I’m sympathetic to the OP, because I loathe pretty much everything about pot, but a teenaged boy behind the wheel of a car is statistically a much greater risk. People die from bad teenaged driving choices, and those choices are often simply the result of inexperience. But you have to let them drive.
You don’t have to let them smoke—disgusting, and to my mind dangerous because it normalizes smoking. I see it as a gateway drug to tobacco. I know people will laugh at me for that, but I’m quite serious. I think that’s a real problem, and I don’t care how common a rite of passage it is.
Declanium, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to say to your family, “Look, I’m just not completely rational about this issue,” and let your spouse take the lead on how the family deals with it. You’re getting a lot of good advice here about getting some perspective, but honestly, I think it’s okay to be a bit extreme about it. It’s just a matter of functionality: you have to respect your kids’ choices in an age-appropriate way, and you have to respect your fellow citizens’ choices even when you frankly think they’re wrong, but you can do so and still think they are bad and dangerous choices.
Here, I think you have to respect that your kids are old enough to challenge your decisions and experiment with choices that don’t conform to the family values. That’s normal, and that’s healthy. You don’t have to respect this particular choice, but I think you’ll be more effective if you concentrate on the health aspects, as you’re doing, and not the slippery slope (what if it leads to…) or psychology (how could you do this to me).
No, I have not. I have never smoked anything, or done any recreational drug besides caffeine. I am a lot less intolerant than I used to be about it, and I would consider it for pain medication if it were necessary (as an edible, though: still not willing to smoke), but I have no particular desire to try it.
On the other hand, most of my friends have at least tried it, and (since I’m being honest here), while I do think a little bit less of them for it, it’s really common, and seems to have done them no harm. And I do have a friend who is a recovered heroin addict (I was friends with her sister during that period, but we’ve become friends since) and a cousin who is an alcoholic spiraling down the drain, so I guess I’ve learned some nuance about addiction. The ex-heroin addict is a smart woman, and ultimately had the strength and family support to get over it. My cousin is not a smart woman, and while she has the family support, she lacks the inner resources to recover.
I guess it comes down to I don’t like it and I don’t want to be around it, but I can manage “out of sight, out of mind” for people who seem to be good people and have their lives together. I think that’s probably the vast majority of users.
I agree. Some people try it, use it for a bit, drop it and never use it again. Others try it, and become habitual users, and it may or may not affect their potential over time. It may not be popular opinion but I hope my kids are the former.
There’s a middle ground in there. Some people occasionally use pot, similar to the way people are social drinkers. They aren’t addicted, they don’t need it, but they enjoy it in moderation in social situations, or even just on their own. For a large percentage (perhaps the majority) it’s a choice that has little or no impact on their lives.
You can certainly hope they chose to avoid pot, but you have little control over that. Are you willing to have that impact your lifelong relationship with your kids?
The fact that your sons reacted the way they did and were able to talk to you in a calm manner (I’m assuming) and seem to be showing care for your feelings tells me you’re doing a perfectly fine job as a mother. I was a “good kid,” but I also did all sorts of stuff my parents would not have approved of. If caught, I certainly would not have reacted with as much empathy as your sons did. in my teenaged years, I was completely self-centered. I couldn’t give any less of a shit of what my parents thought of me and if I upset them.
So you’re doing fine, and it sounds like you have unusually empathetic and mature kids, even if they are doing pot from time to time. I have daughters 5 and 3, and I’ll be thanking God if they even talk to me when they’re in their teens, much less act like they’re concerned about my approval.
You’re doing fine; just take this all in perspective. It’s a relatively normal part of growing up (though I didn’t do pot specifically until I was 18, but “normal part” refers to doing things your parents don’t want you to do, partly in a way to develop a self-identity, partly perhaps as rebellion. For me, it wasn’t so much about rebellion as establishing myself as my own person.)
I really don’t understand why you think your kids are the ones who need counseling.
If they don’t clean their rooms when you tell them to, are you going to take them for counseling for that? What if they fail a test in school? More counseling?
Wrong. We’re talking about pot here. Not hard drugs, not pills, not even alcohol. Most people who use do so simply because it’s fun and they like how it feels.
On the possibly having reasons for doing it front I’ll share that I was a troubled and problem kid but I always hated smoking pot with others because it made me want to go out in the world and it made everyone else want to sit and giggle. Fast forward 40 years and they finally diagnose my epilepsy due to a stroke at birth and offer me a prescription for a medicinal version (unaffordable here so my doc asked if I could grow it).
My point is to perhaps ask the boys what they were getting out of it. If it was sitting around giggling with friends finding deep meaning in junk food and song lyrics then it is bog standard experimentation as done by teens all over. If they report it making them feel more functional then there may be an underlying issue worth exploring medically or psychologically. It is very unlikely but if it is a concern at all it may be worth asking the question.
Thylacine,makes a good point. I have a sister who started smoking at a young age. I think it was two parts youthful rebellion and one part self-medication for undiagnosed ADHD and bipolar mania. Could be if she had been properly diagnosed and treated, the youthful rebellion wouldn’t have happened (as much) in the first place.
My mother tried to force me into counseling, and it didn’t work. I refused to open up to my counselor. The counselor finally got fed up with me and told my mom there was nothing he could do for me.
Looking back, that counseling would have been more fruitful if we went together, as opposed to placing all the blame on our troubled relationship squarely on me.
For god’s sake. Don’t be that woman. I spent my entire 20’s not talking to my mother because of that nonsense.
Pot is extremely unlikely to lead to death. Alcohol can kill you. Alcohol enormously increases the risk you will kill yourself driving, or trying to explode a turkey or something, too. Pot? Pot is likely to make you giggle. Doctors have mentioned to me that they’ve never seen an ER case from a pot overdose. And while pot increases the risk of getting into an auto accident, the effect is not nearly as much as the effect of drinking – friends who use pot tell me this is because when you are high it’s obvious that you are high, whereas drunks often don’t realize how impaired they are.
I would have put occasional pot use closer to a 50.
I’d put getting pregnant in the 70s or 80s, and using opioids in the 90s.
The vaping crisis you read about in the news is likely over.
Most of the deaths have been linked to producers cutting THC with vitamin E acetate, which looks like THC oil and has a similar consistency. But now that that’s known, there’s a lot less of it on the market.
Not that vaping is a good idea, and I certainly would discourage my kids from doing it, ESPECIALLY from vaping nicotine, and also any illegal products. But the risk today from vaping cannabis isn’t as high as you might fear.
Counseling for being curious?
Okay, that’s good. I hope you both find it helpful in re-establishing your relationship.
I agree, and I am “the husband” in my family’s version of this scenario. This was one of the biggest contributing factors to the breakdown of my marriage. When there were difficult times, I behaved like this guy. My wife overreacted and catastrophized everything, eventually resenting me and blaming me for being the “liked” parent and so much more while she “was the one (echoing beginning of OP) doing this and that and the other” and trying to be the “good mom and little wife” when none of that was what any of us asked for or needed.
Really? You’re going to skip all the data we have on cannabis and teenagers and compare it to not cleaning their rooms??? I think weed is fine for adults. A number of studies have shown today’s THC-rich cannabis is not so fine for teens. (And neither are alcohol and a number of other drugs.)
And counseling is not punishment. Whether the OP was overreacting or not, there’s been a huge rift in the family. Counseling could be beneficial to her and to the family as a whole. It’s certainly not going to hurt.
