smoking and allowance...

[FooserX]

Trixie,

You are the parent, and it is your DUTY and responsibility to raise your kid right! Not only is she smoking cigarettes, she's LYING to you! And here you are feeling bad that you followed your intuition and caught her. Not only that, you posted you were going to keep giving her money for cigarettes!! lol

What the hell?

A kid has ZERO privacy while they are living under your roof and your care. We as parents need to do EVERYTHING in our power to look after our kid and make sure they are on the right track. That involves snooping, following sometimes, etc etc. It's not a bad control issue...it's about keeping your kids on the path.

I totally think you did the right thing by reading her emails (what if it were drugs????) and I think you are doing the WRONG thing by not punishing her for lying. That is horrible to me...

Just my thoughts.

 

[Xero]

Aww thanks you're embarassing me. lol geez

But it's true, he's cute.

 

[Xero]

Well see, that's why I think there's a line to draw somewhere within a kid's privacy. I think they deserve privacy, but only to a certain level. I can look back to where my mom straight up took my diary just to criticize what I was thinking, or literally LISTENED TO MY PHONE CONVERSATIONS just because she wanted to know why someone called me and exactly what we were talking about. It was humiliating, and hurtful, and there was no reason for it. She would yell at me for the most pointless stuff and nothing came of it except that we had a crappy relationship.

The thing is that I was never in any real trouble when it came to the stuff she destroyed my privacy over. It was always harmless to me, but probably annoying or interesting to her. I had nowhere to turn. I was scared to talk on the phone, scared to tell my friends stuff, scared to write my feelings down. I thought my mom was everywhere, no joke. I love my mom, but nobody's perfect. No kid is gonna be happy being a robot so as not to get caught expressing their feelings. I mean... ouch.

But if a parent thinks a child is doing something bad or lying or getting into real trouble, then I think that's where the privacy line is drawn. If you don't want your parents snooping and trying to find out about you doing stuff, don't be doing stuff.

Did you say you weren't going to punish her? I missed that...

 

[Xero]

Oh ok, I found it. I missed that at first... I wouldn't personally keep giving her allowance, I don't think that will do anything but hinder, but hey whatever. I wouldn't pay for cigarettes.

 

[Trixie]

Ok let´s clear this up. Her allowance did in fact get cancelled for one month. She came to me after it should have been on her account and asked if she was really not getting it. I told her that in order to get it back it required another talk. A talk without anger or defensivness. We talked for over a hour about everything from trust to drugs to friends that pull you down and why, friends that lift you up, and why. She told me why she started smoking. We laughed a bit and she cried a bit. She claims that is really is a bummer that I found out when I did because for her it was already a thing of the past,( which is not what she said to her friend in the email after I found out, so I am still on alert). Is she just acting, playing me for the fool, telling me what I want to hear? who knows. She did seem awful sincere. She does have a conscience. For right now I feel things are good. She knows I am there. She knows I expect a lot from her. she knows that I am looking. I feel I have done the best I can to guide her without being her commander. As for the money, it was by far the most expensive pack of cigs on the market today. She laughed when I told her that. At any rate, it is certainly not over (is it ever) and I will take each thing as it comes. Thank you for all for your comments. There are really a lot of different opinions out there.