running away and causing trouble, I could still come home when I wanted to.
It probably would have been easier for my dad in some ways to just say “don’t come home”, but I don’t think that would have been the right choice for quite a few reasons:
1.) I was already emotionally rejected by my mom in my opinion, and that would have been yet another rejection and would have caused more damage to me emotionally.
2.) I considered myself to be self reliant, and capable of taking care of myself despite my emotional immaturity and therefore would have simply been gone.
3.) I considered my friends to be a family and that social group would have become my sole support network, and I would have not had the grounding that even one loving parent can give - I would have had advice instead of from a mature parent from other emotionally damaged kids.
4 a.) There is a kind of psychosis that develops on the streets because you are separated from society. You are apart from the rest of the world, and the more you acclimate to it the less you feel - the violence is both a symptom and a cause of this. You become desensitized to the rules of society, to crime, to violence, to drug use, and become bit by bit trapped in that life because you don’t feel like you are part of the real world. My dad kept one of my feet firmly planted in the real world, and even so it took me years to come back and to accept and work within society at large in a productive manner without resenting and hating society.
4 b.) The issues which have taken the longest for me to deal with stem from the street psychosis - I was already somewhat emotionally fractured from the abuse at my mom’s place and I also was a nerdy introverted kid who didn’t fit in throughout my years at school - so I definitely felt separated from the mainstream to start with, and the more time I spent away from society in general the worse those feelings got towards the world. With one foot still in the real world, I got out at 19. Many of my friends took until their mid twenties.
5.) From my dad’s perspective, knowing where I was, and trying in his own way to impose some order gave him a sense that he was still trying, and he hadn’t given up hope. My dads perspective was that inside I was a good kid who wanted to make the moral choices - but I was behaving in a very self destructive manner.
I respect my dad, and have always respected my dad. I regret what I put him through. My dad is a very strong person for putting up with what he did, and what he did was nothing short of a miracle. I don’t expect nor ever dream that every parent could be a strong as he was in handling the chaos I brought him - and I admire my dad deeply for this.
My dad and I are close now and always have been. I have apologized for the pain I caused my dad as well, and my dad and I have talked quite a bit, in fact I will probably send him a large portion what I have just wrote here.