At what point do you give up?

[Carina16]

I'm not really looking for advice, though I will take any that is given. I guess I'm just needing some moral support as I don't really have any family outside of my girlfriend and kids. Mostly I just need some one to whine to. So thanks for listening.

My daughter, well call her Amy, is 13 years old. My mother has raised her for most of her life although she was always told I was her mother. I was just not in a position to be the best for her at the time. April of last year it was discovered that she had been dating and having sex with a 18 year old boy. It was decided that the best thing for her was to send her to me. So she comes to live. She had been with me for a couple months when I discover that she is still talking to the boy. It takes a couple more months but I finally convince her that he is trouble. Amy no longer is talking to him. He becomes very stalkerish. Calling my phone hundreds of times a day, calling the police on me because I won't let him talk to her. I finally just change my number. So all this drama dies down.

We move back to our home state. She is diagnosed with ADHD, depression and adjustment disorder. Things are not going great at school, she is not able to make it through a full school day without breaking down. Her mood swings are so sudden I'm afraid to talk to her part of the time. She starts cutting herself.

The school is working with me and gives her a modified schedule so she is only going half a day. This still doesn't help and she is still having the break downs. By this point she has earned back her phone and internet access. With the rules that I have all her passwords and I check everything. I go onto her Facebook last night and see a friend that I don't recognise. So I go and get my phone which is what she was using to get online.

Through out the course of the night I discover that she has been have 129 sexually explict conversations with people on a chat site and has been sending nude pictures of herself to several different people and has received nude pictures of several people.

When I bust her on this, I almost don't know what to do. There is no shame, no remorse, just no emotion whatsoever.

Anyway, thanks for listening to me whine. I just needed to get it all of my chest.

[ArcticChicken]

Does she have a mental health professional that she's seeing? Because she needs one, badly.

Never stop telling her that you love her, no matter how angry she makes you.

[Carina16]

She is seeing a counsler and a well, I'm not sure what kind of therapist she is considered, but she's seeing both. We have Amy scheduled for a full evaluation on Monday.

[Kheldarson]

I think this one of those cases where you don't give up, per se, but you do recognize that this is not really your battle.

Yes, your daughter needs to know she is loved. Unconditionally.

Yes, your daughter needs mental help. Desperately.

But you can't make her change. Especially not overnight. She has to want to change. And what you can do to best help her is love her, and keep opportunities to help her change open.

[yeahwhatev]

There are some states where the age of consent is VERY low.. I would not leap to the assumption that the police were disinterested in an 18 year old having relations with a minor. If this is the case, check the laws on your new state.

As for your daughter, giving up is for when they are an adult and continue to be self destructive despite every effort and intervention.

Not trying to be rude, but your daughter has been exposed to sex before she was ready. She will need serious professional help to salvage a childhood. Yes, the teen years count as childhood, despite every child known to man thinking otherwise.

You are in contact with professionals and sound like a concerned, active parent. Sometimes that is all you can do. However it happened, your daughter was abused. She cannot be a willing participant in sex until she is of legal age, and mature mind. The breakdowns could be coming from multitudes of influxes and reactions that I am not qualified to comment on.

Keep doing what you are doing.

"I am disappointed that you broke my trust."
"You are a part of this household and it has rules. You broke them and will be held responsible."
"I care about you no matter what."

Consistency and calm are your allies. There are more options than just the school, some of them free. Get other opinions and use other people as a steam valve. Venting on the Internet is good, but speaking to a real person is irreplaceable.

My only REAL piece of advice is to take the phone and computer down to the police station and report every one who has had contact with your daughter. Let them keep the units if they need to. These people need to be stopped.

And seriously.. check the laws.. if the boy was underage at the time of the sex, he is STILL committing statutory rape by having sex with a minor.

[RealUnimportant]

At this point, she has exposed herself & everyone she's swapping photos with to potential child pornography charges, and you too as it was with your phone. This goes way beyond trust issues, as it could impact the both of you for the rest of your lives. I'm not sure about Yeahwhatev's suggestion about taking your equipment to the police, as that has been known to seriously backfire...

I'm sorry I can't offer any concrete advice on how to deal with it, but there's been some cases here in the UK of kids "sexting" under the age of 18 (even though consent's 16) and it's surprising how few of them realise the potential legal ramifications and how they will follow them for the rest of their lives... At the very least you need to let her know about this danger, how you proceed after that is something I can't explain.

[KellyHabersham]

I think this one of those cases where you don't give up, per se, but you do recognize that this is not really your battle.

Yes, your daughter needs to know she is loved. Unconditionally.

Yes, your daughter needs mental help. Desperately.

But you can't make her change. Especially not overnight. She has to want to change. And what you can do to best help her is love her, and keep opportunities to help her change open.

This......been dealing with a slightly similar situation with my own daughter, and unfortunately I don't really have any advice other than to say I know rough it is, and will be keeping good thoughts for you guys.

[Carina16]

I questioned myself on if I wanted to go to the police or not, but first and for most, she is my daughter and I am honestly afraid that they would press charges on her. In the state I'm in, she could be charged as a sex offender. I'm not even sure that I can blame the men she was talking to because after reading through the messages she lied about her age so they were not aware that she was underage.

She is scheduled for a psych evaluation Monday, so I'm hoping that will shed some light on what's going on with her. After talking to my mom, I found out that she had told me about some things Amy had been doing. Such as stealing, cutting her clothing up, burning the carpet in her room and taking towels and putting them in her closet and then peeing on them.

I have talked to Amy about everything and reassured her that I loved her and I always would. She does seem to understand this and she seems to understand that there is something going on with her even if she doesn't realize it. I think what worries me the most is that when I explained to her that what she did was illegal and not only that, now people have nude pictures of her and she doesn't even have a clue who they are. Those pictures could end up online or who knows where. Her response was one of no emotion. She simply said so and that she didn't understand what the big deal was.

[Seshat]

Your daughter believes - truly believes - one or more sexual myths. She was 'groomed' - trained to believe them.

I don't know what they are. Her therapists and counsellers are almost certainly under professional obligation to keep what she tells them in session private from you.

However, at some point, you'll probably hear the echo of those myths in things she says. 'But they love me! They told me so!'
Or 'Only frigid girls are virgins'
Or 'Noone's a virgin these days'
Or 'everyone does it'
Or ... you get the idea?

Discuss these hints with her therapists. They really are on your side in this - well, okay. They're on the side of your daughter's health and long-term happiness, and since that's your goal as well, they're on your side.

Anyway, discuss these hints with her therapists. Ask their professional advice for how you should respond to them. They'll know how these link in with what she's saying to them in session, and they also have training and experience.


No matter what, this is going to be tough. Good luck.

[Der Cute]

Ok, my confession:
I started having sex around 13yrs myself. With guys my age or 2yrs older than I - max. But this was all from school contact, in person, notes. No electronic communications. (which makes yours worse)
My reason/cause was that I wanted some attention. (I possibly was mentally ill back then too).

All I can say is Ow, Wow, Hugs.
Cut off internet/IM/smartphones and dumb down any phones to basic dial cellphones. She currently isn't trustworthy - even if she's sick, have consistent rules and consequences.

*hands a Bailey's*

[evilfarmer]

Ask the therapist about her possibly being Bipolar. I was recently diagnosed at 24 but have been dealing with it since I was in elementary school. My therapist told me a lot of children that are bipolar are diagnosed with ADHD because its belived that Bipolar only shows up once people are older.

I am in no way an expert in anything Mental Health thats just what I read into it. *hugs for you and your daughter*

[RealUnimportant]

Something that struck me as off when I thought back to this - her 18yo ex-bf was calling the cops on you not letting him speak to her? I'm surprised the cops didn't take issue with his interest!

[AccountingDrone]

Ask the therapist about her possibly being Bipolar. I was recently diagnosed at 24 but have been dealing with it since I was in elementary school. My therapist told me a lot of children that are bipolar are diagnosed with ADHD because its belived that Bipolar only shows up once people are older.

I am in no way an expert in anything Mental Health thats just what I read into it. *hugs for you and your daughter*

If it does turn into bipolar, PM me. I have a friend out in California who is bipolar, and has a bipolar child and is very informed. I can shoot her an email and see if I can e-introduce you to her. I have no doubt that she would be more than happy to share some resource information.

[Jester]

First, a word from the late coach Jim Valvano: "Don't give up. Don't ever give up." That is the most important piece of advice I could give here.

I do find it startling that an 18 year old man (legally he is an adult) would call the police to complain that the mother of a 13 year old child will not let him have contact with said child. I am equally startled that the police didn't see a problem with this, or at the very least tell the guy to fuck off if he didn't want to end up in jail. But then, while most police do care, a lot don't. So I can't say I am ultra shocked.

Clearly this girl needs some counseling, as there are things wrong with her that she doesn't even know. And when I say "things wrong with her," that is not a judgment of her in any way, but merely an observation that she has some mental and emotional issues and problems that she needs help with.

Ask the therapist about her possibly being Bipolar.

This is not the time nor the place for a rant about this topic, so I won't rant about it. I will, however, say that not all mental or emotional issues come from being bipolar, and that there are many people who are bipolar who are perfectly functional in everyday life, and who don't have issues of this size. I am in no way a trained health professional, but I am the son of a man who was bipolar, I have many friends who are either bipolar or have bipolar tendencies, and I myself have bipolar tendencies, so I despite my lack of training, I do have some experience in this area.

I am not saying Amy is not bipolar. I am also not saying she is. I don't know, and am not qualified to make that determination. What I am saying is that, whether or not she is bipolar, that is not the whole summation of what she is or where her problems come from, and whether or not she is bipolar, she is still going to need extensive professional counseling to deal with whatever issues are causing this behavior.

Good luck, and I wish you and Amy the best as you both work your way through this.

[Seshat]

I wouldn't be in a hurry to label her with a diagnosis other than 'had sex too young'.

This is what I, personally, consider a diagnosis to be: a tool for the doctor to use, to say 'okay, here's the treatments that have worked for other people with this diagnosis, one or more of them might work for this patient'.

She already has a diagnosis. She had sex too young to give informed consent.

Some people who have sex too young do so as a symptom of a mental illness: the medical community is (or bloody well should be) aware of that. So any therapist worth their salt should already be considering it as a possibility.

Naturally, there are other possibilities.

For whatever reason, she was vulnerable; that vulnerability was taken advantage of. Now she needs to heal; and she needs someone in her life to be a rock she can steady herself on, while she's healing.

Mum? You're the top candidate for 'rock'.

If possible, get yourself a therapist too.