16 yo daughter smoking pot, drinking, partying with college guys :( - Page 4

[pigpokey]

Originally Posted by eclipse 

Why is this a fair assumption???

Well, if he's a young heterosexual male it  definitely cannot be excluded. 

She's hanging out with college guys, not a pimp down by the river.

So ... new rules.  Yes you can see your new friends but home by 12.  No more drinking / pot or you turn over the keys to the car.  Not on school nights.

What she is doing is premature "college behavior," that matched the freshman / sophomore behavior of probably 50% or more of the class of the elite college I attended.  One girl in my whole class of about 1000 students had a baby, and she got pregnant by her home town boyfriend partway into freshman year and moved back there.  One.

[Jane93]

I think a number of posters have been too dismissive of the OP's concerns, especially about the pot issue.  Many people here are pot positive so that is understandable.

However, there is also the case of Henry Granju whose mother, Katie Allison Granju, is a name in attachment parenting and who died of an overdose after being involved in both dealing and prostitution for drugs.  He started with pot, and Katie has written on her blog that she wishes that she had taken that first discovery of his pot usage much more seriously.

I think the OP's mom should reach out for help (perhaps from a therapist or other substance abuse expert) to get better strategies on moving forward with her relationship with her daughter and addressing the various issues raised by her behavior.

Pot usage in college is not restricted to the hippie, crunchy type -- in fact, at my college, most pot smokers were actually frat boys.  I would have serious concerns about a relationship between a high school sophmore and a college guy due to the power and experience differential.   He could be a good guy but I would suggest that what we know about his behavior so far indicates otherwise.  He may be more the type who, back in my day, liked to call the incoming freshwomen "fresh meat."

However, I think that the ship has sailed on the virginity thing.  I would be managing that with discussions about safe sex.

The drug usage issue is much more serious and that would be my focus going forward.

[AllyRae]

WTF.  I was a high school and college cheerleader, straight A student, dean's list in college, never smoked or did drugs, lost my virginity on my wedding night to my still-husband.  And, I stood up for myself in high school and wouldn't let myself be pressured.  I had the self confidence to tell people what I did and did not want to do.  I refused drugs when offered.  I refused sex when boyfriends tried to pressure me.  Never once was I ever half naked at a frat party, even in college.  And this was just a "lowly little public high school" that was far from being affluent and then at a small rural college.  Oh, and for the record, almost everyone on the cheer team in high school was a straight A student, most of them didn't do drugs, and most went on to be the top of their class at great colleges.  Holy fricken false stereotype.  Not all cheerleaders are valley girl ditzy drugged up tramps. And not every popular kid becomes a sex fiend druggy.

Originally Posted by jdsf 

Well, I don't know how helpful this is nearly 2 months later, but I can tell you that this is not all that unusual. I, personally, would never let either of my daughters become a cheerleader because this is the exact same story I have heard from every high school cheerleader I knew in high school and in college. The more "popular" you are, the more likely you are to be peer pressured into these types of situations. For whatever reason, college boys seem to love to hang out with high school cheerleaders, and I recall many a wild party in high school where the drunk/half naked girls were all cheerleaders with college boyfriends. Of course, I went to an affluent high school, so this probably is not the case with every group of cheerleaders, but there is this pervasive mentality that you have to fit in and acquiesce to pressure in order to maintain your status.

Your kids will make bad decisions. Your kids will lie to you. But they still need to know they can trust you when they get in a situation where they are in over their heads.

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by AllyRae 

 Not all cheerleaders are valley girl ditzy drugged up tramps. And not every popular kid becomes a sex fiend druggy.

yeah, the year before last my then 6th grader wanted to go out for cheerleading and we were supportive. She made the squad and cheered for one year, and decided it wasn't really her thing. I can't imagine how it would have played for her or our relationship if we had told our sweet little girl that cheerleading was out because it would cause her to turn into a skanky whore. Seriously. What would we have been saying to her about what we really thought of her?  Would she have decided to prove us wrong by acting whorish without cheerleading? Would she have believed us and thought less of the girls who were on the squad? I just don't see how ANY good could have come from that.

I think that once your kids are old enough for you to post on this board, they are old enough to pick their own activities.