Friend groups, bad choices

[Mumma3teens]

How do you all cope when nothing you do seems to get them to make good choices.

I have one daughter who is driving me crazy making awful choices! We ground her, take her phone away and the minute we give her a teeny bit of freedom and she builds a small amount of trust back something happens and it's broken.

I am so exhausted from it all. We have been waiting for adhd assessment long before these issues started but it's getting increasingly hard to get her to not get caught up in all the excitement and adrenaline from chaos.

when she is home she is so helpful and caring obviously still has her moments but it's the being out with friends that's the worst.

You might need to give more specifics around her friends and what the issue is with the choices made with them. To a certain extent it’s normal for teenagers to do dumb things, to not totally prioritise their future or be concerned about things like looks/dating/popularity/social media etc. but there’s a difference between that and committing crimes for example

What does she do that is so terrible? Most teenagers make mistakes and have dubious friends.

This last school term things have been slowly escalating - social media drama not going to class or walking out of class, lying about where she is going, went to a friend for a sleep over and snuck out, fighting. A lot of which like you say teens can be teens learning and pushing boundaries but i have 2 of them exactly the same age and her behaviour is escalating rather than calming down (both nearly 14). Then yesterday she's been caught trespassing on a building that has been abandoned due to structure damage, has been given a warning at the moment but it could be escalated. She wasn't even going to be going out yesterday it was literally only for a few hours while I did a walk with her younger sister for a school project.

But does a child's behaviour have to go as far as breaking the law before we step in from in being "most teens". I don't want my child to be one of those kids because that is not who she is when she is at home or with family.

Don’t have too much advise but we went through the same thing with DD, especially between 15 -17. DD on an ADHD waiting list and had been struggling for years. She was a pretty good kid, struggled academically but behavior was never an issue at school or at home just had issues with concentration, fidgeting and impulsivity etc. Fast forward to turning 15 and she turned completely feral. Got in with a bad crowd started drinking, smoking weed, different boyfriends putting herself in dangerous situations, self harming, misbehaving at school - you name it she done it. Is now almost 19, has a job, past her driving test, bought herself a car, goes travelling and stays in hostels and has a better group of friends. We are certainly not out of the woods as she drinks way too much still, is getting tattoo after tattoo when bored but I can see we are in a better place than we were 3-4 years ago. I think some of it is teen experimenting , a lot of it was ADHD dopamine searching and a bit just her trying to find herself as seemed a bit lost as never really fitted in. I have to say those years were exhausting and we were left drained by it all. The choices she made were terrible and we were always baffled why she did such stupid stuff. As parents we felt like we’d failed and questioned everything we’d done raising our kids. We put everything we had into keeping her as much on the straight and narrow as we could, private therapy, consequences, soft parenting, tough love etc in the end I think just being there and being the stability in their lives has a bigger impact than you can imagine. At some point they have to make their own mistakes and you can’t control what they do but you can stick to your guns with what behavior is and is not acceptable to you. They listen more than you think.

@2girls76 Thank you for what you have said. We have had episodes of self harming but have given her techniques to change how this is delt with and have been trying to build on our communication so that when she has done something wrong she can come to us and we wont discuss it till everyone is calm.
I've been searching a little about ADHD and dopamine searching and this seems to fit in to exactly how she can be. She loves ice skating and has just started kick boxing and both of these days are her calmest days of the week.
I am going to just take it day by day an today was a good day helping me at work and now she's laughing and playing silly xbox games with her dad. We are going to look into if going private for an assessment will help us to get some support for her quicker.

You sound like you are doing really well and being there for her is sometimes all you can do. Keeping her in hobbies will really help as boredom and ADHD do not go well together. Lots of holding your breath while they navigate their way through to adulthood. We also noticed hormonal changes often triggered and exaggerated ADHD behavior so we know to look out for that now too. It’s been alot tougher than I ever thought it would be. I always thought it was just mine but from what I can gather talking to other mums, most teens have their issues even if they are not ND. The other thing that helped, was talking to other parents that I knew I could trust and had their own difficulties going on. The support and solidarity got me through some very dark times. Also looking after my own mental health so I could deal with things slightly better.