Help!

[LondonDad11]

I am the very concerned father of a 16 year old girl, L. who lives with her Mum, her step Dad and older sister nearby. My daughter's Mum has had to go abroad to look after her ailing father, who has now died and is due to return home on Monday. L. has been associating with a girl friend (also 16) who stays out without consent for prolonged periods of time, recently this friend has gone missing. The police were contacted; L's friend has been in text contact with her mother to inform her that she is staying with her boyfriend. Yesterday L. asked her stepdad (with whom I have a good relationship) if she could stay at her girl friend's house for the night. He deferred to me and I granted her permission. I tried phoning the girl friend's mother - she would not pick up until the morning. L's girl friend told me that L. had not spent the night there. This afternoon, L's older sister made contact with her via Facebook and phone and she said that actually she had spent the night with her boyfriend. On a previous occasion, when L. and I had had a disagreement about nights out, she simply left her Mum's house and went missing for 3 days - including 1 school day. I have had meetings with L's deputy head to discuss strategy. L. is very bright with predicted GCSE grades of A* and A's, but she doesn't want to go to university and wants to pursue Btec instead. L's education is not the primary concern, but her safety is. I am at my wits end as I still do not know where she is or with whom. I want my daughter to have privacy - but not at the expense of her safety or her family's integrity. In this liberal world we have created for our families and society in general - as a reaction to our own parent's stronger disciplinarian principles things have gone badly wrong. Any hints and tips would be much appreciated.

Clarification: I did not grant L. permission to stay with her errant absent friend - but to stay with another girl friend....

Sounds a very difficult and worrying situation.

Can you clarify exactly what you want help with?

Is the situation likely to improve once your ex is back in the country?

What is it you are worried about exactly?

She is 16; it is not illegal for her to have a sexual relationship.
Is the boyfriend a scarey dangerous character? Not clear what you think of him.
I don't like her lying to you & step-dad, but IF you won't let her see the boyfriend, she will be sorely tempted to lie. How often and easily can she see him otherwise?

Is she screwing up her life otherwise? How is she doing at school, etc.?

Sorry, my fault for not seeing the GCSEs/BTec bits.
(please type in paragraphs next time)
She needs room to make her own mistakes.
More understanding about her wanting to see boyfriend might give you more influence over her education decisions.
Just a thought.

Thank you for reading and responding. Once my ex is back in the country L. will at least be confronted in her own home, but I fear my ex will be grieving from just having lost her father. I am worried, as I do not know who her boyfriend is, where she goes or what she does.

I am aware that sex is illegal for 16 year olds. But she left the house under false pretences. If I 'ban' her from seeing her boyfriend, I can't stop her from seeing him illicitly. I would prefer her to tell me at least where she goes and who he is.

Tell her to bring him round? Or something? Is he on Facebook?

She is very secretive and will not talk about him.... i do not even know his name.

That's pants that she won't communicate at all about him. I presume your ex/the step-dad don't know either? Suggests something well dodgy. Somehow you've got to get her to talk, but could it be that she thinks you're closed minded & won't listen? I am just trying to imagine possibly understandable reasons for her secrecy/lying.

You need custardo!!
She's all for kicking arse with wayward teens.
Repost in Chat with the title "Oi Custardo please look at my thread"
And maryz, and the other seasoned teen veterans may reply, too.

I wonder is it possible there's another adult in her life she might open up to, an aunt or older cousin? Somebody who could check out the boyfriend & where she goes, and give you some assurances, and indirectly give her some assurances that you only care about her safety, and not "controlling her life".

She's still too young to keep a boyfriend private, too easy to exploit.

Thanks ragged, I posted that request for custardo on chat.

In the meantime L. has called me and has agreed to meet tomorrow night.

I have done the bit about assuring her that her safety is priority and that it isn't about controlling her life already...

I will try to get her to invite her boyfriend round but i'm sure she won't agree to that. Incidentally, 16 and 17 year olds are allowed by law to have sexual relations but not with over 17's.

if your daughter is know to just diappear for days at a time and safety is your primary concern, i think authoritarian is the wrong way to play this.

i think you need to be her confidant, forgiving, eager t meet boyfriend - find out what he likes with regard to football or something find a commonality even if its ribbing each other about how rubbish each opthers football team is.

you need a conversation with your ex regarding contraception - or if that wont work - with your dd.

i think you need to listen and withold judgement and advice - and i am going to be completely sexist now and say that i think on the whole men like to solve a problem that they hear

men like to answer questions that arise.

i think you need to just make affirmative listening head nods etc. i can highly recommend having conversations in teh kitchen when you are doing something else - they can sit on the kitchen side and you can turn away and bite your lip whilst pretending to put the dishwasher on.

you will hear things you dont want to - but i always think its better to know than not know.

i think its about measured control, so she might think that she is going to her boyfriends with your approval - but actually what happened is this

you drove her there
you know where she is
you know where he lives
you know when and where you are picking her up
she is as safe as you could have possibly made her within these circumstances

even though you want to chain her in the basement

hope this helps my friend

Dear Custardo, Thank you for your tips. Yes, sadly, chaining her in the basement is not an option, so what you say does make sense. However, L. is extremely secretive and evasive and the idea of allowing me - or anyone I know - to meet her boyfriend seems quite unlikely. Let alone talking about football with him. Sometimes she wants to cause disagreement so that she can have the next excuse to run out and away from her impossible parents. Infuriating.

Hi LondonDad11. Ive just come to the end of pretty much the exact same scenario with my DD 17yrs old. She had a secret relationship with a boy of 20yrs old and it only came out when her Saturday music school emailed me to tell me she had not been in all term around 2 months ago. I then rang the girl she said she had been staying with on Friday nights for a year to find she had not been there at all. To cut a long story short she was staying at this boys house secretly for a year. We ve been through weeks of awfulness, with me firstly accepting the she had a boyfriend though hating the lying but trying to be open and accepting, then trying to get him to meet me which he refused, to realising DD was in an extremely abusive situation mentally and physically. I had to get quite strong about getting DD away from him including visiting his house unannounced with a friend. Things escalated to a hideous degree with him threatening me, ringing the house phone constantly, turning up on my doorstep when I was in Turkey on business. The upshot has been 4 reports to the police and 3 visits from the police to this guy. They eventually arrested him for harrassment and malicious intent and the police reckon we ve had a lucky escape and nipped a potentially bad situation in the bud.
I suppose the reason I am telling you this is that lots of advice I had was to step back and let her make her mistakes but when it came to her safety I couldnt and its worked out well as he has not made any contact for 2 weeks now. My daughter feels like she is coming back from that weird universe she had been in, shes stopped the aggression, truancy and general difficult behaviour. Shes back to being loving and her school work is back on track. She even told me last night she feels free as this guy was hugely jealous and nasty, shes relieved. Shes learnt a lot of lessons, made some mistakes but seems so back to normal. We finally got down to the reason for all of this which was pure distraction from the pressure and stress of being in the last year of school doing her International Baccalaureate which is hugely pressured.
My advice to you is to follow your instincts as after all this is your daughter and you know her best. If you need to go against popular advice do it.

Best of luck and hope it all goes well.

Hi Pippa51. Thank you for posting this. You really have gone through the ringer and I sincerely hope this is the last you and your DD hear of this nasty guy. It is still very recent, but the key is that she is on your side and recognises the abuse she endured. My daughter has played truant (and continues to do so) and spends time away from home. Her school has a fabulous system of advising parents if their children go absent the same day. At least she phones her Mum in the afternoon to tell her she's not coming home that night.

I would be interested in knowing how you first recognised signs that she was in an abusive relationship. You mention her boyfriend refused to see you. Does that mean your DD gave you his address details? No such luck with my DD.

By the way, does anyone know how I can set up an alert, so that if anyone adds to this thread I can see it on my hotmail account?