Christmas is cancelled

[littlepinkfizz]

Hi my 16 year old is a lovely ,innocent looking girl. She does well at school and is mostly fine at home. However she has been lying to us without us even knowing, going out with her friends during the summer,coming home early but it appshe has been taking cannabis and has previously been drunk on several occasions. She denies all to the point that we have doubted ourselves and I have felt guilty. But after staying out all night and refuting tell us where she was she was grounded and pocket money stopped.
She went out to a community youth group that she does volunteer work with as part of her Duke of Ed, She returned home and headed up to her room saying her friend's mum had dropped her home( I had left this girl home the previous week). Later I noticed a small package on the stairs.. herbal cannabis. She eventually confessed that she had arranged herself to meet the dealer and buy it herself . She smoked it but her friend ( a different one ) did not.She says her friends don't do drugs. She does not seem remorseful and we have even offered to get her s counselker to speak to and are waiting to have one get back to us. She said she would speak to one.

I have got her about half of what I usually spend on her and her older sisters for Christmas already, but do not feel that it would be correct to
reward her with what she normally gets due to her recent behaviour.

AIBU?

winter I disagree!

The trouble is with going OTT about weed (and I really DO sympathise OP) is that it just reinforces a teen's idea that parents are so old and out of touch that they just DON'T GET IT.

Weed will be pretty normal to her and her friends. You don't have to agree with it or condone it but that is how it is (and has been for a long time).

If you manage to stay calm and educate yourself a bit it will help to ensure that she keeps being honest with you.

I don't blame you for being upset. These things are upsetting but try and look at the positives and don't catastrophise.

I used to work in A&E and I will never forget a mum dragging her teenager daughter in and being hysterical. She was demanding she was seen first, screaming about the danger her DD was in, how she could die any minute. Really going mad.
The DD had smoked a bit of a spliff

This was at least 20 years ago and its still clear in my mind. I bet that girl never admitted anything to her mum ever again.

I and my friends were reasonably good teenagers who all went on to respectable universities etc but we all drank and tried weed at that age. It's well within normal for 16. 'Herbal cannabis' wasn't real cannabis when I was a teenager, it was basically innocent herbs sold to naive kids by con artists, not proper dealers. No idea if that's still the case now.

If you treat a perfectly normal lovely girls like some pariah who needs intervention and help is going off rails, for doing what millions of teens do every single day then she may well turn into one.

You don't want to know what I was up to at that age sneaking out of the house to the local pub and at 14 too

luckily I declined smoking cigarettes and drugs (was offered) but my brother a few years later was regularly smoking weed and then dealing trips.

maybe speak to FRANK but I wouldn't go nuclear on her unless you think it's something more serious.

a pattern of lying and making mistakes - isn't that most teens? You absolutely want them to be able to talk to you, and a neutral party about their problems so they can say things to them that they can't say to you. Even if their criticisms are invalid, they are genuine feelings and the quicker you get to the bottom of the behaviour, the better. Ultimately, 2 of my sisters had moved out at 16, so the idea that slapping them down will be successful is very questionable.

good post vicky, I agree about the learning to keep part of life private and this balance of drumming into her to be safe and let parents know where she is.

winter 'Millions' of teens might well smoke weed. Doesn't make it ok.

Oh no please don't do this! You will regret it and she will forever feel so incredibly left out of her family on the one day of the year when families are meant to be united.
Get her the same amount of presents and deal with this in another way. Ground her, take away her phone but don't cancel Christmas.
I dabbled in weed and drink at that age as dos most of my friends. We turned out fine. Use this as an opportunity to educate her on how dangerous weed can be for the brain (schizophrenia if consumed too often etc) Frank is a brilliant place to start.

But it makes it 'normal' and therefore not necessarily indicative of a 16 year old going off the rails.

Ok elodie but you will find its a fact of life, millions do it, all over the world and have no issues and no problems.

Its a path that the majority of teens will take at some point, your choice if you want to turn it into a mountain and make it into a big issue.
I would never go down that route myself with my own DC because I would be terrified of cutting them off from me, from them not feeling they could be honest with me, and so on and overall making them un happy and perhaps more prone to more drug use and harder drugs.

elodie it's not about whether it's okay or not, it's about opening lines of communication, and to do that you do need to step back and take a pragmatic non judgemental approach to it.

She says she is doing this because she is unhappy. She doesn't think you'll understand. She lied to you.

Is there someone she trusts who she could talk to, someone she feels would understand? Older sibling, aunt or uncle, teacher?

She's doing what lots of 16 year olds do. There's potentially an underlying reason though, rather than just peer group experimentation. I think that is what you should be focusing on, not how to punish her.

littlepinkfizz I think you need to dig behind this. You said that her friend wasnt smoking this so it sounds like there is a different pressure that she is wanting escape from.

Not wanting to be alarmist but I would look at this as an incidence of self harm. You said she was prepared to go to counselling. This is a good thing.

In my opinion there would be nothing that would make me want to smoke cannabis more than Christmas 'being cancelled' by parents...well, not me as such but do you see what I mean? I get that you're angry but this won't help.

Punishment might feel deserving but the outcome will not be positive. Love her, express your fears and focus on educating her to make (Her own) informed decisions

Is what she's doing incredibly awful? No. but it's dangerous.

Not necessarily the drugs (but this as well) but also the staying out, meeting with a dealer etc.

I'm not sure what my advice would be (although, my DSis is 16 and seeing as she has moved in with us this summer I'm reading these responses carefully and filing them away).

I stopped being interested in these substances when I realised what drugs and alcohol do to people. Yes, I had a phase but the phase was over quickly...
Maybe volunteering with her in a shelter or something would work?

Maybe try lovebombing, not with stuff but special time together - her choice of what to do. Try to rebuild your relationship and then she might open up to you more about why she is doing this. Cancelling Christmas might make her hate you.

However, I think 'consequences' would be better than bullying.

And seriously, she left the bag on the stairs? That's incredibly careless. Maybe this is a scream for help or something?

*Not bullying.

Punishment. Because I think something like cancelling Christmas might feel like bullying to her...

Sheesh.

You should have a lovely Christmas with lots of fun together, to remind her what is like to be with the one who care and love her and who know how to really have fun.

I think smoking a bit of weed and getting tiddly is fairly normal stuff. Cancelling Christmas is an overreaction and will only make her try to hide her behaviour further.

The bit I would be worried about is sneaking out to meet her dealer. You need to make sure she knows the level of danger she is exposing her self to.

I had two different types of parents; the mother who acted like you are, over the top, not massively clued upon drugs/normal experimental teen behaviour and the father who was decidedly calmer and more experienced (he was a drugs counsellor actually ) . Fast forward 20 years and I have a house/child/respectable job and that dabbling hasn't done me any particular harm.

Christmas is about families, loving, spending time together. Not punishment and repentance. After all cancelling Christmas for her would be punishing the whole family. Give her a break. She's a teenager. You even say in your first line that she's lovely.

The OPs teenager is meeting up with drug suppliers

As I pointed out earlier many of her friends could be drug suppliers, it could be a friends brother, there is a big difference between this scenario and a proper hardened pusher.

Rosie I wouldn't see not experimenting as a badge of moral honor to be honest! This is something I mentioned up thread you need to be very careful about the language you use, good girls, sweet girls and innocent girls - you can be all of those whilst experimenting!

I can't comment on the youth of today but what you have described was pretty standard teenage behaviour when I were a lass. Obviously lying is never ok but did mine g and weed happen. Talk to her about what she did but don't over react cancel Christmas and drive her away.

Not wholly on topic of OP but related. Can't remember which bad/fab MN'er taught me this, but should you need one you can do this to get a spliff emoji. Like this:

As you were folks, as you were...