Terrified of what will happen to naive daughter

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Has there been an earlier discussion about this on the parents form? I could really use some advice. My darling Aspie is 16, increasingly independent and incredibly naive. Yesterday I found out she was planning to go with her friend (a girl who is sexually very active) to a private house with two older guys she didn't even know. My daughter thought they would just be playing board games and eating popcorn. She couldn't understand why I said no.
This isn't the first time her desperate need for a social life has gotten her into dangerous situations. I don't have any problem with her dating--it's her inability to recognize what's safe and what's not that terrifies me. Help!

Have you tried explaining why you said no? Has she had the birds and the bees talk?

If not, now is the time. As an aspie she won't discover your reasons on her own until she discovers them, if you catch my drift.

Education is her best protection. Bubble-wrap only lasts for so long.

My mom used to cut out articles about crime like muggings and rape and stuff and make me read them. It made me super paranoid about crime, but I don't think it helped in practical terms.

Maybe there is a book another poster knows about that will help in a gentler way that will help you start off a conversation. I don't have personal knowledge of any, but I bet you someone does.

I think this is going to involve a series of conversations and she is not going to be able to generalize. I also think it is going to have to involve a larger conversation about people's motivations and not just sex because sex is just one aspect of that naivete. Also you don't want to scare her off relationships as a whole either. It is about acquiring good judgement of who you can trust and who you can't more than just the sexual aspect.

I also do not know your daughter's emotional developmental age. Even if she is super smart, you have to tailor what you say to emotional maturity as well.

The "need" for a social life at 16 is entirely overrated and overstated. The idea that we somehow have to "let go" is an illusion created by modern-day culture. Don't fall for it!! !

I think you are doing the right thing so far. There is absolutely NO reason, at least not a GOOD reason, for a 16 year old to start dating, especially if she is utterly clueless, makes poor choices of friends, and ends up in ugly situations. I believe that if kids are unable to be responsible for themselves, we as parents must be responsible FOR them. At a certain point, you legally MUST let them fly the nest if that's what they want. 16 years old as far as I'm aware is not YET at that point!

Here's how you handle it: Rather than letting her take notice of boys, let boys take notice of her. YOU make the decision of which boys (sons of good friends of yours, preferably) she gets to have regular, PLATONIC contact with. Sooner or later, there's going to be someone in there who enjoys her company enough that he wants to hang out with her to the exclusion of other girls. If she likes the guy, and if you chaperone her with this guy enough times, you know you can trust this guy to be alone with her, THEN she can have a boyfriend and start going out on dates.

Be just as guarded with her friends. This "friend" who is very promiscuous can come hang out at YOUR place if YOU are around, but they can't be alone together. EVER. What you're doing is controlling the influence. What you might find if the girl hangs out with you two enough is that you end up being a positive influence on HER and start curbing some of her nastier habits. I mean, don't COUNT on it. If she doesn't show any sign of improvement and she's just as bad around you, then you should pick better friends for your daughter…heck, do that anyway.

I tend to ramble on, so by now you've gotten the gist of it. Here are more of my thoughts on this...

What is important for us, especially those of us on the spectrum, is that we cultivate relationships with people we know will do us more good than harm--and preferably no harm at all. We need a steady diet of mentoring from the older generation. Kids are freakin' nuts at any age (my kids are 6, 5, and 1), and I don't care if they have raging hormones or not. I'd encourage this for any child, ASD or not, and any parent. Make kids hang out with adults and build NORMAL relationships with adults. Focus on those relationship all throughout the learning years and emphasize the importance of that over building relationships with their peers. When kids get out on their own, if you have done this, they will be WAY ahead of the game in terms of maturity and reaching personal career and educational goals. That's how you get some 18 yo MANAGING a McDonald's right out of high school while his buddy, 6 years later, is an MBA grad who can't even get out of his mom's basement. I don't even treat my own kids like kids. Heck, I don't treat ANY kid like a kid. I'm a raging, tyrannical despot who makes his kids (even the 1 year old) play piano for an hour EVERY day. And you know what? My 6-year old can now play the pipe organ at church! (OK, I'm exaggerating about the 1-year old, but I do ENCOURAGE his banging on the piano when no one else is playing. It will make it easier for him when he turns 3 and is ready for formal training). I know more 16-year olds who CAN'T do the things my 5 and 6 year olds do, and I've even met teens who've taken piano for YEARS and can't do what my 6-year old does.

The trick is keeping kids involved with grownups who DO stuff that the kids might be interested in later. A 16-year old who is disturbingly clueless about social and intimate relationships needs to forget the whole thing and concentrate on things that matter a whole lot more--like studying, college prep (if we're thinking about college), and building marketable skills so she can hold down a job, buy her own car, pay her own rent, etc. There will still be plenty of boys out there when she's 27 and completed her Ph.D. From what I understand, you can still get your real estate license at 18, work your tail off, and have a quarter mil by 25…even in THIS economy. I read about a piano teacher who made $100,000 in her first year out of college. I'm moving into my late 30s and am just now preparing material to release my own album…something I SHOULD have done a long time ago had I made smarter decisions. I had no one to help me on this side of things, no one to TELL me how to do it, and now that I've figured it out on my own, it's almost too late if it isn't already. It is POINTLESS to stand by and let my kids waste the same precious time I wasted when I could have been a session player in Nashville or touring with some famous country band, or leading worship/writing songs in some megachurch somewhere.

Get through the IMPORTANT things--how to hold down a job or build a business, earn money, secure a source of running water, eat, and get out of the rain. There will be plenty of time for her to figure MEN out on her own (do have THOSE talks with her, of course). But as a parent of an almost-full-grown adult, your time is short. Take control, and DO NOT let some stupid KID control the course of her life.

If she resents you and never wants to see you again, FINE. I'd rather my child hate me forever and learn how to succeed in life than end up in my basement or spare bedroom with no work, no husband, and 3 kids whose fathers' identities are questionable. If you really LOVE your children, as I'm sure you're already aware by now, you care more about their well-being than you do their happiness. Because think about it…if they are doing well, they're probably going to be happy, right? If you give them everything they want and they end up broke, pregnant, and miserable, all for the sake of keeping them "happy," they're not really happy, are they?

That's why I'm the benevolent dictator in my household. I'm good at teaching my kids skill-building strategies that are applicable to pretty much whatever they're interested in doing (not much, however, if you consider the attention span of 6-year-olds, but I HAVE demonstrated how my techniques help improve reading comprehension, writing, athletic performance, among other things. If I can just get them in the HABIT of cleaning the house, we'll be in good shape). I repeatedly tell my kids that I don't want them growing up to be mindless robots, but rather strong leaders who can effectively pass their knowledge and abilities along to others. I'm bossy because I want THEM to be bossy, but bossy in a way others WANT to follow them. Other kids really do look up to them. And I really do think it's because we cultivate adult-style relationships with our children, striving to bring them up to OUR level rather than reaching down to theirs. They KNOW how to act grownup and take the lead, and they have personalities that draw others to them…something I lack, which is why my personal style tends to be more coercive, and I'm constantly begging my kids to look past that to get the bigger picture.

You CAN do that with a 16-year old, though obviously it's difficult to do compared with small children. If she's incapable of choosing her friends, choose friends FOR her. If she wants to date and you're ok with that, nudge her in the direction of dating your friends' boys--people you've watched grow up and know you can trust, and boys you'd enjoy hanging out with yourself at your house. If something steady starts to emerge, put that boy to work like he's your own kid (if he's interested enough in your daughter, he WILL be your kid eventually, anyway). Focus talks about romantic relationships to dating MEN, not some little punk, snot-nosed KID with Mickey-Mouse tattoos and meth-mouth who is set to ruin her life if she lets him. And no, I'm not suggesting pimping out your daughter to a pedophile…what I mean is I've met 13-year old young MEN who act and speak with more maturity than most college kids. I want to help my 5-year old understand what it means to be a WOMAN who can make decisions for herself. I want to show her in my own actions what a MAN looks like so she grows up to be a WOMAN that MEN want as a PARTNER. I don't want her to grow up to be a girl who doesn't know how to do anything except spend her husband's money on purses and shoes when he doesn't have a dime to spare. I want her to end up with a MAN who can take care of her as his equal PARTNER, not some boy who is just along for the ride.

I'm sure you need no reminding here, but you're down to the last two, LONGEST years of raising a kid. HANG IN THERE!! ! Sure, your job doesn't have to end in two years. However, you should feel some relief knowing that you CAN cut her loose and wash your hands of the whole mess if it comes to that. Hang in there and BE PERSISTENT. I suspect she's going to ultimately turn out just fine.

Last edited by AngelRho on 18 Jan 2014, 7:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

That sounds like the perfect recipe for future parental hatred.

The way I see it, the consensus seems to agree with you.

I tend to talk more of my hard-boiled game than the mundane reality of it. There's the one side of me that cracks the whip, and there's the other side that has my kids BEGGING me to read to them at bedtime. I obsess over piano and music because those are the only things I really know that I can pass on to them, and to summarize my overarching parenting philosophy, let me just say this: Kids LOVE to play, HATE to practice. What I mean by that here is friendship and dating can be a lot of fun if done well, but it can really SUCK if kids are too busy living in the moment to stay out of the pitfalls. The learning/guiding/steering process is painful for both parent and child, i.e. the "practice" part. It's only when you hear wedding bells and a year or two later the cry of a newborn that the joy of playing makes the pain of "practicing" worth it.

I'm not afraid of hatred, btw. If this really is the perfect recipe for that in the future, then I have to live with guilt. My hope is that I'M the one who has to live with it and not my children.

You said it yourself: Bubble-wrap only lasts so long. My general approach as a former educator and as a parent is to get through the ugly stuff as quickly as reasonably possible in order to spend more time enjoying the rewards of it. I look at every aspect of life that way, and I believe every effective teaching/parenting strategy is rooted in some similar principle, some various means to the same end. I'm not saying that MY style is THE right or best style for everyone…it's just what works for ME. I do think, however, that the vast majority of parents have no real idea the exact extent of control they actually CAN exercise over their kids. I think we've been largely conditioned to give up and hand the reigns over somewhere around the age of 14, and we don't bother with realistic boundaries. I don't mean we try to set unrealistic boundaries…I just mean we normally don't even HAVE boundaries. When I started teaching my kids piano, the "Dad" switch was suddenly turned off, and I lost count in the first hour how many tears got shed when I stopped being "Dad." I get eye-rolls from my oldest that you normally don't see for another 10 years…which makes me look forward all the more to what being a parent is going to look like in the next 4. A 6-year old with that strong of a BS-detector is going to be a crazy-tough teen to contend with, and I'm honestly looking forward to that.

I don't believe I've ever seen ANY parent in this day and age relate to their kids on that level. My parenting style is MY parenting style…you do what YOU want. You can be kinder and gentler if you know how (either I don't, or I can't), set the same or similar boundaries, and within those boundaries make the parent/teenage years a lab for forming real-life relationships in a safe environment that engenders behavioral patterns that continue on through early adulthood.

But if you're worried about safety, then concerns about your kids LOVING you and being HAPPY have to take a back seat to what's really in their BEST INTEREST. You can't let the emotional part of parenting cloud what really matters most. Imagine them 50+years from now with grandchildren of their own. Guide them towards what you want that to look like right NOW and most everything else will fall into place. If my kids hate/resent me for that as adults and they confront me with it, I'd ask 1) Are you a capable, independent adult with a good head on your shoulders? 2) Are you the way you are BECAUSE of me or in SPITE of me? Either way, my job here is done and, like so many parents have told their kids before, "You'll thank me later."

I'm not a parent, but speaking as someone who was also unbelievably naive about other people's motives, generally and sexually, at that age and even older.... PLEASE sit down with her and have a very frank talk about other people's possible motives in life.

I knew all about the birds and bees, that wasn't the problem, but I didn't have a clue that the world in general is not interested in my own best interests. I didn't have a clue that there are strangers and friends of friends out there who don't give a damn about me and what's best for me. I didn't have a clue that not everyone is a nice or a good person. Not everyone cares about my best well-being. Not even in an evil way of intending harm (although there are those out there too) -- just in a "I don't really know you so I'm not that concerned about you" way.

I was of high intelligence but this awareness was like a total hole in my smartness in general. A piece missing in my common sense. My parents were very decent, well intentioned people but even the very fact that they were led me to simply take it for granted that everyone in the world was too.

By sheer dumb luck, I think, nothing bad ever happened to me that I couldn't handle, in the end. As a mature adult now, I'm much more aware, but I still think it was only luck that I didn't get into a horrible situation when younger that could have been tragic for me. I was so trusting.

Nothing bad came of my naivete but I would still say PLEASE don't assume your daughter will have the same luck. Please sit her down and even though it's going to be a conversation full of negative bummers about the worst side of human nature, please tell about the worst side of human nature, and therefore that's why she shouldn't be so trusting as to do things like go hang out with older men at their home. Spell things out, spell out possibilities and potentials. Remind her that these bad things are NOT always going to be what happens, but just that they MIGHT be and it's smart to just err on the side of caution when in doubt.

I was okay but I've had to learn this stuff cognitively by seeing news reports and finding out second hand that people can be anything from outright evil down to just negligent of another's welfare.

But I wish my parent had TOLD me this.

.

My son is a lot like BirdInFlight describes herself, though younger than your daughter. He assumes because he is honest and does the right thing, that everyone is honest and does the right thing. He assumes that because he would never intentionally do something wrong, no one would intentionally do something wrong. I think it is a form of mindblindness. He is also very, very naive. The reality is, that I have had to have some very frank discussions with him. I have had to discuss things with him that I probably wouldn't have at his age if he did not have this issue. I have also had to point blank tell him he is gullible, and to remind him about that again and again. Because I have to break it down for him again and again. He is, for example, the perfect target for kids to tell him to do something wrong so that he will get in trouble and then sit back and watch him and laugh, because he will trust them that it is OK to do it and not realize he is being tricked. He has such a beautiful view of others...very innocent. And it hurt me to break his innocence down, but I had to. Otherwise the world would eat him alive.

I tell you this piece just so you will take this very seriously (I know you are already, but I want it to stay that way). A friend of mine had a teenaged ASD daughter who was very naive and trusting. A boy brought her to his house and raped her. He said she was a willing participant, and in the loosest sense of the word imaginable, she was. But only because she did not comprehend that she was being taken advantage of, nor the reality of what she was doing, nor the possible consequences. She was just trying to fit in.

You are a living proof of what I always believed: parents (at least those before Generation X) enjoy their power over their kids, and love locking down every bit of their child's freedom. You want to chaperone your daughters on their dates, like in Shakespearean times? (I'm seeing a Romeo and Juliet situation in the making.) Are you planning to hold a hunting rifle to the poor guy's face while you grill him about his opinion of women? You want to choose their friends too? I can understand vetoing the choice they already made, but friend-blocking her a priori is cruel. Having said that, it's your full right to decide who comes over, no negotiation; after all, you paid for the house. If friends are as horrible as you say they are, let your daughters hang out with them at school, and that's that. I doubt you will have to worry about dating; guys will stay away out of fear. If I were your daughter (I'm a dude), I'd just date girls Katy Perry-style (something she did and liked it), just because I wouldn't be allowed to date guys.

The thing about ASDs is that subtle things that other people infer may need to be explained explicitly to them. She has probably just finished putting a lot of effort into understanding and adapting to the social world that pre-pubescent children live in, and now she's a teen, and all of those rules have drastically changed.

Whereas other parents may be able to get away with an awkward and short sex-ed talk (because the kids already learned everything from their friends / tv), you are not in that sort of position.

Instead you need to go for a very clear, long and ongoing conversation (or lesson-plan) about sex, boys, dating, relationships, friendships, etc. She needs to understand all of the things that other kids are inferring, and she's not going to get it except through trial-and-error, or education. I found these websites, which may be able to help: http://www.autismsexeducation.com/ , http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-au ... n-asd.aspx

In your defense, and mine, too, part of growing up is sometimes we have to learn our lessons the hard way. My mom taught me a TON of things, but she chose not to make anything stick. One of my big regrets was wasting my best years in an intense co-dependent relationship. She was a nice enough girl, don't get me wrong, but we ended up disintegrating halfway through college. That's largely the reason I feel so strongly about some of the things I've said, because I've BEEN THERE and have to live with that.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be able to say those things if I hadn't had the experience. My kids won't have to learn from that experience, but I'm sure there will be other hard lessons and make plenty of their own mistakes. I just believe there are some mistakes that don't HAVE to be made. Whether I stand in their way to keep bad things from happening or I allow them to learn through experience, it's the EXPERIENCE that ultimately makes believers out of kids.

I think maybe my parents had enough problems of their own that these lessons got lost on me. Plus, I wasn't so stupid or reckless that I got into irreversible situations. I never got a girl pregnant, for example. But I do have to wonder if anyone I had a physical relationship with regretted it or wished they'd done better. Or if maybe I could have been a better person to them. Or worrying they felt that all I did was use them…or whatever. I don't want to be talked about or remembered that way, but what's done is done. I'd probably feel differently now if I hadn't had those relationships, and I'd have missed out on some good things as well. So…exactly what do you do here?

Actually, no, I'm not. I'm a LATE Gen Xer. I just happen to have been burned by enough bad experiences to want to see those things repeated by my own children.

I'm not happy with the results I see from other parents who are that much more permissive. I'm not raising bums and princesses. I want my kids to be the ones offering your kids jobs. I want my kids growing up to be the gatekeepers and team leaders. And I know all too well how quickly distractions can get in the way of achieving goals.

Yeah, we could run right up against a R&J situation. However, I have the luxury of being able to monitor my kids more closely than that. So if there's a potential Romeo out there, I'm going to know about it. The thing is, though, I don't look at every male as a potential enemy or threat to me or my daughter. I could be persuaded. But as a father, I can instinctively see danger a lot faster than she can. I can either stop it from happening in the first place, or I can influence a potential mate in such a way that he's an asset and not a liability. If I'm too strong for some poor kid to date my girl, he doesn't love her enough. If he can tolerate me well enough to befriend me and work with me, he'll be spending so much time with my daughter that starting a romantic relationship is just the natural next step. If I think he's a cool kid, I'm not going to mind him hanging out, which will by default mean exposure to my daughter. If the guy is a creep, he's a non-person as far as I'm concerned.

The classic R&J is complicated by an irrational family feud. I don't believe in punishing kids for their parents' mistakes. I don't care who daddy is. If you're a creep, you're a creep. Pure and simple. However, in my experience, how well two families get along is a good indicator for how well their sons/daughters will get along in a romantic relationship. I HATED how my mom always knew things were going to blow up between me and some girl. But she was right. It usually came down to the other parents being "our people" or not, and that's just something I had to learn the hard way. When my mom met my wife for the first time, it was like she met the daughter she never had. It was WEIRD how that happened, but that girl and I have been best friends ever since.

My generation is largely responsible for that whole "ME" attitude. We're largely selfish. We tend to spoil our kids. When I hear advice that I'm ruining my kids by involving myself in their relationship-building, especially romantic relationship, it just sounds like a self-centered brat. That says to me, "I can love whoever I want. Who are my mom and dad to say I can't be with a creep if I want to be? I LOVE him/her! Wah, wah, wah, it's not fair!" Or, more likely, "I like sex/want to have sex whenever with whoever. I have hormones/urges, dammit." Yeah, well, I have urges, too, and some of those might actually be illegal. Life is just SO HARD, omigoodness!! !

It's all emotional garbage that doesn't actually work out for the best interests of the child. My kids won't always have my protection. The least I can do is help them understand what good boundaries are. Selfish whining doesn't help anyone get ahead in life. I know my kids, any kids, will be better off without unnecessary distractions. There's a time/place for "love" and "romance," and compromising goals for some vaporous fling is never worth what little momentary reward you might get out of it.

Never, EVER sacrifice what you want for what you want RIGHT NOW. My goal as a parent is to help my kids live that out while they are under my care.

Time to move schools...

Make sure she has friends who understand her differences and who are protective of her. That's the only way I ever was able to learn social skills and do anything and at times they had to get me out of bad situations of my own making. They also taught me how to avoid that and how to get myself out of them.

I don't know how to make sure she has them as friends though. I met my friends at school and they weren't all that popular either but they weren't unpopular. They saw something or other in me and made me their "project". It worked. They were also extremely patient. It was pure luck. Without those friends teaching me what I needed to know, I'd probably still be living at home with my mother and a bunch of cats.

When it comes to social situations, I am as well a bit naive, and dont always get it immidiately if someone wants to trick me, be it about money or whatever. If someone acts friendly, it seems friendly to me.

1) Make sure she had sexual education, and knows of her own physics, as well about how to prevent pregnancy when having sex. If you dont feel well about the topic, there are tons of books that are for made for that age-peer as well. Dont mismatch sexual education with education about sex, its simply about her body physics, why and how to become pregnant, how to avoid that.

2) This is something that you cant do with a book, but must do yourself. Ensure her in every mean, that sex is something, that should only be done out of one reason: Because of the person herself feeling the desire for it. Not because anyone begs for it, not because anyone says he might become sad if she does not like, nor out of aggressivesness or whatever. When it comes to this topic, her needs and desires are ALWAYS of the same importancy, as those of others.

EVERY time someone wants to convince you in any way to have sex, when you dont feel the physical desire to do so yourself, THIS IS MANIPULATION. AND THIS MEANS THAT PERSON IS AN as*hole. THERE IS NO EXCEPTION to that. NO means NO and a friend will accept that, because a friend would not be interested to convince you to have sex, without having the need to do so. If they react with whining, with negotiating, with discussing, with aggresivity, threatening to hurt her (not in physical ways, but as example with "but then I will no longer be intersted in spending time with you), they are simply dicks and not worth it

3) Care for her self esteem and that she is not afraid to confront people if situations are escalating. Convince her to visit any kind of self-defend or martial art club. Its not only about her being now a teenager, but as an mentally affected woman, for some people, you will always be a target to go for. Some of those dont give up until you shout them angry your oppinion in your face, and make sure, that you rather will risk a physical fight with them, then ever let yourself into something out of manipulation talk. Some simply wont give up, because of them being sure, that because of you being stupid, sooner or later they will manage to argue into what they want. They dont understand anything else, then an 100% not to mismention negation.

4) And make sure, that she understands that porn is just as much fantasy as are love and romance films. ^^ There is in general nothing bad about them, but just as you should be aware, that you hardly will ever find a real men that will come across on his white horse, and give his life for you out of romance, there are as well hardly any woman with the desires of those in porns. They are simply fantasy, so you should no do real-life comparison about your real sex-life, with what you see in porn. ^^ Just as you should not compare your car with an Star Wars space-vehicle. XD And if a boy, has out of naivity such expectations on her, that she should ask him, if he already killed a dragon in her name. ^^

But avoid as well generalization and prejudices. What you seem to be automatically be thinking of as an dangerous situation, depends simply on the people involved. Most of my hobbies are more typical for males, so if I would not have been allowed to meet with them, out of my parents being afraid, that there MIGHT something happen, I´d have been completely alone 365 days a year. ^^ We simply played Dungeons and Dragons, computer games, board games and all kind of that stuff. Being a man/boy, does not make you an ass. A minority of people of both genders, simply decide to be one, and this are the ones you need to be afraid of. Not board games in general. ^^



What about the reason, that she then will simply do so, while hiding it from you. Which means that she will then NOT ask you for advices, not share her problems with that about you, not present you her potential boyfriends so that you meet and know them, and you will not be knowing where she truly is, when she is forced to tell you, that she is with an girlfriend, while meeting her new boyfriend without anyone knowing, because of her being forced to do a secret out of it? As well that she hardly will phone you, if she feels uneasy on that date, to catch her up? I think there was nothing more intimidating to the boyfriends of my sister, then my father (a truck and bus driver), expecting the boyfriends of her to show up, when they started meeting her, and him saying Goodbye with adding: "And IF ANYTHING IS, just say and I will come and catch you up. Anyway how late it is."

No, he's actually a good parent. He and I have huge differences in how we raise our kids, and what we allow, but I can tell you this. He's a good parent. He's the kind of parent most of my friends grew up with and you know what? Most of them turned out ok. I on the other hand had a horribly dysfunctional childhood and I'm extremely permissive because my mother was WAY overprotective. I don't mean overprotective live AngelRho may sound like, I mean over protective like not letting use the stove at 14 and not letting me ever dial the phone because I might make a mistake, and not ever, ever letting me drink a coke out of a bottle cause it was glass and I would probably drop it and cut myself. That kind of overprotective. He's the other kind, and while he may seem like he's going overboard, thousands and thousands of children are raised this way and turn out fine, are good members of society, and don't have to go to therapy for it.

I know several people who are like that with their kids. I've just never felt comfortable doing that because I have absolutely nothing to go by and the only model of a parent I had was so f****d up that I just do the opposite.

AngelRho, you go, son! High five to you! You are a good dad and don't let anybody tell you any different.


ETA; To Aspie1 about the hunting rifle statement, well sometimes it's neccessary. Let me tell you a little story. At this time, my kids were 17, 13, 11 and 8. My oldest is a boy and he had lots of friends over who stayed over. He had the big room that was the renovated garage and plenty of room for them to sleep. My 13 yo daughter and her 13 yo friend who was living here with us because of her own family problems, would hang out down there with them a lot. They had the good music and video games. Well, some of the boys were older. B was 20 and was a regular here. He hung out with my son's crowd. It was made up of boys from about 15 to 21 or so. This was about two months before she started "going with" the few years older boy who she eventually became engaged to. Now, I never liked B. He was sneaky. I didn't trust him. But when i'd pop in down there he's sometimes be too close to my daughter and I'd tell him move over, etc. But her brother was there so I knew nothing would happen.

One day she left her email up. I don't normally snoop, but it was there and I saw the IM's from B. I read them. He had kissed her and he was saying really dirty things to her. trying to talk her into doing other things. Well, B was there at the time, in my son's room. I showed it to my husband who was in a chair next to the computer. I said let me handle this. I had always mainly been friendly with B, like all the other kids. I went down there to my son's room, there were about 5 boys, and my daughter and her friend and some of their girlfriends, talking. I said "B, come here, I got something you gotta see, it's great!" another boy, P, said can I see too? They were both about 20. I said sure! Come on! I had something else pulled up on the computer. I scooted the chair over and told B to kneel down at the desk so he could read it, it was a little long. He did. About 8 inches away from me, face just a few inches above the desk. DH sitting in a chair with the tv guide not 3 feet away. Then I closed out the other thing and showed him the IM's. I made him read them out loud. By this time I had my hand on the back of his head and my fingers were tangled in his hair. Every dirty thing he said to my daughter I'd slam his face into the desk. I made him keep reading. My husband just kept looking at the tv guide. His friend P actually sat down on the floor he was laughing so hard. Eventually I stopped after several IM's and B was bleeding pretty bad and I had broken his nose and a tooth. I said "Now are you EVER going to IM anything like that to my daughter again or say ANYTHING out of the way to her?" He said No maam. I said "Get your s**t and get out of my house and never come back".

Well that was fine for a while, and everybody loved to hear P tell the story about how the mama kicked B's ass. Then B came back. One night, late. My daughter wasn't there, she was in bed. I had come down to tell my son to go to sleep and I was going to bed. he was on the couch with some other boys. I said "I told you never set your white trash foot in this house again!" he said "But Mrs Frances, I got nowhere to go, my parents kicked me out". I said I'm going into the kitchen and getting a knife. When I come back you better be gone. He laughed. M who was sitting there said "I'd go if I were you man, she means it" and I did. I came back with the big butcher knife. He jumped up and ran out the door. I followed him in my nightgown and chased him two blocks.

Then the idiot did it a second time a few months later but when I said I was getting the knife he left.

Some boys don't listen. Some boys you have to be that way to. B and I are fine now. My daughter is engaged to another of my son's friends, a nice one, and has been with him for 7 years. B is welcome in our home now, he's married with a baby and we speak when we see each other out. He even showed me the baby when I saw him at CVS shortly after the baby was born and handed her to me. She was beautiful. I told him so. I told him I'm so happy for him and glad he got himself straightened out. He holds no animosity toward me for what I did, and I hold none toward him for what he did.

But, sometimes parents have to be like that.