8/20/2013 I think I’m a grandmother. Before the age of 50, I’m a grandmother. I’ve taught my girls all their lives to wait until they’re in their thirties to get married, have kids, settle down. I’ve encouraged them to see the world, have experiences, live in different places, have different jobs, fall in and out of love many times before they can even begin to know who they are, what they want, and who they want to grow old with….
12/6/2011 Some recent facts and findings: I found a homemade bong made from a plastic water bottle. The thing was configured with a hole punched in the side and tin foil around the lip, and the smell was obvious. It was right on my daughter’s floor—I was just looking for the lint brush. My daughter allowed me a peek into how bad she used to be. She said whenever she was with a particular friend, they were high on ecstasy or Xanax…
12/2/2011 Sadly, life with my troubled teen has been dismal and miserable for the past few weeks. I’m a bundle of nerves, stressed to the point of physical illness, and spend my days grinding my teeth and feeling like I’m suffocating. I can’t say or do anything right; even my most innocuous comments, like “Have a good day,” are met with disdain and disgust. It’s like she turned on me all of a sudden. I’ve been trying to reflect on…
11/23/2011 Today is Wednesday, but let me backtrack to Tuesday night. I’m a sucker. I won’t learn. I always trust, hope, and pray that things will be better. We didn’t fight Tuesday morning when I drove her to work. There was little communication throughout the day. This deserves a mention—until this past week, she was conscientious about calling me each day and updating me and just sort of checking in. Now the secretiveness is back in spades. When I got…
10/17/2011 So the fall/early winter is birthdayville in my family. Me: September; older daughter: October; my sister: November; toddler nephew: December; and “troubled teen:” December. As my girls get older, it’s more and more impossible to be creative with gifts. A set of nail polishes in a cute box or a CD of a pop band used to go pretty far—now the gifts need to be meaningful and that often means expensive. Troubled teen made it easy for me this…
9/12/2011 I particularly wanted to find out about my daughters’ age groups. The survey says: Young Adults Aged 18 to 25 In 2010, the rate of current illicit drug use was higher among young adults aged 18 to 25 (21.5 percent) than among youths aged 12 to 17 (10.1 percent) and adults aged 26 or older (6.6 percent). Among young adults, the rates were 18.5 percent for marijuana, 5.9 percent for nonmedical use of psychotherapeutic drugs, 2.0 percent for hallucinogens, and 1.5 percent for cocaine. In 2010,…
8/24/2011 I admit it, I’ve been duped a thousand times by my daughter, and despite knowing it, I continue to fall for her lies. I think it’s wishful thinking that “this time,” she is finally being straightforward and I have nothing to worry about. I catch her in lies all the time, but 50% of the time I can’t really prove anything and 50% of the time I punish her in some way but it doesn’t change her behavior. She’s either…
6/23/2011 Within the last week, I’ve spoken to the new probation officer assigned to my daughter’s case, for which she’s appearing next week. I had a great conversation with the woman, and she clearly is convinced that my daughter is nothing less than a saint—two jobs, enrolling in school, “thinking of” volunteering for Habitat for Humanity…Why wouldn’t she? I talked her up for an hour, explaining that she had a tough time for a while, that she is now being…
6/2/2011 Our story always gets better! So I was having some company the other day and naturally decided to do some housecleaning. The worst room in the house? My 17-year-old’s, of course. She was at work, so I did the usual stuff—picked up the dirty clothes and put them in the hamper, threw away the abundant trash, made the bed…then I needed to vacuum, so I picked up the random junk off the floor, including a nice small box by…
5/10/2011 I’ll cut right to the chase. I came home, smelled something funny in my house, and saw my daughter opening windows and lighting incense. I couldn’t believe it–my daughter had been smoking pot in my house. At first, I thought I was imagining things, but when I saw the leaves in the toilet and a butt on the bathroom sink, it was too late. I was beyond…words. She tried to lie, but it was a futile. I caught her….