DD17 pregnant again and BF arrested last week

[TiredNanAgain]

Hi all, new name but I’ve posted before about my DD17, her little boy who’s just turned 1 and her BF16 who is honestly causing me to tear my hair out.

It’s been a few months since I last posted so thought I’d do an update because so much has happened since then and I could really use some advice.

DD finally told him about the pregnancy in early July. I was really hoping he would take it well but he didn’t at all. He came over to ours when grandson was having his little birthday gathering with family and a few friends and they ended up arguing in the kitchen. I still don’t know what exactly about but he stormed off mid party and went outside, next thing we know he’s punched a wall down the road and broke his hand. So that kind of ruined the day for everyone as you can imagine.

He did calm down eventually and I think after a few weeks it started to sink in. He even stopped smoking weed for a short while after finding out about the pregnancy which gave me some hope. But sadly he’s back on it now, I can smell it on him again and it just makes me worry about what sort of example he’s setting.

GCSE results day was a bit of a disaster, he failed them all. DD tried to help him revise back in spring but honestly he didn’t listen and was on his phone half the time. He hasn’t gone on to do anything education wise since, says he doesn’t want to go to college and just wants to “work” but he doesn’t have a job and I still suspect he’s dealing but no proof. He gives DD money sometimes which she just says is his allowance from foster care but surely it wouldn’t be that much.

DD is back at college now and doing really well, she loves it. Her course has a work placement next year and she’s excited for that so I really don’t want her to give that up. She is about 18 weeks now and the bump is getting obvious.

Social services know about the pregnancy and have been quite supportive but said they will need to do another assessment once baby is here. His foster carer is trying her best, she’s honestly lovely and I do feel for her because she says he’s been so difficult lately and now with the pregnancy news he’s acting out even more.

The reason I’m posting really is because he was arrested last week. I don’t want to say too much but it was for fighting with another boy. He’s been given some kind of caution and they’re talking about maybe anger management sessions. I just feel like everything is spiralling again and I don’t know how to help DD without completely taking over.

She’s happy about the baby now, says she wants to keep it and that she loves him and he’s a good dad (I wouldn’t go that far). Grandson absolutely adores him and smiles at him whenever he’s around which I know makes DD happy. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is going to end in tears again.

I’m just rambling now but I feel so stuck. Do I step back completely and let her figure it out? Or do I keep trying to push her to see that this is not a stable situation for her and soon to be two children? I’m exhausted if I’m honest and don’t know if I’m making things worse by always being there to pick up the pieces.

honestly its bizarre, go from school, to extra curricular to home. if you can't be trusted at home. come from extra curricular to meet at work and travel home together or pick them up.

Why don't people know and have a handle on U16s whereabouts? especially ones with boyfriends and girlfriends!

I do have a tracking app as well (although these seem controversial on here but it gives me great peace of mind!)

I just mean you don’t have the same level of control with a 15-year-old as a primary-aged child.

How exactly do you think OP is going to convince a 17 year old mother to listen to her? What exactly do you imagine showing authority would look like in this case? Telling DD that she is wrong and that the lad isn't going to be a good father? Can you not see how that absolutely could result in DD and her children leaving her mother's home and setting up home with the boy and OP having much, much less involvement in the welfare of both her DD and her grandchildren?

Setting up home how? Neither have jobs.

Certainly.
Curtail free time spending it would doing sports, studying and hobbies.
how would you force a 17 year old to spend the time the way you want her to?

Boy would not be allowed anywhere near the house.
fair enough- you’d risk encouraging her into his house or shagging on the park bench but not a terrible suggestion

If I thought never mind knew my child was sexually active, she would be on
contraception.
how would you force contraception on her?

If pregnant for second time there would not be a choice. It would be termination
how would you make a termination against her wishes happen?

If refused, then I would realise and accept I had no input and they’d have to work it out themselves with the support of another adult service.
so you’d kick her and your grandchild out and substantially reduce both of their outcomes?

I didn’t want and can’t afford more than two kids in my 40s. I would help with one baby if I could. . I would absolutely not help with two babies.

I'm pretty sure they would be a priority on a council housing list, either into a hostel or B&B if not into a council house. And/or she'd drop out of college in favour of a job that pays just about enough money for now, she'd get into debt quickly, and given that he may well be drug dealing, they may well end up sofa surfing indebted to some really unsavoury people. DD isn't thinking like a rational and reasonable adult.

Your use of the word 'force' is quite dramatic.

I 'force' them to go to school every day. I 'force' them to eat healthy meals. I 'force' them to self care. I 'force' them to do their homework. I 'force' them to limit screen time. I 'force' them visit grandparents. I 'force' them to continue sports.

Its called parenting.

There are expectations and certain behaviours that are expected. They include going to school, coming home, studying, doing sports, doing hobbies.
Following that DC will either go to university (probably) and if they don't, they will be expected to get a job (definitely).

I support them by paying for everything.

If they decide in the future, that they'd rather do their own thing, they will have to get a job, a flat or house share and support themselves.

Force contraception on her? By simply telling her that if she got pregnant a second time, she's on her own. She'd have to live with the consequences of her choice. Would I 'kick her out'? Yes of course. By that stage we'd have established that she was not listening or taking my advice and wanted to be treated like an adult. That means living independently and standing on her own two feet.

Your DD can't afford to support one child on her own let alone two of them?
I don't understand how she can't see that.
Not to be a doom bringer, and i am sure you have thought about this already but baby #3 is on the horizon unless your DD has some kind of wake up call and gets a grip on her situation.

You don’t force your children into school, if they were say, school refusers, you would be unable to get them in without restraining and carrying them in. Which would obviously be a stupid idea. Your children just go to school.

this is probably the issue, you’re not appreciated that your methods will have no impact on someone who firmly doesn’t want to go along with your demands.
They’re ineffective. You’re just assuming you’ll be able to persuade or threaten them without considering how likely that is to work.

Hasn’t it been stated that he was in the year below her at school and at 14 and 15 they were having sex at lunchtime? A pretty grim scenario.

Your plan wouldn’t stop that, unless you were there to supervise every break in the school day, including transit from class to class.

I suppose. I always hated the idea of the implant and progesterone makes me suicidal. I’d never recommend it for anyone.

Has it?? I’ve not seen op post that

@User21548967 Do you understand the concept of ‘Gillick Competence’? If you don’t know what this is, look it up. At 17 years old the daughter would be deemed to be Gillick Competent and therefore has complete autonomy over her body and you cannot force her to have an abortion or be on birth control so that’s two of your idealised solutions out of the window. Neither can you stop her having sex. It would be against the law to imprison a 17 year old to stop her meeting up with her boyfriend as would assaulting her to physically prevent her from doing what she wants. Throwing her and the grandchild out to fend for themselves would be extremely detrimental to the grandchild.
OP I think you have done the best you can in very difficult circumstances and because of you, your grandchild is safe and well looked after.

Force contraception on her? By simply telling her that if she got pregnant a second time, she's on her own. She'd have to live with the consequences of her choice. Would I 'kick her out'? Yes of course. By that stage we'd have established that she was not listening or taking my advice and wanted to be treated like an adult. That means living independently and standing on her own two feet.

OP and daughter had discussed contraception, and DD had seemed to be on top of it.

I guess I just can't understand anybody who would kick their daughter and grandchildren out, knowing that the outcomes for both their child and their grandchildren would be far worse than if they were able to stay at home with family involvement and what guidance you could get them to listen to.

I’m sorry op I don’t know what to suggest. It’s too late for an abortion now so I think your options are limited.

Despite what other posters say you can’t ban her from seeing him. Or force her on contraception going forward. She’s 17. I can really feel your rock and hard place here. It’s easy to say ban him from house, kick her out etc but that basically means giving up on her.

Is she going to be able to do college with two children? Sounds very challenging but I also can’t imagine her managing to work with two children without you doing all the childcare .

I do think you need to drop the idea that you can’t say bad things about him because you’ll push her away. You need to build her up and tell her she deserves to be treated with respect with the hopes that she’ll see he’s not doing that and will leave him.

I think if you witness any behaviour like him turning up stinking of weed, being out of order verbally etc you do need to say he’s needs to leave and isn’t welcome in your house till he learns to treat your daughter /granchildren/home with respect. And repeat every time he acts that way. Because otherwise if you witness it and do nothing you are teaching her that’s how she deserves to be treated.

If discussions about future expectations had happened earlier, the OP would not be in the position she’s now in. Her daughter might be but the OP would have set out clearly what would happen if the daughter continued to behave however she wanted.

Surely your 15-year-olds also go out with friends and socialise?

My teen has a phone tracker and he always tells me what he’s doing (eg to the local park to play football with some friends or getting the bus to meet friends at the cinema etc) but it’s still unsupervised time and once they are at secondary school you’re not going to fully know all the children or their families- so although my DS has told me they’ve all popped into ‘Josh’s house’ after the park to have a drink because he lives nearby and I can see it on his tracker, I don’t actually know anything about Josh or his family.

And... we are back to Square One.
OP can't ' force' her Gillick competent daughter to do anything, so she has no choice but to either bring up the babies or help her DD bring them up somehow in her home.

DD could have 5 babies in the next 5 years, but as any persuasion towards more effective contraception is ' forcing" or ' threatening' and her useless boyfriend won't wear a condom, the best outcome for them is to continue to be born, supported and raised in OPs home with the violent boyfriend visiting when he feels like. Must not drive her into his arms.

It's impossible for any of us to predict the DDs future, so it is very likely she will go on to educate herself and get a great job, despite babies popping up yearly. The statistics on teen mums say otherwise, but who cares about those. Love is all you need.

OP, I do remember your last thread.

Reading this update today, all I could think was Oh no, not again!

I think that you are trying too much to be her friend, rather than her parent. All this she will manage etc etc.

She does not have a clue what it is like to have two babies at once and grown adult women in settled relationships sometimes do not cope.

Yes she is almost an adult, but she isn't one yet. Sometimes it is just a bit too easy to listen to those people who say 'But she is an adult, leave her to it'. She needs help and guidance, not a friend saying 'ah well, okay if you say you will be okay then you will be'. No. This is not okay. He is not good for her, she seems to be manipulated by him, her children are going to be around drugs, he punches walls...... This is not an okay environment for children.

You can step in. You have to. It is your job as her parent.

Do not encourage this. You just do not want to upset the apple cart in case you 'lose' her or push her away. This will happen anyway, as in 18 months she will be pregnant again. And then what?

Get her into therapy. Go with her if you can. Wait outside the rooms. Be her support but in the right direction. If you absolutely cannot do that, find another adult she looks up to and ask them to talk to her. Contact the school. Ask for ideas to help her. Just do not leave her to sort this out by herself. Her being pregnant again now by him, just shows that.

Even if the young man goes to prison there’ll be another boy along straight away and another pregnancy.

Yes, he bears some responsibility but it seems clear that both the conceptions were planned on DD’s part and she’s circumnavigated contraception to do it the second time.

Its not a question of just getting him put of the picture and DD will go on to parent competently and alone. There’ll always be a boyfriend and another baby on the way. She’s chasing love, and I can’t see how you can stop the cycle.

I think a third baby is extremely likely before DD is out of her teens and the only choice OP has is to resign herself to bringing them up or withdraw all support (this will be hard as SS will want her to step up) and work on getting DD into her own place and fending for herself on benefits. With two very young children working will not be a viable option for a good while in this scenario.

What guidance would that be? The same guidance she listened to since she was fifteen? Watching her repeat her mistakes time and time again while I shrugged my shoulders and actively encouraged it by not laying down MY boundaries?

@TiredNanAgain
Have you ever actually reading her the riot act? And really painted a picture of the life she is going to have if she keeps getting pregnant. Because she is going to. She is doing this on purpose.

It sounds like all you’ve done it pay her on the head and tell her it’s ok. Have you tried… parenting?

So what would you recommend then?
Her daughter clearly cannot be trusted to take contraceptive pills regularly.

How many pregnancies she’s gonna have till she finally realise that this is just no way to go anymore?

Over the summer I didn’t do any childcare for him, they actually did a few days out when her BF was off the weed which was nice to see, took him to the farm and the park and he really loved it.

This is in one of the earlier posts. Originally I thought it was about the baby but actually all this was all about the boyfriend and his time at the farm park.

I appreciate he (the BF) is young and has made some questionable choices, and not had a great start in life, but the daughter must be getting this feeling the situation is salvageable from somewhere. At some point there needs to be a reality check and some acceptance of the situation that the BF will never be dad of the year and that getting pregnant every 2 minutes will not make this happen.

Already said what I’d recommend, try reading the thread before replying.