With all due respect, you have the word, “Doormat,” Sharpied across your forehead (A Sharpie will eventually wear off; a tattoo will not). It’s your house; it’s your health. How important is your health to you? From your description, not much. Her immature behavior is more important than your long-term health. You both lose. She’s not a (legal) adult. So why are you allowing a non-adult to make choices for you, an adult, inside your own home?
Create some House Rules and stick to them. No matter what. Right now she has no reason to stop because there is nothing in it for her to stop. How does one teach the consequences of bad behavior when you don’t practice what you preach?
While you may be the best think since sliced bread to come into her life, you’re loafing. Potential threats of returning to previous behavior are making you a hostage in your own home. That means the bad behavior of hers is running your life. How will she understand her bad behavior (and the potential for its return) when you carry around for her?
You wanna smoke? Not in this house. Period. No exceptions.
You wanna smoke? See that chair in the middle of the backyard? That’s your smoking chair. See that can next to it? That’s the butt can. That’s the only place you are tolerated to smoke on this property. Period. And there is a 15 minute waiting period from the time you finish your last smoke and when you can reenter my home. I don’t want you dragging your smoke smell into my home.
Oh, no tobacco or smoking products in my house. Period. Here’s another coffee can, with a lid. Leave your cancer sticks and lighter in it, outside the back door.
Tell her that every time you have a reaction to cigarette smoke, she’s gonna lose a privilege. Maybe the Ciggy Fairies are creeping into the house, lighting up, and letting HER take the blame. Well, that’s too bad. Tell her that you don’t CARE who’s smoking in the house, your reaction to the smoke is now HER problem. Tell her that she’s gonna lose her bedroom door for a week every time you have a reaction, and during that week you are going to inspect her room AT LEAST once a day. This means that you pull out and examine every article in her drawers, cabinets, shelves, and closets. You check under the bed. You check under the mattress. You check behind the mirror. If you don’t have a reaction during the doorless week, she is allowed to have a door again. If you do have a reaction, then she loses something else, like phone and texting messages. You take physical custody of her cell phone (assuming she has one). If she needs to get a homework assignment from somebody, YOU make the call, and relay the info back and forth. There’s also cutting cable and computer privileges. Mostly, this involves moving the computer out into the common area, where she will have to use it right under your nose.
Often, losing the bedroom door ONCE works. If nothing works, though, you’re going to have to have her live somewhere else. Maybe a halfway or group house. When she smokes, SHE IS KILLING YOU, and you have the right to defend yourself.
You could go into all-out war mode: every time you smell smoke, spray an air freshener with a smell she hates into her room. Or maybe treat her like a misbehaving cat: get the water bottle and squirt her when she lights up in the house. You might have to deal with some tantrums, though. However, when she complains about it, you could just deny doing it, like she did when you found her with a cigarette in her mouth. (Disclaimer: I make no guarantees and have no experience dealing with teenagers. Just trying to make you chuckle.)
Seriously, though, if you have allergic reactions to it, you need to be firmer and stand your ground. Imagine if she had a peanut allergy and you occasionally made stir-fry with peanuts in it, and you denied it even when she presented you with peanuts on her plate? That’s ludicrous.
I am in the camp of “its not an option to kick her out”, there are much more creative ways to stop her smoking. Many good ideas have been posted already. Remember, she is dependant on you for a lot, for example food. Feed her liver and lima beans if she smokes, only have food available in the house that she hates. This is just one idea of many that would work but you get the idea, you just have to make it more uncomfortble for her to smoke in the house than not.
Have you spoken to social services? If she is still in school, the school will have a counselor or a social worker. They may be able to help you find some options for her. She won’t be a minor much longer - and then you’ll no longer have that reason for letting yourself be treated like a doormat. At that point, you’ll either kick a suicidal eighteen year old out on the street, or you’ll be sharing your space with an adult who doesn’t respect you or herself and who you are enabling. You need a plan that is going to turn her into either someone you are willing to share your space with, or a self sufficient adult - over the next year. A counselor or social worker may be able to talk over her options with her - and convince her that living on the street sometime in the next year is not in her best interest, so she’d better pick one of the other two options.
I just want to note how much this sounds like something I’ve heard my brother say to my niece–who is only 3. His words are different, and the issues are different (at least, I assume your daughter doesn’t routinely pee on the floor NEXT to the potty and then not tell anyone so it can be cleaned up) but the sentiment is very much one I’ve heard.
I haven’t had any further issues with her smoking in the house since we talked the other morning. She also currently doesn’t have a door so that if she is smoking in her room she won’t be able to hide it. If she continues to not smoke in the house, she may earn her door back in a few weeks. As she has received official warning on this, she’ll be facing harsher consequences on any future smoking in the house. Specifically, she’ll be sleeping on Grandma’s couch until her eighteenth birthday in April.
Since this is our only current, major behavioral issue, I see no reason and have no desire to seek placement for her outside of my home without this second chance. I don’t believe my desire to work with her rather than toss her out makes me a doormat or an enabler, though I’ve also recognized a number of ways that my family has been relying on me too much to take their crap. What constitutes “too much crap” is something only I can decide, though, since I’m the only one on here who actually knows all of the details of my life.
I appreciate the suggestions and considered each reply here.
Seems like the biggest thing (aside from all the other bigger things) is she’s being pretty damn stupid about it. I smoked when I was 17/18, but I wasn’t stupid enough to light up in my room with all the windows closed and parent/guardian home. Is it too complicated for her to open a freaking window and put a fan next to her so most of the smoke blows out the window? It doesn’t work nearly as well as 17 year old criminal masterminds think it does, but it’s at least something.
CaerieD, I compliment you on your patience. Reading some of the responses here, I suspect many posters either missed your reference to this girl’s BPD, or have no personal experience with BPD. I dated a girl with BPD for six months*, and can testify that her mentality and behavior was most certainly not “typical rebellious teenager” behavior. It was a whole 'nother thing, and can’t be dealt with in the same ways.
*It would have been more like six weeks, but, well, let’s just say there are some situations you can’t just walk away from. You have to very carefully and slowly extricate yourself instead.
I’m frankly amazed at some of the responses here… Kick the kid out? For smoking? Good grief. There are a multitude of easily enforceable punishments and workarounds one could use.
-Set up a smoking area thats reasonably comfortable(depends on how lax you are about a 17 year old smoking)
-Remove door(already done, so np). Sucks, from experience.
-Removal of major luxuries. No TV. No computer. No Radio, etc. Also sucks, from experience.
-Removal of car privileges, if any.
-Enforced bedtimes/wake up times. Trust me, from experience, having to get up at 5am along with dad for a few weeks puts a serious damper on inappropriate behavior.
-Sit down and talk rationally about the dangers of smoking, and offer help. Get nicotine gum, or patches.
Were this kid under my care, I would use a combination of the things. The door, of course, would be gone first thing. Remarkably effective punishment for a teen. I would explain to them that they were not going to smoke anymore if they lived in my house. If I continued to smell smoke on her clothes, not only would the door not be removed, but life would become increasingly boring around here. Then I would take her to the doctor to get nicotine patches prescribed(unless they are OTC? I have no idea.), and fully support her efforts at quitting, perhaps going so far as to give up something I loved but was unhealthy at the same time, such as soda.
I’d have to know the girl to judge her though, It may be that I would simply set up a smoking spot in the garage if she had enough issues to deal with already, while just making the offer to get patches/gum to help her quit if she wished to.
But hey, why go to any effort when you can kick them out, right?
Brilliant, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it, since I’ve actually *done *it in the past.
CaerieD, I think you’ve handled this very well, and I just wanted to say that you’re a good person, and I hope your family appreciates it. Good luck to both you and your niece.
This may be some of the best parenting advice I’ve read, and I’d like to embroider it on a pillow or tattoo it on my forehead or something, just so I have it handy.
I was coming to suggest a smoke alarm. Though you may need a special one I’m not sure the normal ones actually go off from cigarette smoke, they definitely exist though because my high school had them.
For smoking in a house where there is a person with a strong allergy to smoke, and for ignoring all requests to smoke somewhere else. It’s not just the usual teenage rebellion when someone’s health in on the line.