I know you think you’re just being realistic here, but some pot smokers go on to be the President of the United States. In fact, I would posit that every president since at least the first Bush has tried marijuana. I don’t think you can really use it as an indication of anyone’s future. Whatever trajectory they are on now, they will remain on.
Instead, your attitude could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think they won’t amount to anything, you won’t support them, and kids do need their parents’ support until quite late. Moral support as well as financial.
Elysian, I’m mapping their future based upon the therapist saying that particularly the younger son is manipulative and has issues.
Also the family has addiction behavior.
That’s why I’m making an accurate prediction.
No Obama’s here.
I don’t mean that. I mean before your sons came into existence, when you were planning your life, you must have had a thought (or thoughts), such as; I want to get married, I want to have kids, etc.
Had always wanted kids.
I had a happy childhood. And I suppose I had fears about motherhood and what it could entail, but at the time (my mid 30s) I felt that that the good outweighed the bad.
Now do I regret it?
See, this is where your black-white thinking is leading you astray.
Smoking pot does not automatically make your kids “bad kids,” and not smoking pot isn’t evidence that the others are “good kids.” The kids doing binge drinking (around 15 percent of twelfth-graders in this survey reported having consumed five or more drinks on one occasion within the previous two weeks), for example, are at least as likely to have psychological, legal, and/or medical problems as pot smokers, but you overlook that. They can be drunk as a lord for weeks on end and driving while under the influence, but as long as they don’t touch marijuana, you classify them as “good kids.” Why in the name of God is an alcoholic a “good kid” but a pot smoker a “bad kid”? Have you seriously never seen the studies about the health risks of alcohol? What do you think are the long-term effects of a drunk-driving conviction, or even worse, a DUI accident?
[Also, your statistics are inaccurate. According to that same study, about 43% of twelfth-graders have used pot in their lifetime, and about 49% have used some illicit drug, including inhalants. (The corresponding figure for alcohol is 58%.) These figures have actually declined; twenty years ago, a clear majority of high school seniors had tried drugs. ]
Man, take a few days off, and this thread BLOWS UP!
Coincidentally, I was out-of-town visiting my youngest. During the visit, she took the opportunity to mention various ways in which we had totally fucked up as parents! (Yeah - FUN conversation! :rolleyes:) Curiously, none of our transgressions involved drug use by her or us. So there are countless ways a parent can fuck up their kids (or the kids can perceive the parents as having fucked up).
I readily admit I was far from a perfect parent. And I posted threads here where I expected to get support and confirmation of my choices, but was instead, harshly criticized. While that was not pleasant, and while I did not accept EVERY criticism 100%, I DID welcome the different viewpoints, and tried to incorporate parts of them into my understanding of parenting.
Hell, parenting is just winging it, doing the best you can. And at some point, you basically say, “Well, I did what I could. Now the kid has to take it from here.” Maybe the OP’s reaction to pot won’t have any lasting impact on the kids, but the kids will, instead, remember and hate some more minor thing the OP isn’t even aware of. That’s how parenting is. You do the best you can for however long you fell you have to, and after that, you hope you’ve equipped the kids to be independent adults.
I think it unfortunate that the OP is choosing to make this one issue (which I DO NOT minimize - even tho her response is fucked up) permanently define her relations w/ her kids.
Wanted to quote and respond to a few things the OP has written:
The kids’ pot use and money management are 2 significant aspects of who they are and your family’s dynamics. But if they are otherwise succeeding in school, engaging in productive activities, social, respectful, helping out around the house - then these are issues to WORK ON, not to permanently define lifelong relations. Parenting experience differs. I’m not sure how many “significant issues” that I encountered w/ my kids were permanently resolved in a couple of months by my announcing an ultimatum.
But the OP gets to choose. Just happens, nearly EVERYONE who responded thinks the OP has chosen wrong. But she will not be dissuaded. Impressively inflexible.
I think the comments of the OP’s black/white perspective are very insightful. The OP doesn’t see a problem with that. IME, few intolerant, inflexible people do.
And at some point, the kid’s success and happiness - or lack of either - is ON THEM. Hopefully, the OP will realize that at some point.
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No problem with being gay. Would easily prefer son being gay to being on drugs.
We have gay family members. Never was an issue.
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What if they ate unhealthily and became obese/diabetic? Smoked cigarettes? Drank more alcohol than you personally think optimal. Chose friends or life-partners you aren’t thrilled with? Adopted a religious/political stance different than yours? Were just plain mean or unpleasant? Committed a crime? Cheated on a spouse? Made parenting decisions you disagree with? Etc. ad infinitum…
I’d far rather one of my kid be a pothead (so long as they were employed and independent), than be a born-again, NRA member, Trump supporter. But different people differ. The gun-toting, bible-thumping Trumpist might be someone else’s ideal progeny. Bottomline is - THE PARENT DOESN"T GET TO CHOOSE THE ADULT THEIR KID BECOMES.
Oh yeah - so my daughter has some resentments over some choices we made raising her. I readily admit, I was not a perfect parent. But I also admit that I never tried harder and longer at anything as I did at parenting. And you know what? My kids were participants in the process as well. I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t all that horrible either. And my kids weren’t perfect either.
But so what? I’m more interested in working on my present and future relationships w/ my adult kids - all employed, in long-term relations, financially solvent - than to spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror.
Declanium, depression lies. It lies about everything, it says black is white and up is down and that the world is ending. Your brain chemistry is out of whack, you have an illness much more serious than you seem to realise. You may need to get a dr on board for some meds if you don’t respond to therapy. I hope you are being honest with your therapist about how you are receiving their words because if they aren’t being twisted by your lying brain they need to have their licence revoked. Depression lies, it catastrophises it needs to be healed. Early in the thread I wrote about using it as medication for myself in my youth and suggested you think about having younger son checked out if concerned, he may well have inherited some brain issues from you.
How long has that been going on? That has to be annoying. Have you had a discussion with her and cleared the air or doesn’t that work? My mom can’t really handle talking about what went wrong.
I come from generations of screwed up families with the cycle of abuse being repeated again and again. Fortunately, my generation seems to have stopped the abuse and dysfunctionality, partly because of better awareness of what is good parenting. Not only my sister and I have worked on it, but many of our cousins.
There is a concept called “good enough parenting” in that no parents are perfect. They don’t need to be. If the children get sufficient love and security, then they will be resilient enough to become successful adults, with the recognition that successful adults are not problem free.
The problem here is that if the story is accurate, the OP is ensuring that the children won’t get love which then causes lots more problems than whatever negative consequences they suffer from smoking pot.
There are many articles on good enough parenting. Here is one with some interesting thoughts.
My bolding.
This idea that we can’t really claim credit for our children’s successes or blame for was expressed early on in this thread.
More importantly, parents everywhere should really be aware that kids don’t do things against their parents. They have their own logic and reasons for things.
Thanks for the concern. Not my thread, but I’ll admit I was not a perfect parent - same way I’m not a perfect person. Never been overly “warm and fuzzy.” Not terribly social, and very respectful of results/competence. But I tried to be a good parent.
And both my wife and I had issues w/ OUR parents/sibs - so we likely modeled less than perfect dynamics.
Finally, none of our 3 kids was a perfect/easy kid. I do not believe that ALL of an adult’s problems can be attributed to their parents’ purported misdeeds - the kids contribute to family dynamics as they grow up, and have considerable discretion as to how they proceed as adults.
So the result is that, now that they are adults, my kids and we seem to have some differing memories (accurate or not) about past events/dynamics. We get along OK w/ our kids, but they are not the intimate, entirely authentic relationships we might have hoped for. There definitely are boundaries and unresolved grievances - some of which I understand, others not so much.
One of my greatest sources of dissatisfaction is that my 3 kids are not closer to each other. But, they were never as close as I would have hoped as children. Maybe it will change/improve as they age. Or not. In any event, we, and the 3 of them, have pretty good lives, and plenty of reasons to be happy and content. Like I said, we just spent 6 days w/ 1 kid. In May we are driving out to visit another, and the local kid comes over for lunch weekly w/ our grandchild. Interactions are - at the very least - pleasant. We all support each others’ choices, interests, and accomplishments. Relations just aren’t as entirely open and intimate as might be hoped for.
At least 2 of my kids pursued some amount of counseling as adults. My understanding was that both counsellors were eager to attribute our kids’ concerns to parental transgressions. As I understand it, that is a common occurrence - and not entirely fair. Like I said, we weren’t perfect parents, but we weren’t all THAT bad. Now, in their late 20s-early 30s, the adults have considerable responsibility for the adults that they are, and how happy they are.
In my 59 years, I have limited experience w/ successfully “clearing the air” among family members. Instead, with adults it seems to be more of a matter of how to style the areas in which you DO get along, and minimize the areas in which you DON’T - and avoiding the areas you KNOW you disagree on. Maybe my experiences are fucked up. I do my best, but am not sure how drastically I can change myself at this point.
