I wouldn’t go the route of drug testing. Drug testing isn’t going to stop a teenager who’s determined to do drugs, it will just make them a craftier drug user. The people I know who are tested by their parents either “schedule” their drug use so that it’ll be out of their system or use drugs that will leave their system faster, like alcohol. It sounds like she’s only an occasional user, there’s no need to go overboard.
People have already given the advice that I would: sit her down and tell her about reading her blog. Explain that while you understand that people her age experiment with drugs, it will not be tolerated in your house. If you find drugs in the house, they will be flushed (don’t put them in a drawer in your room and forget about them) and she will be punished. If they start interfering with her school work, job, ect., she will be punished. If she’s arrested, she’ll have to figure out how to deal with it on her own. Don’t lecture her on the effects of drug use, she’s probably heard it a million times before in school. Just let her know that she should stay out of cars driven by people on drugs and you will always pick her up, no questions asked.
Abbie, your post seems closest to how I would handle the situation (and the closest to how the situation would have been handled by my parents) but I have a question about this part:
So she is allowed to smoke pot as long as she calls to be picked up? And if she fails the next drug test after that, it doesn’t count because she called? Seems like a big loophole. I’m thinking the random tests are overkill, at least at this stage.
Good luck having a teenager willingly bend over for a smacking.
This doesn’t work in my experience. You’re right, being embarassed is a big deal with most teens but from there it can go either way. They might learn, or they might leave.
You might be underestimating 15 year olds. From personal experience 15 is a pivotal age for teenagers. Many will have older friends and a social network they can turn to. My sister did and effectively left home at 16. My parents tried to impose their will and failed (she was never a problem until about 13). In fact, I can think of at least 3 others (all girls) who did the exact same thing and are paying for it now.
Sure, everyone’s different and I’m sure some kids are dead scared of leaving (which is why I wasn’t a problem and I’m still living with mom at 27 :D) but get the right combination of pig headedness and a rebelling teen and you can easily loose control of a teenager.
A lot of good advice here, but I’m not sure how much of it would actually work on a teen. Speaking as someone who just graduated, we were bombarded with seminars, speakers, posters and pamphlettes telling us why drugs were bad. Kids aren’t stupid- they know the side effects and reperucssions. People still do it. I didn’t, but plenty did.
Why didn’t I? My mom always told me, “If you EVER get arrested for ANYTHING stupid- drinking, drugs, killing a prostitute (kidding)- don’t call me from jail. Your ass is safer behind bars; what happens to you in prison isn’t nearly as bad as what I WILL do to you.”
I was thinking the same thing you were as I was writing it.
I’m guessing it would be something like this: say she smokes and calls Mom to pick her up on January 1. It takes what? Thirty days to get out of the system? If it’s 30 days, then a test on say, February 1st should come out clean. (One would hope that this would be only a very occasional event. If she’s hell bent on smoking, it’d be nice to see her only do it a handful of times per year rather than at every party, ya know?)
This is assuming she hasn’t called to be picked up between those two dates, anyway.
This is a very big loophole, you’re right. I would think that if she starts abusing this agreement (simply getting high every weekend and always making sure to call), that arrangement would definitely have to stop.
I think the point I was trying to make is keeping her away from the wheel of a car while she’s stoned, even if it means telling her that she won’t be punished when she gets home. I don’t want to see any kid encouraged to smoke pot, I’d hope there would be lots of discouragement. But I equally don’t want to see someone bury their child, either, so sometimes concessions may need to be made.
It’s kind of like the “I don’t want you to do it, but if you think you’re going to have sex come talk to me about birth control and I swear I won’t kill you” thing. It’s not that parents are telling their kids to go ahead and have sex, they just want, in the event of their kid doing something stupid, to keep 'em alive.
The girl is smoking pot. Why would any parent extend the same amount of trust to a kid doing pot than they would a straightlaced, angelic, never-does-anything-wrong-and-wants-to-spend-the-summer-building-houses-with-Habitat type?
I believe in the “trust until you screw up” philosophy. Parents who snoop when they have a great kid who has given them NO reason to do so are in the wrong. Everyone needs privacy. But the idea that parents should continue to “trust” their kids when their kids are continually doing bad things is ridiculous.
When you screw up, trust is lost and it takes a while to be rebuilt. Whining about it is kind of like whining because Wal-Mart won’t take your checks anymore after you’ve written 15 bad checks there.
Purple haze is the adult, not the kid. It’s not her job to be “trustworthy” when the daughter herself cannot be trusted. When your kid is putting themself in danger, all bets are off and you’ve gotta do what you gotta do and let the kid get pissed if they want to. They can be “friends” when she’s 30.
purple haze: I found out my daughter is smoking marijuana.
straight dope: Thats okay, she’s just a minor breaking the law,but so what? Pot should be legal, and kids underage should do whatever they want, parents should get used to it.
:smack:
How stupid does it get? You do realize if she smokes and you are allowing it (assuming a parent would be that stupid) you will be arrested.
Because “doing pot” does not automatically make one untrustworthy. Nearly half of all high school graduates in the U.S. have tried marijuana. Add in the ones who have had sex, used alcohol, driven recklessly, or engaged in other risky behaviors, and your Habitat kid starts to look like a distinct minority. Everyone is wired differently. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect all teenagers to live up to such lofty ideals, and I don’t think it’s right to lose trust in them when they don’t.
First, teenagers screw up. I mean, that’s what they do. Also, when your definition of “screw up” casts such a wide net that it snares most of the teens in the country, it makes your philosophy essentially meaningless.
Huh? Everything you’ve posted directly contradicts that statement, unless you’re working from a definition of “everyone” that I’m unfamiliar with.
It’s not about being friends. See what I said about that whole “middle ground” thing in my previous post. I’m not saying mom should sit her daughter down and teach her some proper joint-rolling techniques, but your recommendations seem like an insane overreaction to a pretty common (and usually benign) situation.
D and I used to drink together, find one night stands together, and sometimes smoke weed together. She move to another state (away from me, her mother, school, any form of structure) and now spends all day watching DVDs and smoking (she has no job and no education). I stayed at uni, still smoke a little, am the top of the class every year.
Weed can do a lot to you if you let it. I think if you are sensible to begin with you will be fine.
My mother was VERY cool about drinking and pot - she had a policy verbalized since I can remember that if I chose to drink or smoke pot, it would be my choice, but I was expected to be responsible about it. This meant - no driving, no taking rides with those high or drunk, and an open door policy on calling in either one of these situations when I needed a ride home.
BUT.
She was very anti-smoking. Don’t do it. Ever.
Guess who started smoking at 14? And who didn’t drink or try pot until 19?
IMHO - make it clear that it isn’t the end of the world, but make it VERY clear that you expect responsibility.
As long as your kid isn’t a chronic pot head, there are worse things they can do… witness my brother who is very close to his CGA and STILL smokes weed occasionally.
Insisting your kid obey the law is an “insane overreaction?”
Using a drug that destroys brain cells (especially at a critical time of one’s physical development) is “benign?”
Sounds to me as if less than half of the teens in the country are being “snared” if we’re talking about pot, according to your cite. You’ll get out of kids what you expect out of them (most of the time). You can expect them to be responsible, law abiding citizens, or you can lower the bar completely and be cool with pretty much anything they do. Those parents in the latter category have no right to wail when the pot turns into something far worse – and let’s face it, sometimes pot is just the beginning of a disaster. I would think that our kids are too precious to allow them to start ruining their lives at such a young age. Whether we think pot use (as in, the only drug being used) is generally harmless or a Bad Thing, the decision to begin using it should come after you get some sense and maturity … which, in general, is not the teen years.
There’s screwing up, and then there’s SCREWING UP. Minor screwing up would be coming in late from curfew because you honestly lost track of time, or your grades are slipping because you’re overwhelmed with extracurricular activities, etc. Drug use is a pretty damn major screw up, IMHO. It’s against the law (rightly or wrongly), it’s physically harmful and it can get both the kids and the parents in a lot of trouble.
If teenagers can’t get the death penalty for murder because they are supposedly not rational enough before age 18 to truly understand what they’re doing, why would we assume that they have the decision making skills and maturity to begin using drugs at such an age?
I have to say that if my parents were trying to force me to name names (to call the police or inform parents), I would have left home. Whatever relationship we had would have been destroyed.
My parents never caught me (although while I was in university, I did inform them that I was a social dope smoker). It was truly never a problem for me.
I agree with the posters that recommended letting her know that you won’t bail her out, that the legal consequences can be great, and the usual health disclaimers apply. I agree that it’s imperative to impress upon her that smoking and driving or being in the car with someone who is (or has been) smoking is as dangerous as being drunk and cannot be tolerated.
What might be an effective deterrent? I assume she will qualify for her driver’s license next year. After you’ve had your discussion, perhaps you should let her know that may not be an option if she chooses to break the law or you have reason to believe she’s being less than responsible.
Thanks, Abbie. I didn’t agree with the part about getting the names of her suppliers and turning them in; I also think the drug testing is of limited usefulness and not a thing I’d do unless as a last resort, but I do agree that if your rule is “My kids are not allowed to smoke pot” then by gum, you should definitely do all you can to enforce that. I know that there are lots of worse things than pot, and I smoked it more than a few times myself. That’s beside the point, and the point is, my kids are not allowed to smoke pot.
If a child is doing something they are totally aware their parents disapprove of, that also is a violation of the law (whether or not we AGREE with the law is a totally different discussion - it’s the LAW until it’s changed), then they are, by definition, being untrustworthy.
Privacy for a minor child living at home is a PRIVILEGE not a right. A kid who self-admittedly is breaking rules doesn’t get to complain that their parent isn’t trusting them.
If a child is not going to behave in a trustworthy fashion, then they don’t get to be trusted. Trust is EARNED. Once broken, it has to be earned back.
Smoking pot is dangerous to a kid. Maybe not physically (although that’s extremely debateable - and we can take it up in GD if we’re so inclined), but definitely legally and socio-economically. There are a number of serious risks associated - not all physical - and a parent’s job is to try and minimize those risks for their kids. If my kid were out joyriding in “borrowed” cars - or drinking and driving - or spraypainting slogans on buildings or cars, I would be just as upset as if he were smoking pot. For much the same reasons.
All those things are instances of breaking the law where it infringes upon someone else. You steal my car, spraypaint my wall, drink and drive on my roads and possibly kill me. If you smoke pot, the only victim is you .
I understand why some people would take that position, but I don’t agree with it. A legal code is not the same thing as a moral code, and I think that’s an important distinction for a teenager to learn. Otherwise, they might go around thinking pot smokers are equivalent to car thieves and vandals…
When I was a teen, my mother freaked out about my cigarette smoking and nearly blew a gasket when she found empty malt liquor bottles in my closet. Pot, on the other hand, never bothered her. Even though I was rather overt about it (I kept my bong on my desk), she never said a word.
At the time, Mom had been a nurse for over twenty years, so she wasn’t exactly stupid. Though she had never smoked, rarely drank, and never tried drugs, she knew the risks. She also knew that I was bound and determined to, well, be a teenager, and that the harder she cracked down on risky behavior, the sneakier and less forthcoming I’d be about it.
Sure, perhaps she could have stripped me of my privacy and humiliated me, making us hate each other, and maybe even making me fed up enough to run away, but she didn’t go that route. She read me the riot act for the things she considered most dangerous, but let the comparatively minor things slip by with a tacit sort of tolerance.
My health was always her primary concern; the law was secondary. Since her approach made me more inclined to give her an honest account of what I was up to, she knew that I was a responsible and discreet user who would probably avoid legal trouble. And I did.
