15-year-old daughter is rude and abusive to family and boyfriend

[Jessica]

I am having an awful time trying to deal with my 15-year-old daughter. When she was 14, she got into a relationship with an older boy who was a drug dealer and user. He cleaned up his act after they started dating, but the relationship was way too serious for her age, and he became obsessively jealous of her and wanted to control all of her free time. They dated for nearly a year, and during this time I lost any parental control over her because she made it quite clear that if we didn't allow her to do what she wanted, she would just leave home. THis was a serious threat, because her boyfriend's mother would have allowed her to move in with him. So even though I was just sick about the whole situation, she basically did what she wanted for a whole year, and the only input I had was to try to get her home by a particular time each night (with limited success).

She finally got tired of being controlled by this guy and broke up with him about 6 months ago. At first I was relieved, but it turned out that she didn't know how to handle her new freedom. She had no friends because she had given them all up for the boyfriend, so she started hanging out with a group of kids at school that smoked pot and drank and partied all the time. She lied all the time about what she was up to, so I was a little slow to catch on. I finally discovered that she was drinking heavily, smoking marijuana and "hooking up" with different guys at parties - making out with boys or even performing oral sex on guys she had just met. Obviously, I was terribly upset about all this, but anything I said just made her angry and defensive.

I felt totally helpless to do anything to help her or get her to straighten out. I put her in counselling, but I haven't seen any great changes in her behaviour so far.

Recently she decided she wanted to date again. She started going out with this REALLY NICE guy that we were just thrilled about. He is polite, athletic, good looking, and does well in school. He treats my daughter with respect and actually cares about her as a person rather than just wanting to get her into bed. I thought he was the greatest thing that ever happened to her, but of course things are not working out. For whatever reason, she seems to be sabotaging the relationship. It went well for about 3 weeks, and then she started getting overcritical of him. She criticizes him all the time, and nothing he says or does is right. She is rude and insensitive and refuses to even see him most of the time. I could go on for pages about all the horribly nasty things she has said and done to him. However, he says he loves her and just keeps being patient with her. The situation is making me crazy. I know I need to let go and stay out of it, but I want so badly for her to wake up and realize what a good boyfriend she has and what a support he could be for her. But I also feel that he deserves so much better and that he should break up with her and find another girlfriend who will appreciate what he has to offer. I desperately want not to care what happens and let her make her own mistakes, but I have way too much emotional investment in this relationship.

What do I do? Do I keep trying to point out to her how unfairly she is treating him? Do I call her on her outrageous behaviour? Or do I somehow make myself stop caring whether she ruins this relationship that had so much potential to be a good thing for her? I am just so afraid that if she breaks up with him, she will go back to the whole party scene and "hooking up" with random guys again. I just want her to have a stable dating relationship with a normal guy and to be able to care about another person.

I can't tell if she is just totally self-centred and not able to feel love for anyone besides herself or if it's the opposite and she has such low self-esteem that she is not capable of giving or receiving love. And either way, what do I do to help her? Sometimes I feel so bad for her that she is not able to be happy, and other times I feel almost like I hate her for being so selfish and nasty and rude not only to her boyfriend but to me and her father as well.

Sorry if this is too long, I am just feeling totally frustrated and helpless. I can't have a conversation with my daughter anymore because she just says it is none of my business. Last night we had a bit of a fight about how she was treating him. She said everything was going well, but then she went out to a party with him and apparently treated him bady again, flirting with other guys in front of him and bullying him to the point of being tongue-tied (and then criticizing him for not "being himself" around her!). Is this my fault for having had the confrontatation with her? Would she treat him worse because I told her to treat him better? Or is this relationship just doomed to fail even if I say nothing?

I need advice!! Thanks.

[Mike Bradley]

Dear Mom,
Somehow, somewhere your daughter has learned that all relationships are controlling and abusive, and she is acting this out as either the abuser or the victim, and she is finding partners who are willing to play along. This is usually indicative of a girl who feels crummy about herself (has poor self-worth). The problem is that, for now, the more you push her on relationship issues, the more she will dig in and move in the opposite direction. So I'd stay silent on any observations about her boyfriends.
I would ask to be included in some of her counseling sessions so that in that controlled environment you can talk about how much you love your daughter, and how worried you are for her future. Keep the "criticisms" framed in love so that she hears more caring and less judgment.
Please keep us posted.

[Jessica]

It's me again with a new problem! Things haven't really improved in the areas I mentioned before, but we now have a new problem. Our daughter has a "best friend" who is an older boy. He seemed harmless enough until recently, but now we have discovered that he is providing her with marijuana and making a lot of sexually suggestive comments to her, at least on her cell phone. I know your previous advice was to say nothing about the boyfriends, but how do we handle this situation? I feel like I want to contact the police or confront the boy and his mother and tell him to stay away from my daughter. However, I know that she would be terribly angry and not trust me again if I intervened in this way. It just doesn't seem right that this guy (he is 18) should be allowed to continue behaving the way he is towards my 15-year-old. Even though he pretends to be her friend, he obviously just wants to get her high and take advantage of her. Unfortunately, she doesn't see it that way and really believes he is her best friend. What do I do now???

[Mike Bradley]

Dear Mom,
DING! DING! DING! DING! That is the sound of the parent alarm bell going off to signify when parents must intervene more forcefully. If this young man is providing illegal and dangerous drugs to your daughter (yes, marijuana is dangerous to developing teen brains) then it is time for you to move in. This is NOT a "you must choose your own friends" situation. I'd wait for a counseling session in which to tell her in advance that you are immediately calling this kid and his mother and saying that his next contact with your daughter will result in a phone call to the police. She will go nuts, but you will calmly tell her that you love her far too much to stand by while she engages in behaviors that can hurt her terribly. As much as she rages, she will also know that you are right.
Keep us posted.

[Jessica]

Hi, again:

Lots of happenings since my last post. First of all, my daughter broke up with her nice boyfriend (no big surprise there, just disappointment). She ended up being grounded that weekend for coming home at 4 a.m., and we had taken away her cell phone. She got the phone back last Tuesday. That night I checked her text messages (might be a violation of privacy, but I pay the phone bills and she has hardly earned my trust) and discovered a bunch of messages from the previously mentioned 18 year old "friend" planning for them to get together the next day and smoke marijuana.

You had suggested dealing with this in a counselling session, but believe it or not, my daughter's counsellor does not think we should interfere in this "friendship" even though the boy is giving her drugs! Anyway, my husband decided to take matters into his own hands. First of all, he spoke to the boy and told him that we knew what he was up to and that it had to stop. The kid lied and denied everything. THen my husband went and spoke to his mother. Not surprisingly, she denied it all as well and tried to blame our daughter! My husband finally showed her the cell phone messages in order to convince her, but I don't know what happened after that.

My daughter is extremely angry with us. I told her that she was not forbidden to see this "friend", just that from now on it would only be under controlled circumstances. For example, I told her that he could come to our house and watch movies or something, or she could go to his house as long as his mother was home, but that we would drive and pick up and he was not to drive her anywhere. She refuses to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with using marijuana and accused me of trying to ruin her life and control her friendships. She basically has not spoken to me for a couple of days, and I'm pretty sure she's just scheming how to get together with this guy again. I told her that using drugs was something we were not willing to be lenient about and it was where we drew the line with her behaviour. I'm just afraid that confronting her openly is going to cause her to go underground now and be even more devious, because she certainly does not seem at all repentent about her actions. I took away the cell phone permanently because I told her I was not paying for a phone that was getting used to arrange illegal activities. Instead of promising to behave better (as I had hoped), instead she calmly informed me that she would just get her own phone and pay for it herself. I don't have a good feeling about where all of this is going.