Never give up!

For anyone who has to deal with a strong-willed child, or one with other forms of emotional developmental problems, I now know a lot better of how personally streesful this can be.

E, our 16 year old, is out of control. She makes no effort to contribute to the well-being of our household. Most recently, she decided that she would run away again, right after the police had been to our house to cancel a run away report we had filed. I tried to stop her. I kept telling her to go back home. I could not restrain her, but instead allowed her to beat on me with her fists. Of course I was geting a bit hot under the collar, but to hit her is unacceptable, no matter what. Well I finally just had to let her go, I was about to be ambushed by neighbors who swear up and down that it was me beating on her. I refused to get entangled by them until I reached the house where I instructed my girlfriend to call 911. To make a long story short, the incident ended peacefully. No one was arrested and we again filed another run away report.

My story is in no way unique. A lot of parents are dealing with far more severe situations than this. For a bit, I was so aware of how afraid I was feeling. All my life I had been accustomed to feeling angry, but this was almost paralyzing. I had forgotten that I was the parent, I was responsible for the well-being of the household. For years I re-iterated "I may not agree with what you choose, but I can respect your right to choose." And that is what brings me to our point.

As our children grow and develope, they must see someone in authority, namely their parents, who can stand their ground and say I respect your right to choose. If for some reason they choose not to believe you when you tell them of consequences earned by negative behavior, although we may disagree with what they've choosen, we must allow them to experience the weight of their decisions. And that's where I went wrong, I tried to stop her. I know she's heading towards disaster, she knows there's nothing promising waiting for her at some unknown destination. And well, this time it got the best of me.

I had to ask myself, was I loving her by further aggrevating the situation? This was a tough love moment. I know the types of people she was running with and towards, they are dangerous at best. And the worst case scenario is a nightmare we don't have to endure here.

The bottom line is this, our home is a place of well-being. Every effort must be made to ensure that. We must stand our ground and maintain our home so that when our children finally hit rock bottom and require a place of well-being, we can receive them and nurture them and perhaps finally see the fruits of our labor. Adolescence is a time where young adults learn to assert themselves. Right or wrong doesn't matter, it's the decision making that makes the difference here. As long as our decision is to  maintain the well-being of our home, they'll always have a reference of something solid, a comparison to all they'll experience through making bad decisions.