my daughter lost interest in her work since boyfriend

[crescent60]

I have similar situation to yogiem's,(actually much worse).
Since my 16 years old dd started going out with this 19 years old boy, she lost entire interest in her work. She has been getting straight As so far. Her mocks results went down to Bs and Cs. When I talked to her teachers (my dd didn't bother to come with me to the parents' evening) all they said was if she doesn't do the work her grades will go down even further. I talk to her constantly, I explain the consequences but this always ends up with cries, shouts etc.Sometimes she does not turn up to school, sometimes she leaves for the afternoon. School tries everything to encourage her to keep up with her work. I have been trying reward systems or punisment as lowering her allowance. She goes out all weekend all I get a text message telling me where she is.(She usually stays with her boyfriend who lives with his family. As a rule she is supposed to be at home by 7.00 pm during the week, but she usually comes back at 9.00, 10.30. I feel so helpless... she also refuses to introduce this boy to us.My main concern is as this boy does not go to school and enjoying family home without working, my dd thinks it is ok to live like that. Recently she is saying that she won't do her A levels. She has Science exam this Monday and I know she will be out all weekend I do not know what to do!!!
Can you give me any suggestions?

would it work if you let her know you don't care if she fails all her exams as then she will not have the chance to do a levels and the expense will not have to be funded by you - she can get a job at tesco stacking shelves?

Or would that not have the desired effect?

I think you need to get very tough - why is she allowed to stay with a boyfriend and you haven't even met him? I would stop her allowance straight away; how does she finance her clothes, mobile etc? She should only get the allowance if she treats you and her home and school work with respect, it sounds as though she is taking it all for granted.

She probably even won't get a job stacking shelves unless she passes her exams.

This sounds exactly like DD1 when she was in the sixth form. Her boyfriend worked and her argument was why do I have to do homework if he doesn't Its incredibly difficult at this age to enforce reasonable behaviour if they are not willing to go along with it. DD1 was already in year 13 when all this started and so had applied to university and had reasonable AS grades but we did have a large chunk of time in year 13 when she barely went to sixth form and wanted to leave and do more hours of her (minimum wage) job in a shop. Her boyfriend thought university was stupid and only losers did A levels which wasn't very helpful.

Her behaviour was appalling and it had a huge effect on DD1 and DS. I think I was completely at the end of my tether with it all. I think you need to have a serious (and calm!) talk with her about your expectations. Its quite reasonable to support a teenager studying for A levels but not if they just give up on everything. Try and agree an amount of time that she can see her boyfriend, I would have been happy for DD1 to be out till 10.30 on a week night so long as it was a couple of nights a week and she was doing homework on other nights. Sometimes relaxing a rule gives them less to struggle against.

I don't think I handled the whole thing very well but we got through it in the end. Her boyfriend dumped her during the Easter holidays so she picked up her A level work and actually did some revision. She's now 20 and in her third year at university and very relieved that we didn't let her give up her A levels. I think looking back it would have helped if I could have taken some of my emotion out of the situation. I was very stressed and we had a huge number of very shouty arguments and she did leave home on several occasions to sleep on peoples sofas rather than be at home with us.

Thank you for all your responses. It was very helpful.