Things really start to get tense in our home. She is only nice when she wants something. We start to have incredible fights more often and they are more intense. She keeps trying to get me to understand that she really likes to smoke pot and to just let her, other parents let their kids. I really try to get her to understand I will never allow her to just smoke and do as she pleases. She starts to perfect her lying. She could look me straight in the eye and tell me a lie and believe what she is telling me is the truth. She had put a hole in the lining of one of her large pocketbooks and was putting her pot, pipes and lighters in that lining. I found the hole in the pocketbook one day and only found a lighter. I left it there and started to check it on a daily basis. I finally found her stash in it one day. I confronted her with it and she looked me straight in the eye and said it had been there for more than a month, I must have missed it. I said no, I have been checking this spot for more than a week. It wasn't there a week ago. She told me I must have missed it before, it has been there since November and she forgot that it was even there. She pleaded with me and got angry with me, as I wouldn't believe her. My younger daughter ran out of the house with fear that fists were going to fly and someone was going to get hurt. After I was done arguing with my older daughter, I found my younger daughter and comforted her. She grew more afraid each day. She told me how she would lay in bed at night awake wondering if her sister was going to come in and hurt her. Her sister would confide in her and when I found things out on my own, she blamed it on her younger sister.
The school has a parents' portal and we can see our children's schedule, current grades, any missing assignments and their attendance record. We can also email the teachers. I see she is missing a couple of classes every other day or so. I decide to write an email to the teachers' who have marked my daughter absent from their class. I find out she is truly missing from the class and she has work to make up. One day, I see that she has an excused absence. I call the school and talk to the attendance office. I told the woman, "I saw on my portal that my daughter had an excused absence" and she said "yes, I will get the note". She gets it and reads it to me. I say, "that is a very good note, but I didn't write it". My daughter gets an in school suspension. She tells me I am ruining her life and to lay off. Soon she is missing the end of the day, everyday. I call the school every couple of weeks to let them know that the classes missed are unexcused. I know she is skipping classes to go get high. I transport my children to school on a daily basis and when I pick her up she smells like pot. We argue and I push her buttons, but I try not to push too hard. I need to find a way to save her before I lose her forever. The race is on. My fear was that one of two things was going to happen to her if I couldn't get her the proper help. She was either going to end up on a street corner one day, selling her body for drugs or she was going to end up dead. I couldn't stand by and watch it happen or hope that it wouldn't happen to my daughter.
As things got more tense, I started to wonder on a daily basis if she was going to come out of the school and come home with me. Quite a few times, I got out of the car and started to walk towards the entrance and she would come out the door. I thought to myself, whew, she decided to come home with me today. I had no idea what I would do if she didn't walk out the door. I knew full well if she wasn't coming home with me that she was long gone. She would have had two hours to decide where she was going to go and I only had a couple of first names to go on. She had started to ruin some of the friendships she had and the people she talked to on IM, sometimes I only had their screen name. I kept a list of the screen names and when a would find out the name of the person I would write it down. But then again, I mostly only had first names and most of the time I did not know what grade they were in. Sometimes I was even unsure of what town these kids lived in and what school they went to. The problem with Myspace and Facebook our kids have friends and then they hook up with their friends' friends and so on. My daughter knew kids in at least a 50 mile radius. If she didn't want to be found, there was a good chance that I would not find her. I had also been told, if she were picked up for running away, she would only be brought back home and then it was up to me to keep her there.
I decided to talk to my daughter's counselor and ask if she knew of any programs. She gave me the name of two in my area. Both were an hour away in either direction and the residential part of the program was only six months. At the end of the six months there would be daily outpatient counseling. I knew six months was not enough time to get my daughter to realize she had taken the wrong path and then the idea of trying to get her to go to therapy, an hour away, on a daily basis, well you know the answer to that. My good friend and walking partner once again, listed off a couple of names of school's she had heard of and I decided to start checking them out. I went onto the Internet and looked in my area and then out of state. I read everything from the course curriculum to testimonials from parents and kids. I found one I liked and made an appointment. I went to the school and was a little surprised at how it looked more like a camp than a school. I needed to remember that this was a whole program and her schooling was only a small part of the whole layout. I talked to counselors, the nurse, admissions and then was brought through all the buildings by the most senior student. She explained what all the buildings were and showed me everywhere my daughter would be. She was extremely nice and very informative. She had said that she was so out of control two years ago that her parents had her transported to the school. She was now the student coordinator and due to graduate in a few months. I walked out of there quite impressed, but still very unsure of whether this is what my daughter really needed. This program was a 2 1/2 year residential program. They sent me home with an application and all the information that I could possibly need. They told me to call anytime with any questions. This was the beginning of February and I was faced with a very difficult decision.
No comments:
Post a Comment