Found out 14yo daughter is drinking and am looking for "Positively" affective punishment?

Question

Have recentley learned that my daughter and her friends have been drinking. I know kids do as I once did but I also know where that leads! I'm finding it has however been BEFORE school..AT school and having guys get it for her at her friends house while her mothers not home! I am very worried. Aside from taking away cell phones and making them attend AA Meetings to show what alcohol does to people in the end can anyone suggest more? We both as mothers have told our stories of abuse by her alcoholic father and my drug addict ex husband and my life once on drugs and all of our regrets but what more can be said or done to deter these girls and give them a better start and chance than what we had??

Answer 1

You need to be a parent. Have you considered boot camp? My sister sent her son there and it worked wonders. Why would you send a child to AA meetings? As you put it "to show what alcohol does to people in the end" I'm an alcoholic. 8 years sober. I attend AA on a regular basis. If you want to show her what alcohol does in the end take her to the morgue. Have law enforcement talk to her. An what about a Cell phone for a 14 y/o kid? PLEASE! She is a KID. YOU ARE THE PARENT. You need to do something before she becomes another statistic. I'm not trying to be mean, but this is serious.

Good luck!

Answer 2

You and the friend's mother really need to be a team on this! Grounding for a period of time is where I would start- 1 to 2 weeks under constant adult supervision and with no privileges to see friends outside of school. It will be a punishment for you as the parent as well! Drag your daughter along when you run errands- she has shown that she is not behaving responsibly when she is left home or at a friends without an adult present, so she has lost her privilege to even stay at home for the half hour that you are at a grocery store. After the grounding period is over, you should speak with the parents of any friend she wants to spend time with about the level of adult supervision and access to alcohol. Kids who are 14 don't usually know anyone other than relatives or friends relatives who are 21 and can purchase alcohol. Are the children stealing alcohol? You and the other parents need to either remove it from your home or lock it up in some way. Or, is someone purchasing the alcohol for them? That is a crime, and should be stopped immediately.

Answer 3

I have recently found myself in a very similar position to yours. I totally agree that there should be a punishment, and that would probably consist of no priveliges and the AA meetings are a good idea. I would also be concerned about 'why' she is drinking!! In my experience, I have heard a number of times that if one of the parents is a heavy drinker, or has a history of alcohol abuse, that can leave a person with a predisposition to being an alcoholic too. Have you considered maybe taking her to a counsellor as well? Kids are very reluctant to be open with their parents, encourage her to talk to you, validate her feelings, she is going down a very dangerous path if this behaviour continues. Once the trust is gone, she is going to have to work hard to earn it again.

Answer 4

this is tough but its what i would do... if you cant trust here and clearly you cant and she is only 14.. she would spend every min with me or and adult that i know.. i would drive her to school walk her in and not leave til the bell rings.. i would get there before school lets out make sure she was there for all of her classes then stand by the door to walk her out...she would go straigt home and stay there unles she went somplace without me..... sounds mean i know but you may just be saving her life if she is hanging out with kids drinking she could end up in a car wreck or be raped or who knows what? around here in the last 3 yrs we have lost 8 kids to drugs and alcohol... and this is a very small town.... aa is good but send her to alateen meetings instead.. and keep the line of comunication open and one more thing if anyone in her family was addicted to drugs and alcohol she has a very high chance of being adicted also... to the lady who said make her suffer the hang over that will not work on someone who is in the process of being an alcoholic they tend to not have a hang over like the rest of us do.. hence that is y they keep drinking til the point of a hang over the rest of us learn real quick when to stop...

Answer 5

This is a very bad idea, but you could get her so drunk that the next morning during her hangover you could make lots and lots of loud noises. I saw this on War at Home and don't recommend it. I just thought it was kinda of funny. But seriously to help you out I would, if i caught my child drinking, punish them by talking to her and asking why she did it. Every time she answers i would say why. For example

"Honey why were you drinking?"
"Its cool, everyone else does it."
"Why?"
"I don't know?"
Also you could threaten to call the cops if you ever catch her drinking and she'll get in trouble for underage drinking. And those guys could go to jail by providing a minor with alcohol. These ideas i've given you probably won't work seeing as im only 15, but if i were drinking and my mom caught me. Lets just say I would be on house arrest, only to go to school. Oh and like the person before me lectures work really good. When my mother lectures me on certain things I feel real embarassed and when she cries about something I did very wrong like it was on purpose to disrespect her, I get really guilty. But never yell at them, it usually pushes them away. I know this because whenever my mom yells at my half-brother you can see him just get further away from my mom and just not care what she's sayiing.

Answer 6

this is bad of me to tell. when i was 18, my second sister was 14 and she bragged about drinking with some of her friends to my stepdad. my mom was out of town when this occured and probably would have handled this differently and less effectively than he did. he's a recovering alcoholic and former drug addict, and he said if anyone had done this for him, he wouldn't have been in the first place, but here it is: he told he to pick out which hard liquor she wanted (i had never drank before, so i asked if i could join, he let me) and he bought it. i didn't get trashed because i had seen people who were trashed and it didn't look like fun. she, on the other hand, had not. she drank herslef into oblivion. the next day while she was hungover (it was summer vacation, so no school) my dad asked if she was ever going to drink around people she didn't know ever again. she covered her eyes, groaned and said "no". and i can confidently say she didn't drink again until her 21st birthday, and then it was with people she knew she could trust. it probably wasn't what you were looking for, and many counselors would call it abuse. i think it was extreme intervention. while i don't promote this, and probably wouldn't do it to my kids, each child is different and that means different measures need to be taken with each.

Answer 7

Here is a little story that might help:

My mother is an alcoholic. I got drunk for the first time at 12. I quit drinking at 15. Why? First, I realized that I wasn't really drinking for pleasure, just to kill emotional pain. Even so, the truth was that drinking didn't REALLY make me feel better; I just thought it did. I realized that it was useless to try to run away from reality and that it was weak to try to ignore my problems by drinking. Second, I had one night of drinking that lead to one very bad hangover and an aversion to the smell of gin, Grand Marnier, or Kahlua that lasts to this day. Third, I really didn't want to end up like my mother.

Answer 8

Report me if you happen to like for being a *****, I formally do not care however Nateena is a bloody liar. four% of her solutions are quality solutions. Never been given a quality reply? Take an extended stroll off a brief cliff you mendacity rat. But that was once a quite well funny story. Didn't make me snigger nevertheless it was once customary.

Answer 9

Have you considered getting her so drunk she gets sick? It's like when the dad finds out his kid is smoking so he makes the kid smoke a whole pack of cigarettes, they are reluctant to do it again Just a suggestion. I really would have been concerned, because like you said kids will be kids, but it's before and during school that worries me. not just weekend warriors. i think taking them to AA meetings is a great idea, let them see what a person has to go through and what they look and smell like, take them to the house of someone who drinks heavy and see what a wreck it is, that it's not like it looks on the movies. But I think the most important thing to do is tell her that you know she is growing up and going to be doing these things, but there is a time and place for it. And just as you wouldn't go to work drunk that she shouldn't go to school drunk.

Answer 10

First of all I don't know about you but I wasn't drinking at 14 and neither was my daughter. I never allowed my daughter to go to a friend's home when there was no adult supervision. That rule didn't end until she was 18years old. My daughter also never had a cell phone at 14. She did finally get one at 16, I paid for the phone she paid for the phone plan No priveliges in my home were doled out until appropriate behaivor was shown, that was simply the way it was from day one. If she wanted anything other than a roof over he head, food in her stomach, clothes on her back and her education she had to earn them by behaving. I don't beleive in "grounding" a kid because I don't beleive in punishing myself.