I was a loser kid at 16, dropping out of my first HS when my aunt took me in. She hoped that a new school would make a difference (after sending me to 8th grade summer school). It did, within a couple of weeks I found someone who helped me study and pass, and who continues to have a positive influence on my life (and is *still* helping me with HS-level trig ). Bless my aunt, I miss her dearly.

I think having never lived completely on my own stunted my growth, though.

I kinda needed a future father-in-law back then to kick my ass a little, or at least have a nice long talk with me or something. If just to ask, "What the hell are you doing?" A little shame is a good thing.

marko, is there any way you could put me in touch with her?

i believe that some of the things i have to say might have some persuasive power, IF she is willing to talk to me. PM me if you wish. i am one of those people who has had a pretty sketchy history..

This!

Thanks for the offer Longbow
But she wont even listen to her big sister normally the only person she will listen to.

I have spoken to his parents she is safe and staying in a two bed rental property they own. (I also have the address)
They assured me its clean and safe.
That was a big relief especially to me and her mother who had visions of her sleeping rough.
I had to hold my tongue when speaking to them but They are decent people.
My girl and the dead beat must have been planning this for awhile they waited for the property to become vacant before they made There move. But I will have to let that go if I want to rebuild are relationship.
I think I may have come up with a tolerable solution I will enrol her in to a school down there its not ideal and not what I want but at least she will finish her education. I will send money if she agrees to go back to school.
My eldest daughter will travel down to see her on the weekend and put it to her.
I will give it a couple of weeks and just arrive at there door I don't think the dead beat is in to drugs or any thing illegal
I searched his belonging while he was staying with me. he showed no signs of drug use.
My biggest worry has always been drugs.
I just wish she had waited till she finished school I would have helped her move out if that's what she wanted.
Ironically the couple of k I saved was for her to use as a deposit for a flat if she was going to collage.

Thanks again guys.

No matter what anybody says, it just seems harder with daughters. Maybe I am an old fashioned dinosaur, but when an 18 year boy defies you and tells you he has the world figured out, the thought of letting him taste the cold hard truth of reality doesn't seem as painful. With daughters it is excruciating. I feel for you man. Maybe a little cooling down period for everybody is in order. Pride and stubbornness can make you crazy.

I'm with you brother... my daughter dropped out of HIGH SCHOOL 2 months left in her senior year. Moved out, got into drugs, partied, got kicked out, arrested, moved back in...crashed on a moped being drunk... that finally was bottom for her, couple years now life is better, and she now regrets what we begged her not to do.

Just remember, they do seem to get better, and usually come back.

good luck.

I feel for you Marko, but they often do grow up. Our two put us through hell. My son went off the rails as a teenager. Alcohol and violent behaviour plus a lot more I won't go into. I got to know the local police very well - and the judicial system. He was kicked out of school without a qualification to his name. My wife couldn't cope so I moved out with him for quite a while. Life wasn't fun. Now he's 22, holds down a good job with prospects, lives with his girlfriend who is an excellent influence and gets more annoyed with bad teenage behaviour than I do.

My daughter - serious depression, self harm and suicide attempts (the phone rings at work and it's your daughters school saying she's taken a serious overdose could you come and take her to hospital - my response was rather blunt and she was on her way to treatment before I got in my car ...). Culminating in her cutting her wrists and standing on the edge of a disused quarry waiting till she fainted and fell. She was saved by of all people by my son, who just happened to pass by with a mate on their off road motorbikes. She went straight into an adolescent mental health unit. Not fun.

Now she's just turned 20 and starts at University next week. Demons pretty much behind her. Some children get seriously messed up during the teenage years but the majority do come out of it. Don't give up on your daughter. Don't stop talking. Even if she's not listening - she is. She needs to know that you are there and will always be there - that unconditional love thing. It's not easy, in fact it's bloody nearly impossible, but only nearly impossible. I wish you and her all the best.

PS all the advice about money etc. is spot on.

Been there. Seems like a lot of us have been there, despite our best efforts. Which just goes to show you that some of the strongest, most stand-up guys I know here can still be completely reduced to utter bafflement by the decisions of an 18-year-old female. We literally do the best we can, but our children get it in their heads that we're morons. Sure, they often regain their senses, but how much damage is done in the interim?

I'm going to tell you what happened to me. My wife and married, she had a 14-year-old daughter. I was 27, my wife was 32. The daughter had some serious legal troubles within our first year of marriage, the details of which aren't important, but it landed her in jail for a few months and got her a few years of probation. She decided to graduate early from high school, which her mother and I fully supported. We had a little apartment on our property she lived in, and things were looking like they were smoothing out. Until she met this guy. Now, ordinarily parents would be thrilled with a guy who could keep a job, and we were. She got in the family way (big surprise, as she'd practically moved in with him, but she was paying her own bills) and they came to us with the news. I bribed her with taking out an equity loan on the house and sending her off to uni. She refused.

That was when we found out he was still married. Yeah, our daughter was The Other Woman, she'd neglected to inform us of that, must've slipped her mind somehow. He'd gotten his own wife pregnant as well, a few months earlier. He had two kids born to two different women, each within about three months of the other.

I was pissed off. Partially at him, but mostly at her.

Her mother and I sat down and reasoned this out. We had two smaller children, aged 4 and 6 at the time (they're now 12 and 14). We couldn't let them be raised thinking this sort of thing was okay. We'd tried convincing her to split up with him, but she steadfastly refused, letting her uterus do the thinking for her, hormones being a poor substitute for brains.

So, we asked her to leave. Hardest thing we ever did. Wife cried herself to sleep for many nights afterward. For months, she wondered what in the world she had done so wrong as a mother and I kept having to tell her that it wasn't her fault. She'd done everything she could, putting her daughter first since the day she was born. I laid awake at night, wondering how my sales pitch for attending uni failed so miserably.

It's ended up working out. He divorced his first wife (as it turns out, she was bat-crap crazy) and married our daughter. He works hard. He gets and keeps jobs and has a side business. He treats her like a queen, even when I think she's entirely out of line with him. They make more money than my wife and I do. He turned his life around and started attending church. Later, he got baptized and has been terrific influence on his kids (they're expecting their fifth now) and even on mine. We don't know what we'd do without him.

But, at the time, it was difficult to see into the future. When you're there in the middle of it, you're dealing with the immediate problem and fighting for the best. That's what we men are trained to do. It's ingrained in us. When something goes wrong, our first instinct is to fix it, with the judicious application of brute force if necessary. That's where you are and it's where you're going to be for a little while longer.

Remain open and honest with her. She needs to hear it, and she'll appreciate it later. If she doesn't, then there wasn't much you could anyway because she's stubbornly and willfully ignoring you, mostly out of spite. When they get that way, they'll let the whole thing burn down around their ears before they'll admit you were right. However, if she can depend on what you say, that you mean what you say, then even if it's not something she wants to hear, it's something that's constant. Unless Dead Beat changes miraculously, she'll get tired of being his mother.

Good luck, my friend. Know that a bunch of us have been there before. You do come out the other side, just takes a bit.

Of course you mean "marko", I was never grown up enough myself to even contemplate raising a kid. We babysat our niece allot, that was enough for me.

Oops - sorry - fixed.

My advice would be that any money you utilize for her benefit... it needs to be done under your control. Do not hand her money, or deposit money into some account of hers. Don't buy her anything she could turn in for a refund, either. If you want to provide food to her, then buy it and hand it to her. Along with preventing the funds from being diverted to some other use, it has the benefit of demonstrating that you are there for her in a way that she can not deny. She may not act appropriately appreciative of it at that time, but it will still be planted into her mind for later consideration.

As to those "nice" parents of the deadbeat boyfriend... just remember that they are essentially enabling this to happen. While it is a comfort to you that she has a roof over her head, it sounds like this teenager scheme might not have come to pass without those parents providing that key ingredient.

I truly hope this works out OK in the long run. I know it has to be hell for you right now.

Sounds like /you´re getting a handle on it all now,. Cool, calm, and collected.

Apart from this, possibly.
/
Can I suggest meeting at a coffee shop? And not out of the blue but pre-arranged? Pôssibly meet both of them?
2 reasons, she would, I think, be more likely to agree to meet you. And, less chance of a shouting match with people around.

At this point what you want is assurance that she is ok, isn´t it? Mebbe discuss the future, a little?

Whatever you decide, very best of luck.

Geesh, marko, your scenario is one of my worst nightmares.

All of you guys who've gone through the same is good reminder to me to treasure the times with my daughter now.

Well I have calmed down considerably
I have a cousin living not to far from where she has moved to
I asked him to swing by not go in but just check out the house and area
Dead beats parents were truthful.
I even google mapped the area seems ok.

Yes dead beats parents have facilitated this by letting them live in the house.
but I think they were thinking along the same lines I am There son is in decent accommodation not slumming it in a bedsit with undesirables like I did when I first left home.


A little advice of my own,
trust your Gut when meeting suitors for your kids.
In retrospect I had a bad feeling when I first meet him he was a little to confident.
You know the type would sell ice to an eskimo.
I had concerns but did not voice them to keep the peace mistake number one
Mistake number two I let him stay in my home again against my better judgement.
Mistake number three he played me I thought I had gotten through to him talking about how important it is to provide to strive for a Job/career and not live off other people or welfare.
yes he is young he is educated. has manners and to my knowleague has not mistreated her in anyway
Things could be worse. But hell will freeze over before I ever forgive him I will forgive Tara.
I sure as hell was no angle at that age but I would have not pulled a stunt like this.

It just baffles me. At that age, the last thing I wanted to do was settle down with just one girl.

I feel for you. Both my kids went down a bad path. My daughter was a runaway at 16 and it took her until she was 24 to straighten out. But, thank God , she met a good man and is now married with a beautiful little boy. My son is now almost 30 and is now clean of addiction to opiates for just over a year. Pray every day.

Guys I can not thank you enough for sharing your experiences.
I was really thinking I was a failure as a dad.
My oldest girl had a baby at sixteen my son left young as well age twenty
But at least it was a mutual agreement we just clashed about everything but he finished school and he had a job to go to
My wife has accused me of being to hard on the kids I never raise my hand to my daughters not once
I gave them as much as I could materially I tried to instil values in them. A work ethic
When I Lost my job I even cleaned buses for a pittance to show them welfare was not away of life.
Because of my wife's comments I went easy on Tara when she meet the dead Beat I let her away with a lot of things.
Things the others would never of got away with a lot of good that did.
I have tried various parenting methods I am out of ideas at this stage.
I still have a twelve year old he has witnessed this with her siblings
Thank god none of my kids have ever been in trouble with the law or to my know league been involved in drugs
My son has a very good job and my older girl is doing well in collage.
I keep telling my self things could be a lot worse but I cant help feeling I have made some critical mistakes.
I know we all make mistakes but some have long lasting repercussions.
Had I not thrown the dead beat out there relationship mite have fizzled out in time.

Marko, you are a parent. Did you get the parenting guide when the stork arrived? Have you applied for the rule book? The PDF? I think Falcon 4 BMS has it, not sure.
Oh no, wait....there IS no rule book.
Dealing with different scenarios with different children is....different every time!

Don´t beat yourself up about decisions made in the past. They are gone. Deal with today.

Today, you might want to try and phone her? Arrange a Coffee shop meet up? Tell her she can bring BF if she wants?
If she doesn´t answer then txt her with the idea, the plan, of a meet up. Plant the seed of you guys getting together for a chat.

If she has enrolled herself back in school-.---it ain´t ALL bad!

We´re with ya Hoss.

Thought i would update you guys who were kind enough to reply to my post.

Well i could not have got it more wrong.
I spoke/seen to my girl for the first time on Friday she looks amazing happy and healthy.
she is like a different person.
it was a awkward meeting i will admit i acted a bit like a dick to be honest.
Her mother convinced her to come home for a visit for a couple of days.
I did not argue or anything like that with her but i was not trying to engage in conversation.
But seeing how well she looked and how happy she seemed i gave her a big hug as she was leaving to catch the bus home.
and she accepted my offer to drive her home and we had a good chat cleared the air so to speak
And get this the deadbeat got a job and a good one at that.

I guess that's the other part of being a parent. When you realize they make good decisions on their own

Glad you got it sorted and the air clean.