joy riding girl

[Rob of 2 teens]

Hi Dr. - Your Teens book has been a great help to me. I saw you in CA 10/19 and we spoke afterwards about how to help my wife cope better.

At 2am this morning the cops called. My soon to be 16 yr old daughter had taken our car 25 miles to her boyfriends house. He and she and 2 of his sleep over buddies (2 eagle scouts in the group) then got caught - no lights, no license.

Happy Holidays, where's the Tylenol.

We have withheld all driving instructions as an incentive - "When you show us responsibility/maturity, we can then talk about a license." Boy she showed us.

So that's part of it. She said until the cops caught them, they had no fear. Today she has shown proper remorse and wrote a letter of apology to us and her boy friends parents. Still my concern/questions is -

- How do we make this the best possible lesson, and...

- How can my wife better keep this in perspective so she copes properly and doesn't risk her own blood pressure/health?

- By the way, sneaking out and joy riding effect what percent of the teen world so on a scale of 1-10 is this as serious as it feels?

Thanks.

Rob B.

[Mike Bradley]

Dear Dad,
If your instincts tell you that she "gets it" now, then you're done. Adding more punishments and/or lectures is just piling-on, and actually becomes a diminishing return in that your daughter's growing anger at extra punishments might cause her to focus more on your behavior than on hers.
So give her a hug and move on. By the way, you might want to flip to the section of my first book where I describe an eerily similar episode in my own teenage years, and share it with her. I believe my parents used to buy the industrial-sized Tylenol.
Happy Holidays!