Please help educate me on standard "party-girl"-type teenage rebellion.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m godfather to my best friend’s two daughters, and our families are quite close. Recently, they asked us to tutor the youngest one in math and science, as her previously ok to good marks have nosedived. She’s 15 years old and currently in grade 10, first year of “real” high-school. After a while, it’s become apparent that what we have here is a failure to give a crap, if you’ll pardon the vernacular. Parent-teacher interviews have revealed that she does not pay attention in class, does not bother to hand in assignments, and only makes a cursory effort on material she neither understands nor remembers on exams and quizzes.

This is part or a wider pattern that has emerged in the past year: she has experimented with drinking, smoking & partying. She spends between 2 and 3 hours in the morning putting her hair and make-up together, and is invariably drawn to kids who have a reputation as druggies, partiers and drinkers. People who study or get good grades are deemed “losers”. From casual discussions, it’s clear that, from her perspective, graduation, adulthood and full time employment will occur roughly in the same timeframe as the heat-death of the universe. It does not help that she is becoming one smoking little hottie, and has boys tripping over themselves and elbowing each other aside for the privilege of basking in her radiance, and of making various offerings of free food, dance tickets, calculators, etc.

Yes, I know, there is nothing new here. I know this is as old as the world, and that there probably was some Assyrian dad in 7453bc wondering what to do about his daughter in the exact same situation. Unfortunately, this is completely new to the parents, and to my wife and I also. Older sister has been an over-achieving honour student, and is currently in first year of university after graduating high school with grades asymptotically trending towards 100. I don’t know what to expect, what to look out for (beyond the obvious immediate threats to her health). I don’t know what advice or guidance to offer my best friend. And, frankly, he could use some help. Aside from being the sole breadwinner, he’s also currently dealing with the Mom’s grave, life-threatening illness, (which will require a bone marrow transplant in 2 months) and basically managing the household as well. I wish I were making this up. Party-girl isn’t too troubled about Mom’s illness, partly because Dad has shielded the girls from the full seriousness of the situation, partly because right now she despises her own mother as an ultimate loser.

So far, Dad is doing his best to keep track of her comings and goings, and trying to avoid / reduce unsupervised time with other kids. Cell phone has been discontinued after she ran up a >$700 bill in one month. School counselling has been arranged, although they sound somewhat overloaded and they refuse to involve the parents. We have been tutoring her in math and science, and there will be summer school in the immediate future. Facebook and email traffic is being sporadically monitored. As far as we know, drug testing is being setup with the family doctor. Needless to say, there have been countless family and father-daughter “talks”. The best that we can say for these efforts so far is that there has not yet been any serious catastrophe, and that marks are marginally improving. Just maybe, further deterioration is being held at bay. Maybe. For now.

And so I turn to you, Dopers. Is there any wisdom you can offer? Did you go through the same thing? Do you see this all the time at work (hopefully not as a corrections officer)? Is this you when you were young? Can you recommend a book, or a website? Because all I know is that, right now, trying to help this kid is like pushing on a rope, and will remain so until this kid can have some kind of insight and muster up some kind of motivation.

2

The amatuer psychologist in me zeroed in on this sentence as the key to the situation. She’s probably more troubled over Mom’s illness than you think, and it’s manifesting itself in inappropriate ways.

As for what your friends should do about it, though, I got nothing.

3

My suspicion is that this is exactly why she’s acting out. She’s shielding herself from hurt and fear by trying to convince herself she doesn’t care about potentially losing her mom, because she’s such a loser anyway. She’s probably also drawn to the “bad” kids because they seem tough and able to handle “real” life, unlike the “good” kids who are “sheltered”. I’d suggest the dad talk to her more about what’s going on with Mom, in a quasi-adult way, and get her some therapy if possible - even just a school counselor or someone to vent to.

4

There oughta be a “Scared Straight” style program where the 15 year party girls get to meet and experience “a day in the life” of a 20 year old single mother of three, trying to live on WIC/food stamps and minimum wage. Father either unknown or not paying support. Or trapped in a bad marriage with an abusive/druggie spouse that can’t/won’t work.

5

I should preface this with: I’m not a parent (I’m only 24 myself), but I do work with high school students and have since I graduated high school.

A couple of things jump out at me, primarily the section where you’re talking about her older sister. While she may never admit to it (teens are tricky like that), are you sure she isn’t acting out because of the standard her older sister has set? Sometimes, it’s easier to just not try at all, then to try your best and still fall short of the standard. Now, we as adults know that such an attitude won’t get you very far in life, but to a teenager, it gives them some short term feelings of control over a situation.

The other thing is her mother’s illness, which may also be causing her to act out. Dad might think he’s doing a good job of keeping things from the kids, but kids aren’t dumb. I assure you she’s more hip to what’s going on, more perceptive to the feelings in the house, etc. than you guys are aware. That is the much harder thing to deal with here.

If I were in your shoes, I’d help her find something she loves. Naturally, this may be easier said than done, but I’m sure there is something out there she can get passionate about and excel at. Ideally, something completely different from anything her sister did, something that can be entirely her own. If they have the incentive of doing something they love and working hard at it,usually kids like her will pick up the slack in other areas to keep doing that one thing they love.

6

I don’t envy you. At 15, the daughter is old enough to handle the truth about what is going on with mom. Who knows, that may be the reality check that snaps her out of her teen-aged funk.

Other than that, most kids like this don’t have any real long term goal setting, because college, as you implied, is an eternity away.

7

I have a couple of cousins who were like this. Both of their trajectories were to be pushed into going to college, getting pregnant shortly after going to college, and using the child to manipulate their parents into supporting them for about ten more years… at which time they started to grow up and take some responsibility. And by which time they had 2-3 more kids.

I really don’t know that anything would have stopped either from doing what they did. There’s a certain kind of woman who is man-mad, and eventually maybe baby-mad also. They seem constitutionally incapable of being responsible enough to stand on their own two feet until they’re about thirty years old.

To head-off the possibility of babies, I’d discuss getting her a long-term birth control like Norplant.

Also, you can’t make her care about grades. Sophomore year of school is a little early to be making kids think about college and careers (imho), but you might want to plant seeds of ideas in her head about beauty school, catering school, and other practical but academically less-challenging career options that provide a lot of sensory stimulation, rather than dry boring book work.

8

This is a problem to me too. If she does know more than Dad thinks she does (which is probably the case) she knows that Dad is lying to her and that her mom might die, but has no one to talk with about it. If she really doesn’t know, then she’s being set up for quite a horrifying shock–either when her mom ‘suddenly’ gets very sick and dies, or when she realizes that she was lied to.

My first advice would be to sit down with her, apologize for treating her like a little kid and hiding things from her, tell her the true situation, and be honest with her about the feelings around that. Find her someone she can talk to honestly about it.

9

Seconded. All the teenage girls I knew who were like this either… a) fucked up their life real bad with drugs, alcohol or pregnancy or b) snapped out of it around 23, settled down with a decent guy and started grinding out a normal life.

Neither is an attractive option, but I believe in the pattern.

10

If a 15 YO thinks her mom is a loser, I would bet your ass she thinks she is a loser, too, whether she’ll say it or not.

Teen years are where you start growing into a woman, and where do you look? Your own mother. And you push her away at the same time as you try to emulate her. She’s uncool and so old-fashioned but at the same time she’s your standard for what a woman should be, at least until you grow a little older.

Much has been written and said about the male influence on a son that I think people forget sometimes about the female influence on a daughter.

11

I would like to give an enormous thumbs-up to this. No dad wants to think about his 15-year-old daughter having sex, but he has to accept this statement: if she isn’t already having sex, she will be very, very soon. (Maybe this weekend!) She’s not going to make good choices about condom use on the spot, you can take my word on that. Talk it over with her doc, and at the very least get her on the Pill or something.

12

While I thankfully have no firsthand experience with this sorta thing, let me throw in my 2 cents.

Given her downward slide AND her mothers precarious position AND the poor Dad being overwhelmed I think its time for a very serious “come to Jesus” kinda talk with the girl where EVERYTHING is laid out stone cold.

13

Depo shots seem to be a good way to go for girls that age, because they last 3 months. It seems unlikely that she would be into taking a pill every day unless the father monitors her pill-taking every day. The pill has fewer side effects, though, so if he can monitor it, she’d be better off.

14

Yikes. While I’m all for giving teenage girls long-term birth control, in theory, the effects of Norplant and Depo are pretty severe for full-grown adult women, especially in terms of depression and especially at the beginning. Getting someone to talk to her about condoms and Plan B might be better. And, if you’re lucky, someone’s bothering to talk to the boys she 's friends with about condoms, too.

I know you can’t get away from supposed “Girl Power” these days (okay, fine, in the 1990s) and Super Sweet 16 makes it look like like teenage girls no longer have a problem with self esteem… but they do. She may seem self-absorbed and enjoy basking in attention, but if you want her to rise above this, eventually, she’s going to need a sense of self-worth. Real self-esteem. Only if she thinks she has value and potential will she realize she needs to graduate to make something of herself, that she has the power to tell a guy ‘No’ or that he has to use a condom, and that she can make a name for herself rather than living in her sister’s shadow, at least academically (I am making assumptions here, but I’d be pretty surprised if the two weren’t explicitly compared to one another by their parents).

To be honest, though, unless the OP is leaving something out it sounds like she isn’t that far gone. She’s doing badly in school. Okay. Not everyone’s top of the class, and her grades are slowly improving. She needs to stay on that. The drugs, drinking, ‘partying’ (dancing? Hanging out with friends?)… not that rare for 15-year-olds. Certainly not for me and my friends, and none of us had sex before 18. Yes, it sounds like this could be connected in part to the mother’s health, and that the kids will need support once they know the truth, and I appreciate trying to go the preventive route, but nothing about this sounds like the end of the world.

15

Teens at that age are really bad at using condoms regularly and effectively, and Plan B is only for if you know you had an mishap, within 5 days, and it’s $50 a crack, unless you’re covered by insurance. That’s why depo shots are commonly used by teen clinics (or the patch, which is hard to monitor whether it’s being used properly).

16

Really good advice thus far, I won’t try to duplicate anything that’s already been said. A lot of parents have a tendency to over-infantilize their children and protect them from the world. It sounds like dad is doing that in this case. With the internet as it is, she cannot be sheltered in the same way that kids 20 years ago could be. The mom issue is more of a biggie than you’ve stated it, and more than the dad probably realizes. It is way too late to try to shelter her at this point.

Kids that age give off a very strong “don’t care” aura about almost everything, and especially about things they DO care about. Teens who claim “I don’t care what people think about me” actually desperately care that strangers think they don’t care about them, and desperately DO care what their friends think of them.

There are really a couple roads you could take. One would be prohibition–no more partying ever, no more internet ever, no more phone calls ever (or at least until she is earning straight Bs). This might have the positive short term effect of making her look like a good girl, but in the long term this will have an extremely detrimental effect on her relationship with her father. I don’t recommend this road.

Another way would be to realize that, although she is legally under the father’s rules while under his roof, logistically she is old enough to think for herself. She knows what she wants and she+you know how far she will go to get it. I don’t think you need to stage a super-serial intervention, but do try to impress upon her how her choices will impact her future. Try to show her that popularity in high school means diddly effing squat once you’re in the real world. Ask her if she even has any goals. Does she want to go to beauty school? Massage therapy? Bartending? Low-totem jobs in the medical field? Does she want to end up in a crappy minimum wage job becaues she didn’t ask herself these questions when she was 15? Because she’s not going to go to college with her current grades and lack of study habits.

I don’t know how effective it would be to convince her that she must go to college because of future job prospects, though it’s one way to try it. You could try being honest with her about how much better it is to be popular in college than high school (sorority life and all that), and how much better sex gets once you’re older.

I also think that directing her into a hobby is a good idea, but it’s probably too late for her to get into most of those. I was in basketball for a while, softball for a few years, and band for many years. Does she have any structured extra-school activities at all? A sport would take up time that she would otherwise spend doing nothing, and sports drug test too. Could she join choir? The problem is that most kids who do these things (relatively wholesome structured activities with their own circle of friends) started them by 6th grade at the latest. (Please note I am very against overscheduling kids, but she sounds very UNDERscheduled which is also not good)

In the end she is going to be who she wants to be. You could do everything right and she could still refuse to change, get knocked up at 16, and that’s that. Don’t get discouraged if she doesn’t take your advice. Because it IS just advice. You can only control a human being’s actions so much. Be honest and tell her dad to be straight about mom’s condition. Because if mom dies without something improving, I anticipate this girl having a total meltdown.

17

I took Depo and gained a crapload of weight that took me a helluva long time to work off. Would not recommend.

18

One thing I remember from the cliques in high school was that if you were unhappy or scared about how your life was going and wanted to hang out with people who would understand that feeling there were really only two groups to choose from, the theater crowd or the druggies. Everyone else seemed to be generally happy with their lives and doing fairly well in school.

Since 15 is about the age when peers have more influence on behavior than parents, it’s possible that her poor school performance and crabby attitude are mostly about trying to fit in with the only people who she feels are accepting of the issues she’s dealing with right now.

At 15 she is aware of what’s happening with her mom’s illness, and probably very scared about it but unable to talk to her dad since he’s shutting her out and not being honest with her about the situation.

I wonder what else is it that you all expect her to do with her fears? No one at home is allowing for open communication and most kids at school probably have no idea how to handle that information much less offer any real support. If you want her to turn away from this crowd and toward another source for support it’s probably up to you to become that source.

19

Good on you, OP, for being there for the whole family. A caring outside influence might be just what this girl needs.

I agree you need to help her find her passion. Try volunteermatch.com to help pinpoint local opportunities, then go with her. If she suddenly comes to realize the awesomeness of, say, teaching kiddies to read, or caring for injured wildlife, bingo - now you bring up her grades as you point out the prerequisites for working in that field.

Good luck, and do report back if you get a chance.

20

One thing I recommend is getting her away from that environment, for a few weeks or months. Have her dad send her to summer school in a foreign country, or have her be an exchange student. Granted, she may get in trouble wherever she goes (highly possible), but it will at least get her away from her loser friends for a while.

Her dad might not go with that, since he wants to supervise her closely as she is acting out, but (in my personal experience) the more closely supervised a person is the more likely they are to act out, especially if they have a rebellious streak to their nature. Plus if she is sent away she may realise there’s more to life than her druggie friends, and may aspire to better things.

About birth control - I do not think this girl is actually stupid. After all, her sister is intelligent and so are her parents. She’s probably aware of all the options. I was, at her age. However, I had to sneak around my parents to get any birth control, and at that age, getting effective birth control without your parents knowing is DIFFICULT. Condoms are easy to get but also hardly fail-proof. It would really, really be wise of her parents to take her to the doctor and discuss all the options with her and then support her decision. Implants are probably best because at that age party girls will most likely sleep over at their friends’ houses and then forget their birth control, and one night of that could be disastrous. This is REALLY IMPORTANT.

She also needs to hear the STD talk, but it’s less important than getting her on birth control ASAP.

Also: I hate hearing doom and gloom from people about party girls inevitably ending up welfare single moms. Both myself and my best friend were insane at that time, are 33 now and still don’t have kids; have respectable jobs and college educations and have enjoyed our lives. Granted, my friend took a while to get there, but that’s because she joined the Navy after high school instead of going to college, like me. It’s a completely reversable situation, if she has the intelligence and if her parents can handle it thoughtfully and not reactionarily.