In the Beginning

Welcome to A Parent's Challenge.  My hope is to help other parents help their children.  I was losing my daughter faster than I thought possible and this is our journey.

I always knew my daughter was going to give me a run for my money, I just didn't realize what it actually meant and where it was going to take us.  At the age of 13, I knew I needed to monitor her computer use and text messaging.  I purchased a program called Spector Pro to monitor her computer use and I read her text messages while she was in the shower.  She was misusing the text messaging and we took it away.  I found out through her instant messages that she had started smoking Marijuana in May 2009.  She started to make plans away from home.  Whenever we did go away as a family, she wanted a friend to come with us.  I knew she was getting older and her friends were becoming more and more important, but she started pulling further and further apart from us. 

Over the Summer she started to get real sneaky.  She and a friend snuck out of our house shortly after we went to bed one night and came home at 3:00 in the morning.  I evidently heard something and woke up.  On my way downstairs, I could see her light on under her door.  She came down shortly thereafter saying they had woken up hungry.  I went back upstairs, checked her room and found two pair of pants on the floor soaking wet, it was raining that night. The next morning we confronted her and subsequently grounded her for a month. 

She got involved in Summer Soccer in another town and made some new friends.  She really enjoyed it.  I thought, maybe this is what she needs.  Keep her involved in sports and she won't have time for anything else.  It pretty much worked, so I thought.  I had a hard time telling when she was high.  I mostly knew she was high when she came home and ate me out of house and home.  She became very good at lying and manipulating a situation.  She started to get more agitated with my other daughter and I.  We were worthless to her and she made sure we knew it.  I would ground her for her attitude, but it did not matter. 

School started in September and she was a Freshman.  She started her Freshman year in a new school in the neighboring town.  I thought this is good, we will get her away from some of her old druggie friends and she will have a new start.  She had made new friends over the Summer during soccer within this school district and she was trying out for the school's soccer team.  Things were looking up.  She was excited for a new environment, new school and new friends.  She seemed to like her new surroundings and fit in pretty good.  I got a call in November from the school saying that she had bought Marijuana in school and I needed to come in as soon as possible.  She was suspended for five days and grounded for a month or more.  On the way home in the car she told me that she liked smoking pot and I couldn't stop her from smoking it.  When she went back to school, I started checking her room as often as I could.  We started having more and more arguments.  She would get right in my face and scream at me.  She kept telling me that she could do what she wanted.  She would say to me, "Why don't you just give up,  I am going to smoke.  I like it and there is nothing you can do about it".  She would say, "It is only pot, what is the big deal/"  "All my friends smoke and most of them smoke with their parents, why can't you just accept it". 

It is getting late, so I will continue this tomorrow.