12 year old son and weed

[BettySuarez]

A few weeks ago I found some messages on my sons facebook account from a friend asking him how much 'weed' he wanted :(

Son was replying back and forth saying 'yeah', how much etc

We confronted him about it and he denied ever having taken any drugs but seemed vague as to whether he intended to get weed from this older boy (our son is 12.5 and other boy approx 15)

We warned him of the dangers of drugs (at length) and have been keeping a close eye on him since.

I have just managed to get access to his Facebook account again and this other boy keeps pestering him wanting to know when he will have the money ready etc. Approx 6 or 7 messages to chace etc.

My son has not been replying (which is at least something I suppose) but nor has he said an out and out no to him or made attempts to block him.

I'm not sure what to do next

Access to my sons FB account is rare and can't ever be guaranteed (he uses my iPhone to Facebook his friends and I only get to 'check up on him' when he forgets to log out)

So I have no guaranteed way of keeping an eye on things iyswim

I have however managed to make a note of this boys name and his email address plus have written down the name of a man who I think may be his Dad.

Should I try to send a message to his dad and arrange to meet up and chat this through? Or should I send a warning email to the son telling him to back off.

Calling the police may also be an option????

Right now I am freaking out so would appreciate some calm sensible advice from some sensible mumsnetters :)

Be careful. I would not contact the dad because you are not sure who he is are you? And you also cannot be sure how he will react. And do NOT contact the other boy, that would be a bad idea.

Do you know if the boy is at the same school as your DS? If so I would tell the school what you know and let them deal with it - I know this means your son potentially gets into trouble there (although he has not yet done anything wrong, possibly!) but he is so young I think it is a good path to take. It might make him wary enough that he is not tempted again.

I am sorry to say that if you report it to the police I think they will not do anything.

Thanks meanmomma, my son attends a different school to this other boy but they share the same circle of friends at weekends so I would ideally like a way to warn him off.

I could of course just talk to ds again but then he would know that he had been careless and not logged out of FB properly.

Then I would have no way of checking up on him again

You could report it to Facebook but then if the lad gets kicked off you wont know if they are arranging something by other means...or he can just make another account. Is there any way of saving the messages in your phone (sorry, I know nothing about iphones)? Apart from meanmomma's suggestion I really cant think of anything right now but it would be a good start if you could save some proof.

Can you have a look in his info next time and see what school he does attend?, chances are even if its not displayed, there will be lots of his friends with the same school displayed on their info.

I know this is beside the point rather, but don't you have to be 13 to have a FB account? Why does your DS have one now? If he didn't, it strikes me that it wouldn't be so easy for this other lad to contact him?

I personally would tell the other boys dad. Have you explained to your son that his "friend" could be arrested for supplying Illicit substances? It is even worse that he is supplying them to a minor.

I smoke myself but This is wrong. One thing I can assure you of is this;
He will go behind your back to get it and trying to educate him will fall on deaf ears. He will just get better at hiding it.

If you want him to stop then its desperate measures. Dob in his mate to his dad, if it persists inform the police. Kids shouldn't be getting stoned.

"Vague" wouldn't be good enough I'm afraid. I'd be cracking down hard if this was my ds (and both mine are teens, so I'm not talking in fantasyworld).

He's potentially fucking his life up completely - weed (you have no idea of the potency of what he might be buying) really damages growing brains, skunk is proven as a factor in the high incidence of schizophrenia in young men, and 12.5 is terribly young to be messing with it! Frankly I would not be sneaking around checking on his FB, I'd be telling him he's not supposed to be on there at his age and he's only allowed on there for the forseeable if you have full access. And I'd be monitoring his movements very carefully, docking any pocket money so he wouldn't be able to pay for weed, and basically giving him some extremely firm boundaries.

If you want to save the info you can screenshot the facebook pages on your iphone by pressing the lock button and the home button at the same time.

Trying to warn off the other boy is not a good idea and is not likely to work.

Your son is so young, I would go in all guns I think. Close his facebook account, take his phone off him, ground him, tell his school, tell his friends' parents, don't give him money and make sure his belongings don't 'disappear'. Keep him extremely busy with school and a mixture of activities that are good for him, let him know you are willing to be tough for YEARS to keep him safe.

Thanks for your replies everyone, I half suspect that my ds is just 'making the right noises' infront of this other boy but we don't intend to take any chances and are keeping a very close eye on him.

The one advantage to this time of year is that it's gets dark early and he isn't allowed out after dark unless he is at the house of a very trusted friend.

I appreciate all other comments re Facebook - I absolutely hate it but feel it's a case of 'better the devil you know' when it comes to teens

I also feel that I have a responsibility to notify this other boys parents - this young lad could be in deep himself, or trying to supply other people's kids. I know you can't always say for sure but his Dads profile looked very nice and had a friendly tone to it (I looked at the family holiday snaps on their profile you would think people would learn to control their privacy settings ) so I think I will attempt to get in touch. Let them deal with their son and we can deal with ours!

My son is 12.5 but looks at least 16. Went through puberty early and is head and shoulders above most of the boys in his year group and the one above that. It's hard for him and I'm sure he feels under pressure to grow up and hang around with the bigger boys.

I know he will make lots if mistakes and errors of judgement but I want him to make as many of them as possible while we are still here to watch over him and guide him through it.

Drugs are just a huge no no for me though and I will never ever find them acceptable

Thanks for your advice everyone. Some things to think about!

Be prepared for them not to believe you and to pin the blame on your DS then, it is a rare parent who listens to a complaint about their own kid and accepts the truth of the message. If you have photo evidence of the incriminating evidence that would help I guess.

You sound very helpless, you say you 'absolutely hate' Facebook, but your ds has it and you can only look at it if he forgets to log out?
I know this is not about fb, but it does seem really indicative of something a bit skewed, op. Do you feel comfortable with just telling your 12 year old what he can and can't do? My ds1 is nearly 15, he's fully aware that he has fb only on the understanding that we have access. It's not to interfere in his friendships or the minutiae of his life, but because there's a whole world of people who we don't know who he might come into contact and be having some kind of relationship with on there, and we love him and think that's the best we can do for him.
It's just, if he does this, which you 'hate' and feel unable to intervene in, why would he care if you hate drug use, or something else too?

I am with post. You seem to be being far too hands off with a 12 yo. When my DS1 was that age he only had FB on the understanding I was on his friends list and could check what he was up to. He didn't like it but he understood why we insisted. Part of taking care of your child.

I would not be watching the situation, I would be coming down like the proverbial ton of bricks, as I would want to clearly signal to my child this was not OK and do my best to frighten him off it. What is stopping you intervening?

If not facebook they'd find another way of exchanging messages, I feel that access is a red herring.
I wouldn't try to scare him about "drugs".
I would have a lot of talk about drug dealers & the drug dealing world, how seedy & sordid that is. It's a realm nobody in their right mind should want to brush up against. And like one of my cousins said (about other cousins), life is hard enough enough without deliberately handicapping yourself using drugs that make you spaced out & stupid.

I was a weed user at 12-14, btw, so speaking with experience. :(

Imo, a proviso of your son having FB at 12 should be that you have his password.

If he wants to get hold of weed he will regardless of fb, mobile phones, etc. I think the really, really important thing here is being able to talk openly and honestly with him. You need to find out everything you can about drugs, get some leaflets, look at websites. Talk to him about it. Tell him you know a lot of kids his age do take drugs and he will have to make his own decisions for himself about what is best for him. Help him to take responsibility and give him the tools to resist peer pressure. His school will be able to provide you with contacts for drug advisors, so will your GP.

He will have to make lots of decisions about drugs, alcohol, sex, etc. so the more informed he is, the better. Let him know that you are not cross with him and he can tell you if he's tried weed or any other substances. You should not have to sneak around to find out what he's doing if you can get the communication open. My ds (also 12) has talked openly to me about kids in his school being offered weed. He has said he's not interested. He stays away from 'that group' and mucks about with his own friends.

I think there is a good chance that your ds is not interested as he has not replied and is probably hoping it will all go away. He may have said to this other boy that he wanted to buy some but that could just be to look 'big' or whatever. If you talk with him, you could agree to help him say no thanks, I've changed my mind and leave it at that. Hopefully nothing more will come of it. But if the other boy thinks your ds has put in an 'order' he might keep chasing him for the money so your ds does need your help right now.

One last thing, I have my dcs passwords and regularly check their accounts. They know this and are ok with it. I am not snooping, I am helping to keep them safe. Have a look at the thinkuknow website re internet safety.

Thanks for the replies everyone and I totally take on board everything being said re Facebook.

He is on my friends list and this is indeed a proviso - he is also not allowed pc access unless it's in the main living room where we are pottering about etc.

I don't however have his password. If I did then his drug conversation would never have taken place on there (it was via private messaging and not on his wall)

So the likelihood would be that he would have found other means to communicate with this boy and then who knows? He could have taken his first step with weed by now and we have known nothing about it.

sorry that last sentence should have said 'and we would have known nothing about it'

To other posters who have suggested that I seem a bit helpless or 'hands off' as a parent. I don't agree with this at all.

As much as we would like to, we know that we can't keep an eye on the exact movements of our teens. Although my son is only 12.5 - he looks and sounds just like a 16 year old. He went through puberty very early and very quickly and so I'm sure that he is experiencing a lot of the same emotions and thought processes as boys 2 or 3 years older then him - but perhaps without the emotional maturity that older boys possess. So this is an incredibly difficult time for him and one of our main priorities is to continue to ensure that we have an open and loving relationship with him and that all lines of communication are kept firmly open.

We have so far managed to accomplish this with our eldest daughters - even though there have been many very challenging scenarios and I hae often felt pushed way out of my comfort zone.

I absolutley do not ever ever want any of my children to experiment with drugs or hang out with the 'wrong people' or to get in torouble with the police. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how much we 'don't want this' or what lengths we go to as parents to try and prevent it - the fact remains that if they are determined to go behind our backs, then they will.

And as with Facebook, we could easily get rid of it, I would have no hesitation is doing so (and his phone if need be) but what would it gain? It wouldn't stop him from making these very poor errors of judgment. It would just reduce the chances of us finding out about them.

So that's the compromise that I referred to earlier - not a compromise with my son as such but more a compromise with myself as a parent. Not sure if this makes sense?

I had no trouble getting hold of MJ in 1979 with no Internet or mobile phone, really, FB is a red herring.
I am so glad I don't have to face this stuff (yet).
My other thought right now is to sit him down & talk about "where are you going with this,"; kids that age think they're "just experimenting" but it can quickly lead to all sorts of things they never envisioned.

Your son is so young, I would go in all guns I think. Close his facebook account, take his phone off him, ground him, tell his school, tell his friends' parents, don't give him money and make sure his belongings don't 'disappear'. Keep him extremely busy with school and a mixture of activities that are good for him, let him know you are willing to be tough for YEARS to keep him safe.

I totally agree with this. I don't think you can be mild about this, weed is potentially life destroying, far better to be harsh about this now and endure a bit of pain, rather than be more liberal and have your son potentially be one of the significant % of teenagers which have severe mental issues as a result of smoking weed.

Thanks lljkk, I agree that FB isn't the issue here although I will repeat what I said earlier (i.e thank god he used FB on this occassion otherwise we would never have known)

I organised a massive overnight woodland campout with friends when I was 14, boys, booze and fags in that order and that was obviously without any help from technology. Where there's a will there's a way and all that. To this day my parent are convinced that they raised a polite, well behaved and modest young lady and have no idea of the double life I led as a teenager.

Anyway I digress as the real issue here is drugs. We have both spent lots of time with him talking through the dangers of drugs and also getting him to look at the peer pressure aspect. I am as sure (as it is possible to be) that he wont try them.

I still feel very uncomfortable with 'doing nothing' regarding this other boy though.

GetOrf - I agree with the sentiments of that post - I really do. I would happily have all my kids bloody microchipped and wired if it were an option. Like any parent - I would go to any measures to keep my children safe. Nothing else matters.

And to repeat - I do not have a laid back attitude about drugs - far far from it.

Close his Facebook account - what would this achieve exactly other then making me feel that I had 'put my foot down'. As other posters have pointed out - if he were determined to try smoking/weed/booze etc, he would be able to manage it without help from FB.

Take his phone away - as above - to what end?

Ground him - he has been grounded and this is currently in force.

Tell his friends parents - I see nothing to gain in shaming my son other then to risk allienating him from me at such a fragile time of his life.

Keep him extremely busy with school and a mixture of activities that are good for him, let him know you are willing to be tough for YEARS to keep him safe - yes, agree with this wholeheartedly

Also (just out of interest) to those of you who have access to your childs FB passwords.

Does it not concern you that your child (knowing you have access) will simply 'censor' their conversations?

Surely there is a danger here that you could be lulling yourself into a false sense of security?

I think closing FB, taking phone away and restricting his money will have 2 results - restrict his ability to communicate and also emphasise to him the utter seriousness of what he is potentially doing. I think you have to be zero tolerance with this ion order to (hopefully) give him a shock to the system.

I am very laid back and liberal with my teen daughter, but drugs would be the absolute end. It is the thing I am terrified of (have bored on and on on MN about the subject, but have family members whose mental healhth has been detroyed by the stuff). I have also talked to dd at length about the subject - it isn't a taboo subject, which I think helps.

I agree that placing a ban on those things for a period of time (say a number of weeks to coincide with his grounding) will help to hopefully drive that message home. But a permenent ban (which I thought was what was being suggested) wouldn't really solve things in the long term unless I was to ground him until he reached the age of 18. I may have misunderstood though.

We have left him in no doubt about the seriousness of what he was contemplating.