Parent Thread

So maybe I am just a bad parent I don't know at this point. I tell the wife to not think that way since it isn't productive and to find solutions and that some kids are just "bad" and we have to power through and make them survive until they reach some maturity and snap out of whatever it is they are doing. Eventually they will be an adult and make their own decisions legally and we will need to extract ourselves from their lives.

This week we got all new cellphones on Verizon after moving to North Carolina since the home we have signed a lease for has zero ATT reception but good Verizon. My daughter (now age 14) has had a lot of issues in the past with chatting up random strangers on KIK and other chat programs and giving out too much personal information and random junk like she is a pot head and stuff about sex and how much older she is etc. She has cut herself and we have had a few ER visits and also two weeks of intensive outpatient therapy. She is a wreck basically. She claims she gets bullied online and at school etc and this is why she is this way. We have bent over backwards to help her. One thing her therapist and we agree on is that interaction with random people on the internet is probably not a good idea at this stage. She just got her cellphone back in order to text message family and a few approved friends since we moved across the country. She has been better overall so we kind of check on it every so often. Her phone is locked down so she can't install apps and it doesn't have a browser or really anything else. She can text people and call people. Last night she has a problem with her brand new phone so I check it out and as I am checking it out she receives a text from some number with no contact information and it's some dud flirting with her. She has zero other texts on her phone so I pretend I am still troubleshooting, delete it, give it back to her and wait. She goes to the bathroom and the wife grabs the phone and she has 5 or so messages back and forth about calling her baby instead of boo and how she thinks that's hella cute etc. Basic stupid girl stuff. The number is from Michigan. We ask her about it and she says she got on my ipad, installed Kik and found some random dude and got his phone number and has been texting back and forth with "mike smith" from Michigan .... She doesn't understand how her name, state, and phone number are an issue. Says she is smart because she didn't give out her last name. We explain just how stupid it is and we get the standard bullshit you only see on TV and in movies about how he listens to her and we don't, that she can talk to him when she feels alone in the middle of the night, he gets her, how come her brother can have voice chat on the playstation with strangers but she can't talk to strangers over text messages. Take the phone away and just tell her to go to bed. Zero remorse from her of course. Told us she is smarter because it took us longer to catch her this time and doesn't realize it's because we are trying to give her space and privacy and let her make the right decisions.

Browse through the history on my ipad and she has searches like "how old to fly alone", "how to sneak on a plane as a minor", "sexy pickup lines for gamer boys", we couldn't help but just laugh in the privacy of our room at some of the bizarre google searches she did.

I just have no clue what to do at this point. In patient treatment isn't covered by insurance without serious issues and multiple suicide attempts. Boarding school and things like that are $30k/yr. The wife and I rebelled like any other teenager but not like this so no clue what to do. Sure we take every device away or spy on the devices but then she will just borrow someone else's (she has done so before).

Anyone else have a willful 14 year old without a single shred of common sense?

Cad_sl said:

My niece is like this a_skeleton_03. I don't know your daughter obviously but I can tell you my niece just seeks attention. She thinks the boyfriend or random guys or whatever give her love while her parents don't because they "just try to hold her back." She is 17 now and has completely destroyed her relationship with all of her family, including her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and is living (sort of) with her boyfriend now after attacking her father in the home and being allowed to leave rather than going to juvie or getting her ass beat.

It's impossible to hear but there's only so much you can do for kids. You can show them the right example, you can give them the proper guidance, but you can't force them to be anything other than they are. The more you tighten the noose on your daughter, the more she will resent you. I know thats hard to hear, but the harder you try the worse you will make it. You're doing the right thing trying to protect her from predators and teach her how to conduct herself, but she doesn't see it that way. She sees it as you preventing her from being an adult, because you hate her/are envious of her/etc. So the more you tighten up, the worse it'll get.

I don't know what to tell you because obviously my family's efforts in a similar situation have completely failed. But just wanted to let you know this isn't really your failure as a parent, kids are going to do what kids do. You can only do so much. Soldier on.

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Yeah I am exactly there where I know it's just one of those things we just keep doing and we might not see any positive results from. We are trying to do that gentle smother or whatever you call it. We prevent her from doing anything downright unsafe and bad but at the same time try to be as hands off as possible but the thing is she just always makes the worst choice possible.

The rule is, don't talk to strangers, we learned at like age 5 and only really needed to be told once. Okay she's 14 and thinks she knows better, I get that. If she was just talking to random girls about how bad her parents suck I would pretend I didn't see it and move on. Talking to "mike smith" from Michigan and then googling how to sneak onto a plane .... lol you just can't make a poorer decision I think.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Have you shown her "To Catch a Predator"? You could also see if there's a local support group for people who have met the bad end of the spectrum for teenage abductions and have her listen.

I think at 14 I also had vastly superior intelligence to my parents.

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She knows all that she thinks she is smarter though. "Mike" just gets her and hasn't asked for nude photos so he can't be bad .... he just wants to talk and he listens to her.

At 14 my parents had been playing catch up for years, so I thought, turns out my dad knew everything but only called me on things I did that were dangerous to my well being. If it was something that wasn't going to really cause any long term issues he tried to ignore it and we are trying to also. Yeah she is sneakier than I was but only because we aren't doing pat downs and things like that. We know she is doing stuff we are just trying to not call her on it. When you have like 6 contacts on your phone and 3 are in the car with you and you have been typing on your phone for an hour straight you aren't just doing nothing ....

Noodlemod_sl said:

You could also have verizon pull the text logs for you if you're really concerned. I know this because my sister did this to her boyfriend when she thought he was cheating on her. Might cost a few bucks, but might give you a better idea of what's going on.

Sorry, I am a terrible person and read a lot about missing children (a morbid fascination, not a personal obsession) so I always think the worst now.

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Yeah we just switched so we would pull it from ATT but yeah not sure if I need to do that, yet. I wish there was an easy way to just get all messages forwarded. Going to look into a a jailbreak solution that does that. Sure it's shady to spy on your daughter and let her use her phone as a honeypot but at this point I don't care. She is incapable of making good decisions.

Slaythe_sl said:

Is she geeky enough to play online games or is that something that just opens her up to making the same dumb decisions with a new group of predators? I wasn't anything at this level at that age, but I was doing things in EQ that were definitely kept from my parents (buying/selling stuff mostly).

I have a niece that is crazy about Minecraft and while she's done some dumb stuff there like sharing accounts (although I did this in EQ so whatever), I think it was mostly out of ignorance than anything.

It's a weird suggestion. Just something I think could maybe be better than random chat programs which sounds really scary. I know restricting this stuff can't go well. My parents threatened to take EQ away a few times and I thought the world was ending as a teenager. My niece, in today's world, has to be plugged in 100% of the time. She wouldn't be able to function without her iPad available to her at all times.

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Yeah I tried to get her into that kind of stuff. Her brother plays FPS'es (mainly Destiny right now) and I understand those little assholes are stupid and they say all kinds of shit but as long as he doesn't repeat it in front of me that's fine.

She doesn't want to just talk to random people she wants to whine about her life and be all emo and have them be emo with her. Every time we read any of these conversations it is the most depressing Romeo and Julliet stuff that quickly devolves into this pity party about her life. It's just too hard being in a middle class white family with no real problems and parents who have stable jobs and a good marriage especially when your brother doesn't have any problems so you need to have all the problems for the entire family.