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View Full Version : holding the line as a single mom



Zoe Girl
6-5-11, 9:55am
Argh, I could put in a LOT more bad words here.

So middle dd has a boyfriend of about a year, she is 17 and he is recently 18. I really don't like the guy, he treats her like crap IMHO. Well we moved last August and now we are abotu 30 minutes away, he does not have a license, my dd does not have access to a car right now due to headlight being out (the cops here are tough on that) and I am making the kids deal with that on the car they drive. Anyway i got home last night and he was here. Okay fine, but I have said before he cannot spend the night, I also do not want her spending the night there but if she is gone I can't do much. I am also not willing to drive in the middle of the night to fetch or deliver kids of this age.

So he was here in the morning as I figured he would be, the coffee table was trashed again with soda cans and obvious indoor smoking. I woke everyone up and made them clean it up at 7 am. Then I told my dd I would give them bus money to get back to his house even though I am going that way. I just can't stand having them in my car when they both are doing this over and over. I have to go to sleep early and I get up early and then surprise! He is at my house overnight. Even when my dd was able to drive she would take him home way past the 12 pm curfew which is how she got pulled over for the headlight and found out her license had been suspended at 2 am.

So I know it is hard to be separated especially going into summer but I am not going to support this for a kid who has her one the phone crying every week. With my older daughter the boyfriend and her tried this and I was able to have a mature conversation with them, these kids are not able to do that. I can hear them talking outside about how this is all about a messy coffee table, and I said clearly it was because he can't spend the night. Plus if I want to be picky about going to sleep with a clean house and waking up to a messy one I certainly can.

okay just had to work that out for myself because I have no adult to talk to here at 7 am.

Mrs-M
6-5-11, 10:50am
Hugs Zoe Girl. There's a certain strength I recognize and see in single parents I know I don't have, so I admire those like you going the distance. Just being able to persevere from day to day while maintaining a happy balance between comfort and contentment speaks volumes as to how strong and determined you are.

Tammy
6-5-11, 11:42am
older children will do the opposite of what you say, many times, in order to show their independence. So the more you oppose their relationship, the more you will drive them into each other's arms. romeo and juliet ...

there are a lot of various opinions on this, but with our 3 kids (now all in their 20s), we didn't have a lot of rules. just the basics -- no drugs or alcohol in our home, unless it was a beer with the family type of event. if you get in trouble with the law we won't bail you out. if you do stupid things when we don't know it, then you will pay whatever consequence comes along. let us know where you are, so we know you are safe. and tell us the truth. that was about it.

one kid was quiet, good, studious, introverted, with just a few friends, and she stayed home a lot reading and writing. she had an abusive boyfriend first year of college (stalker tendencies, he never hit her), and she asked us to help her get rid of him when she saw the light, so as a family we broke up with him, and had to reinforce it a few times. but it only worked when she was ready for it to work.

one kid hated high school by the time he was 15 and spent as little time there as possible. he met his wife when he was 15 --- they dated 5 years or so before marrying. she is 3 years older. we included her as a part of part of our family all along the way, and she even lived with us for 6 months a year before their wedding because she was in a tight spot financially. this son didn't party much, but he liked to stay out late with his 1-2 good friends and challenge authority in more harmless ways, like trying to steal street signs, etc. i told him that if street signs were in my home i would call the police and ask them to come get them, and if they found out it was him, then i guess they would do whatever they do ...

the other son partied a lot more. he had a steady girlfriend for a few years, now is single. lost his license once for 3 months for underage drinking, and had to arrange his own ride to school each day, or take the bus. he has turned out to be the most conservative financially of our 3, and is doing fine.

all through these years, I kept talking to them, letting natural consequences take their toll on them. the thing is, I worked hard to not let a wall of anger build between us, or to make a scene or act like the heavy-handed parent, or oppose their friendships or relationships. I did the opposite, and we took girlfriends along on vacations if they wanted to go, and we invited the partying friends to our house for the poker games. we wanted to keep all this close to us so we could have good influence on things, and to know what was happening with our kids lives. and to keep them and their friends talking to us.

its a gamble to do this, as is any form of parenting, but it worked for us. our kids all grew up and out of their problems, and are doing well as adults. working, finishing college, saving money, out of debt, kind to people, etc.

I think its time you don't punish or oppose your daughter. i get the sense she will just hide things from you and it will push her farther in the direction you don't like. If i were you i would invite the boyfriend to family things and go pick him up and go out of my way to welcome him. Then he will have to make a choice -- shape up and treat her right and be a part of this family, or go find someone who will run to him because of big bad mommy. abusers like to find people who have no support at home.

loosechickens
6-5-11, 2:52pm
yeah, I was always of the "kill em with kindness" school myself. The more you put obstacles between DD and the boyfriend, the more desirable he seems. Welcoming him, making the two of them partners in your endeavors, including him as part of the family, etc., will probably work better. PLUS, they will be around your place, you can observe behaviors toward your daughter that might be problematic more easily, and with less to fight against, you'll pull the rug right out from under her "us against HER" that is going on right now, Romeo and Juliet style.

It was my experience when my kids were teenagers, that I might as well embrace having their friends draped all over the house, sleeping on the floor, etc., because they could have snuck them in easily since I sleep very soundly, anyway, so didn't want to be in the position of forbidding, then not being able to follow through.

I was only a single parent for about five years, but it was right through the roughest part of my kids' adolescence, and after they had gone through a very public divorce and their father marrying a young, very young woman who worked for us, who was barely older than they were.........BUT....they lived through it, so did I, and they both turned out to be great people.

Does make you want to pull your hair out, though, doesn't it?????? ;-)

redfox
6-5-11, 7:06pm
OMG, we went through this too. When BF showed up for dinner - we invited him regularly - the first thing we did was ask him what time his bus home was, and make sure he had bus money. The first time he didn't have bus money, we told him that the 6 miles home wasn't a bad walk. Our DD gave him the bus money and he always had it after that. We checked his departure bus time each and every time he walked into the front door.

Madsen
6-5-11, 11:17pm
Oh man glad I'm not having kids. ;) lol

Zoe Girl
6-6-11, 8:04am
So far I have not directly opposed him, other than listening to her sob her heart out when he is being an above and beyond jerk. However I did start inviting him in until the damage at my house was too much. There is no "we" at my house without a partner so much so it is all just me, and it is all easy to blame it on me. I have just stayed clear and direct. When he was no longer allowed over when I wasn't home I was able to point out several things such as our slashed holloween pumpkins and a hatchet in the wood of the deck and gouges in the coffee table and all the clothelines being cut. . He comes around a little when I am not here and we are working on getting him home more independantly but there is no way I am going to sit by and watch my house get trashed and damaged on a regular basis. I will say he has started to make eye contact and said thank you for dinner the other night. Slightly better than the feral animal he started out as. I hear the damage is related to his taking his ADD meds appropriately, I don;'t know one way or another but I do know that for all the kids and teens I have opened my doors to (a few stayed with me, spent countless horus at my house, etc) I have never really seen this before.

margene
6-6-11, 12:00pm
I hear ya. My son wanted his 17 year old girlfriend to spend the night here. She was lying and saying she was 18, which didn't matter, i didn't want her to spend the night anyway. But I knew she was only 17. Then I overhear him telling her I'm a b**ch. And as far as the mess i'm tired of waking up to the midnight meals that haven't been cleaned up from.

redfox
6-6-11, 1:12pm
I hear ya. My son wanted his 17 year old girlfriend to spend the night here. She was lying and saying she was 18, which didn't matter, i didn't want her to spend the night anyway. But I knew she was only 17. Then I overhear him telling her I'm a b**ch. And as far as the mess i'm tired of waking up to the midnight meals that haven't been cleaned up from.

When a teen calls you a b*tch, it may mean you're doing your job! Setting boundaries & limits is an important part of our job description, and teens' job description is to push the boundaries. Our teens were very clear that there was a no lovers overnight rule in our house. I know they broke it a couple of times, rather to be expected for teens. However, I was able to tell every parent whose child spent the night that we segregated kids by gender during overnights - and we also separated same gender potential lovers when one of our kids was identifying as gay, and his friend came to visit.

We also got both our teens to Planned Parenthood and supplied them with plenty of info and condoms. Our son became sexually active in 8th grade, with an older girl, and our daughter at age 17. It was a challenging time... and they are both disease free, no teen pregnancies, and our daughter is finally choosing healthy, age appropriate BF's. It was a rocky road ... and then they grow up, I promise!

Mrs-M
6-6-11, 1:24pm
Originally posted by Redfox.
When a teen calls you a b*tch, it may mean you're doing your job!Bingo!!! Bang on! :)

lhamo
6-6-11, 5:08pm
ZG,

The destructive behavior -- hachets? things being slashed? -- sounds really disturbing. Definitely not normal. I am all for alternative lifestyles and letting kids figure out who they want to be, but violent and destructive behavior is not acceptable, especially given that he is verbally abusive to your daughter. I think you are right to be concerned. Set your limits and stick to them. You have enough on your plate without having to worry about being a parent to someone else's feral child.

lhamo

Zoebird
6-6-11, 11:55pm
I agree. You just have to keep setting the limits as best you can with them, and hopefully it will work out quickly.

I also wouldn't dream of calling my mother a bitch. I guess I'm just too respectful. You have to *really* make me angry for me to call you that. And a fair few people have made me that angry (about 10 or so). It's not a term I use often.