Wednesday 25 April 2018

Teenager not respecting curfews


She is 13 and has her mind set on not respecting any curfews. I asked her what she is thinking and she wrote me this"It's my life, my time, my choices. Yes, in the role of my guardian, you may have a legal right to give me curfews, but that's not going to help much if you can't enforce them, which is difficult when I don't respect them. Sure, you can call the cops on me each time I don't come home, they might go looking for me the first 3 times, but then they will probably stop, because they have bigger crimes to take care of. Of course, you can try to send me to juvie then, it will probably interfere with my education and cause more harm than good, and you can probably see that, so you probably won't send me. So, despite having this legal right, you have no good way to enforce it. You can't physically control me like you could when I was a baby and I am not susceptible to punishments. The way I see it, you can either come to terms with this and accept that I come and go as I like, or you can turn it into an everyday battle. If you battle, you will find yourself unaware of where I am half the time. If you accept my autonomy, I will keep you informed. See I understand you become anxious when I'm out and you don't know where or who with, and I will, within reason, do my best to minimize your anxiety. I'll tell you where I am, who I'm with, when I expect to be home, and answer if you call, but I won't come home until I want to. Love you mom."What would you do?In case you are wondering, she rarely stays out late on weeknights, because she hates waking up for school if she didn't sleep enough. It's a weekend issue. She goes to parties we don't let her go to (hosted by seniors, she is a freshman) and she stays out until midnight-2am. She isn't drunk or high when she comes home. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2HL5n4b

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