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I suspect my youngest took the blame for her sister.
Months back, my two daughters (ages 16 and 18) attended a party together. Unbeknownst to me, there was no adult supervision and alcohol was served. Both of them ended up drinking.
Now my youngest, allegedly, was behind the wheel during the drive home and the car ended up in the drainage ditch just in front of our house. Her sister wasn't wearing her seat belt and went face first into the dash and got her bell rung pretty good. My husband and I weren't home at the time. A neighbor saw the accident and phoned it in and my youngest ended up getting arrested.
Naturally, they were both grounded following this incident. For two whole months.
On Friday, my youngest was in juvenile court to receive her sentence. For DUI and vehicular assault, she got 30 days in juvenile hall.
Here's the thing. My oldest suffered a cut from when she hit the dashboard or whatever. One thing I noticed after we got the car out of the ditch was that there was no blood on the passenger's side, but I did notice drops of blood on the driver's side. Not a lot, but they were there.
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but is it possible my oldest was really the one driving? And my youngest decided to take the blame for her? But why would she do that? And if that is what happened, should I just let it go, since we've already dealt with them?
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Hi there.
I'm a Mom too, with 3 grown daughters. So first, in case you were not aware of the driving force behind teens making such bad decisions, I thought I'd first share a link on teen brains and namely the pre frontal cortex but read on to learn about the fully developed part of brain that responds to pleasure and rewards.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
I actually saw a movie where a boyfriend let his girlfriend an adult woman with no driving experience, drive his car and she crashed it. They switched seats and told police he had been driving but where blood was, is the exact same story as you mention. So I think it is highly likely that the other was driving.
You said the youngest was sentenced in juvie hall. So I assume the oldest wasn't. While you don't have something for sure like photo or video proof, its likely the one who drove did not get the kind of intervention needed. I can only imagine wildly what might prompt the younger to take the blame. Perhaps she has a secret of her own she wants kept from you and so she told her sis, she'd take the blame if sis never told you. NOw thats a wild guess since there are not many siblings who are so loving and close like twins that they would do anything for each other.
Once you read the article, you will understand what you are up against during this period of their life. Think back to your teen years. Even if you never got into major bad situations like this, there will still be things and decisions you made that looking bad now, you realize your decisions making abilities were handicapped. And myself as an example, I married a guy at age 20 who ended up being verbally abusive up to when I finally left after 30 years. I wasn't anywhere near 25 when they say the cortex is done maturing so a person can make better decisions. In some people, it can take longer, closer to 30, but in general for most its around 25. So I was still too young to make a good decision and he had my parents fooled too before marriage.
I like how they talk in this article about how during teen years, a person responds more to offered rewards and things that are pleasureable. I never had to ground my girls. But looking back, I think that grounding would not have pounded in the behavior I wanted in my girls as much as offering something they liked as a reward for good behavior vs grounding if they chose the other way.
I was given advice for my youngest from another mom who had a daughter the same at age 4. A child who wants to make her own decisions like an adult but of course we know is incapable of making good choices yet. So she told me to give them choices..one being the thing we want them to do like get into bed at 8p. Or they could refuse and stay up but then they would get extra chores, lose allowance for a week, not get dessert that night, anything they perceive as pleasure. You just make the other choices you give them, so unpleasureable that they will never pick them. It worked for my daughter at 4. I believe it can work in the teens.
So its time for a united front, both you and Dad talking to the girls and being on the same page. Regardless if they lied about who was driving, they had no business being at a party with no adults present, they had no business drinking or either of them driving in that state. All around, both made poor decisions. So the two of you need to talk about this and what you both will tell the girls before actually doing it, that is if there is a husband.
If I were you, I would tell the girls you have something serious to discuss with them. Maybe you could even try the pleasure thing to get them to give you their full attention and promise something like a pizza night at the house where each could invite a friend over for pizza but they must listen and agree to follow the basic rules.
If it were me, I would probably read to them the article I put link in here for you. They first need to realize that ALL teens face the same thing, being handicapped in decision making because this part of the brain isn't complete yet.
You want to start teaching them how to come to you and use you as a sounding board for any decision they are planning to make from the biggest like attending a party, to getting a tattoo, or starting to have sex. Let them know that this is a skill they will need to use even as an adult, whether passing any ideas or plans past you or coworkers, or basically any other level headed adults they know and feel comfortable to talking to. While its more the teens and 20 somethings who write in here for advice, I do still get people who are older, facing a difficult decision and they have only their thoughts and point of view on it and want more input and other bits of info gathered from others as we do here on advicenators before deciding what they will do. Teens are adults in training but too many parents do not treat them as such and keep making ALL decisions for them. Decide what things are okay for them to make their own decisions in now so that they already know how to make decisions where they have thought out ahead any possible repercussions from any decision they make.
My oldest wanted to get her eyebrow pierced and told me she planned to do so when she could afford it. While saving, she lost one job and was looking for another. So I asked if she still wanted to do that and she said yes. So I told her I had something important on that subject to share. Had she thought ahead to the fact there may be employers who do not want to hire a person with any piercings? She still didn't believe it was important. She got the piercing and I supported her by telling her how it looked nice. Then a month after getting it, she is finally offered a job at the mall but had to promise to stop wearing the piercing. She let it heal up and so the money she spent on it was wasted. She was about 20 then. Give your daughters examples like that from your life or even make up some good ones but they need to know why coming to you first or another trusted adult like even an aunt or grandma or a girlfriends mom is better than going it alone until after their brain has reached full maturity at 25 or so. If it is something like how they wear their hair, clothes they choose, none of that is permanent, is a way of personal expression and as long as it isn't breaking school dress code, they should be able to make such decisions. When my middle daughter told me she liked how the female singer in a band had dyed just the ends of her hair a bright color and wanted to do the same, I told her that sounded like fun. She was about 14 and I had seen the hair she talked about and agreed it would be nice. It wasn't something I'd do with my hair but we got the produst that takes the color out of your own hair before dying the lime green ends to her brunette hair. After 6 months she was bored with it and it was never done again. She also wanted name brand shoes all the kids were wearing. Just because I couldn't afford these for her, I didn't say she couldn't get them. I did not make that decision for her. Here is where she got to make a decision. I told her if it was that important to her, I would pay the amount I had set aside that I could afford and she could spend her birthday and Christmas money to make up the difference. She didn't agree to that. She looked around a bit and saw some short boots on sale and realized that her mom could afford these cute boots and a pair of regular athlethic shoes both for the cost of what I would have put forth to pay my part on the name brand pair of shoes. She made her decision to get two for the price of one. This is what kids want, but they will still mess up. The thing is not blowing your top because no yelling or screaming no matter how much you deserve to do so for whatever they did, is not going to change anything now. All you can do is see if you can help prevent them making the same future mistakes by learning from the current ones.
How does grounding help a child learn how to do better next time? I am not saying it doesnt come in handy with difficult kids who will not work with you on things like this. But it is important that they learn another thing that will help them greatly as adults. We will all make mistakes, even as adults but the thing is to learn from our mistakes. You can only instill that in the girls now. If they understand you are upset about what they did but you are more concerned about helping them avoid making bad decisions in the future and learning from current ones, then most teens will be willing to go along. They don't like parents telling them they will get choices or to come to them with an idea and then your freaking out and yelling and giving a lecture about something they haven't even done yet. They will learn quickly to not work with you if a parent is at all unreasonable and flips back and forth on their stance. Not saying you are like that but I am not either but I caught myself several times mid sentence about to object about something I realized was just my personal gut reaction, not having the full story or info yet and making a bigger deal of something that was not a big deal.
If it helps any more since you have girls, I had three and when each entered HS, I told them to watch the girls who seem to always have a boyfriend and always be breaking up and with a new boyfriend. Watch what their emotional life seems like and how they do on grades because in HS, teens are only learning how to date and so most dating only lasts a week or maybe a month with someone before they are moping over a breakup or rejection that affects their ability to concentrate. I told the girls that if they did decide to date in HS, I just want to know so I can be watching to see if it affects their grades, and if it doesnt, its okay with me. I told them they could have male friends, same like having girlfriends come over. Teens want to spend time together with someone they are crushing on or dat ing at school but we all know that the best relationships start with friendship so I said if a guy wanted to date them, he had to be willing to be a friend too and come by our house where he was welcome to hang out. I gave scenerios to cover all the possibilities. Next I said if they ever did find such a guy who came to our home and we knew him well and they found it too hard to resist having sex, I didn't want them getting pregnant or catching disease, so although it wasn't my wish for them to do so, they could still come to me and I would make sure they got on birth control and had condoms. No boy ever came to our home, not one of my girls had a boyfriend or wanted to have sex while in HS. They all began dating right after HS like at 18,19 and 20 for one. They knew what I wanted but I was still leaving the decision to them wether they dated or not but under the conditions I gave.
About not knowing there would be no parent supervision at this party, I started when they were little. Every time they wanted to go to a new kids house, sometimes on the weekend and sometimes right after school, I made sure to meet a parent right away or they couldn't go until I met the parents. I am glad I did this because a set of twins had a mom who was a hard drug addict and had invited drug friends to pass out during any time of day, camping on the floor of her living home. The dad was nice but worked two jobs end to end to support the family, knew what was going on but wasn't there to make a difference. SO I told the girls they could have the friends to our house but they could never go there.
Another I checked out was a single Dad. I had girls, I had to be sure he was a good person and not a pervert who might sexually abuse my girl. I had peace of mind because he was a good guy. However another home I went to right after school because the girl said I could meet her mom who was home, well the MOm wasn't home. This was a latch key kid. Thats one thing. She told me Mom would be home any minute so I stayed thinking literally minutes. It was a half hour and Mom walks in, looks at me, says not a word and goes off to do something without even asking who I was or why I was with my daughter in her apt. So I again told my daughter, you can't go there but the girl can come to our home. This was such a routine for them that if I had needed to, and they wanted to attend a party at a kids house, I would like have already known the parents and called them to ask if they would be at the party. Then when they say, "What party? or say they won't be there but it will be okay cus their kid is responsible, I would not have allowed them to go. The girls never attended anything without telling us. I built up communication with them on a daily basis at the end of each day. To them, this was normal to have a parent asking not because they are nosy or distrustful, but because I care and am truly interested. SO even the little arguments and problems with girlfriends, I was able to give them pointers on how to handle when they were miserable with something not going well.
I don't know how much of this you've done. It would look strange to start wanting to know the families of the kids they hang out with and I am sure your girls will think you simply no longer trust them, but maybe you can find other ways to learn who they spend time with and the situations with those parents. If you can't trust the other parents, its best your kid is not at the other home, even as a teen because as a teen they feel grown up and can therefore get into trouble lots faster and more seriously often than younger kids. This is a lot to say and I hope I have given you things to think about. If you need to write me back with anything, please do so by going to my column page by looking for Dragonflymagic. I can not respond or write back from the comment section where its not set up that way . I can only read comments but not answer new questions there. I wish you the best.
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