On 2005-05-23 19:11:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Yeah, what do you do if your son is smoking weed everyday, is no longer able to go to any high school because he's been withdrawn from every one, disrespects you, decides there is no curfew and practically does whatever he wants. Where would you send him, on a reward trip to Disney World???
You know these school have helped many teens and their parents. There is such a thing as caring parents with really fucked up kids. "
Just in general, because every situation is individual:
If he's under 16, you flush his weed and homeschool him, and if he doesn't come back on curfew, you don't let him go out. If he leaves anyway, or doesn't "attend" homeschool each day when you do lessons, you call the police and report him as truant.
If he's over 16, you tell him he either stops the weed at your house, attends homeschool classes, and comes back by curfew or he gets a job and moves out. You tell him if he doesn't quit smoking weed at your house, or move out (and therefore not smoke weed at your house), you will call the police. You search the house randomly and throw away any weed you find (if it won't flush, the garbage disposal would do).
Then at whatever age you are no longer legally obligated to provide him with 3 hots and a cot and clothes on his back, you can make him move out.
You meet your legal obligations. You give your kid 3 hots and a cot, and clothes on his back, and basic medical care while he's a minor whether you love him or not just because that's your legal obligation no matter how rotten he is. He doesn't have to "pay" you gratitude or affection to get those--they're your unconditional responsibility. Sending him off to a program is throwing an adult tantrum about your obligations and cutting off your nose to spite your face.
However, if you love your child and are patient, then he may move out, figure out what he wants to do with his life, and grow up.
I think if I decided it was time my child flew the nest, the refrain would be, "Just think, if you get a job and move out, you no longer have to hear me nag."
That all presumes that the kid really is rotten---which isn't always true.
I don't believe in "tough love" but I'm a great believer in Mom Fu. Sometimes I take a tough line with my daughter. Sometimes I stand back and let her work out a problem for herself. Sometimes I remind her that I'm here if she decides to ask for advice. You have to know when.
If I needed to take a tough line with a child about moving out, I would. I wouldn't stop loving her. I wouldn't cut off contact with her as long as she wasn't violent. If she was violent, I'd have her committed--she has a major mental illness, as do I. If I was violent, I expect she'd do the same for me. I don't consider it "to" me because I wouldn't want to be so out of my head that I'd hurt someone and then have to live with that.
But unless she was immediately dangerous to herself or others I wouldn't commit her, and I wouldn't incarcerate her myself, although I would accept the law doing it if she was rightfully convicted of a crime.
Sometimes kids are real PITAs, but it doesn't change our obligations.
A Program just worsens the situation over what it would be if you let the young adult alone. Life is a great teacher. A parent's final *effective* recourse is to stand back and let it teach.
Not to the extent of Programs or Tough Love. There's a big difference between "rescuing" and just being a decent, loving, human being in your interactions with your child. Contact, conversation, the occasional cheap dinner out, and (when solicited) advice are not enabling nor rescuing.
You just let them find out about life the hard way, in the school of hard knocks---an excellent school, BTW. But you give them the lifeline of still treating them like kin.
Moderate, reasonable, sane, functional---good old-fashioned Mom Fu.
Timoclea
