Answered questions(8)
Mixed Up in Michigan
My son is a smart kid who never does as well as he is capable of in school since he is so terribly disorganized and sloppy and since he is always starting 10 projects at once and rarely finishing any of them. He in his first year at Michigan State and he is not doing very well. I can see that the things he struggled with in high school are becoming more of a problem for him now that he is expected to take more responsibility for himself. I should stress, it is not laziness that plagues him – if anything he has too much energy and excitement and that’s what gets him into trouble since he is always getting pulled in a thousand opposite directions at once. I am not sure how I can help him from afar. I am contemplating hiring him an older student who can sort of mentor him along, sort of like a life coach but for school. Sort of what I used to do for him when he lived at home. Do you think this is a good idea? Is there anything else or anything better that I could do for him?
Read answer →Career V. Kids Safety?
My children are 10 and 12 and neither has ever gotten into any trouble. I am a geologist and I am considering a career relocation that would put us into an area which has a major drug situation with meth and with oxycontin and other prescription drugs. This is a rural area so there is only one high school to attend and there is no way to minimize their exposure to this. I know that there have been numerous cases of high school students overdosing and getting in trouble with the law. This is what I have been able to find out just by searching the local newspaper so I bet it is worse on the ground. I am dragging my feet on accepting this offer because I am worried that we would be putting our kids in harms way. I remember being a teenage and going along with the crowd. If everybody else is doing drugs won’t my kids get sucked into that too?
Read answer →Fleeting Eating
What do I do with a girl who is 17 and in her last year of high school who is taking diet pills and who won’t stop. I can make her promise to stop but I cannot make her actually do it. I am starting to feel like the police man in the house. Whenever she pours a big glass of water I am wondering if she is drinking to avoid eating and I bite my tongue to ask her but I often can’t resist and that does not help when I am badgering her about what she is doing especially when I cannot prove one way or the other what is going on in her head. I am so frustrated with her. She has taken diet pills in the past and I caught her and we had a big talk and she promised she would not do it again. She knows the risks. Then she lost a ton of weight this last month and I got suspicious again and I started asking her if she was taking anything. Of course she denied everything but then my youngest daughter found the pills in her bag and she still denies that she is taking them she says she is just selling them at school (she says they are not ilegal). What am I supposed to do? I can’t make her do anything and being thin seems more important to her than her future health.
Read answer →Blended Family Friction
I am newly married to a woman that has 2 kids. They are 11 and 13. We have been in a relationship for 3 years and I know the kids very well and we used to get along very well. We did not live together prior to our marriage 6 months ago. But ever since a couple of months after the marriage my relationship with the kids has become very strained. They do not seem to respect my right to discipline them, although my wife encourages me to take on that role (on an equal basis). It’s become quite uncomfortable and I have tried talking , as a family about the situation, without getting and improvements. I am at my wits end and I hate it. They used to like me and we had a lot of fun. Now they seem to hate me and I just feel anxious or angry all the time at home. I am not sure what to do?
Read answer →Stealing
My 12 year old son was caught stealing from his friend’s mother’s purse. He has stolen from us before on 3 occasions and he was punished for this and we believed we had addressed the issue. The first time we let it go after a serious talk and the second time he was grounded from TV and computer games for 2 weeks and the last time he was again grounded for 2 weeks and he lost his allowance for a month. We are shocked and livid that he would do this outside of the family as well. He cannot explain why he did this. There is a pattern of behavior here that is very disturbing, but he does not get in trouble at school or have other behavioral problems other than normal stuff. We don’t know what to do? How do we address this?
Read answer →Teens Know Everything
My son is a regular user of marijuana. He is a junior in high school and duel enrolled into our community college and doing very well. He has a part time job, is active in our churches youth group, and in boy scouts. He doesn't see anything wrong with smoking marijuana and has even said he does well to prove all "stereotypes wrong". He will not see a expert. I don't know what to do. DO you have any advice?
Read answer →Early Entrepreneur?
My 15 year old son has way too much money and I can’t figure out where he is getting it from. He always has a story about how his ‘friends bought him this or that or how his friend gave him an old ipad mini or how he bought a scratch off and won $100. He won’t admit that he is doing something wrong and I am worried he is doing something illegal to get this money. I feel powerless because I worry he is going to get in a lot of trouble but I don’t know how to stop him what should I do?
Read answer →Researching Drugs
My 15 year old son was looking at a lot of legal high websites. I had put some parental monitoring software on that he didn’t know about. He spent about 90 minutes bouncing around and reading about party powders and a lot of herbal speeds and pills and stuff that honestly scares the bejesus out of me. I confronted him right away and he said he was just worried about a friend who was using some of this stuff and he was looking to it. Yeah right….thinks I. So now what? I have to believe he is probably using this stuff and honestly I’d rather he used regular old pot than this new breed of synthetic lab cooked up stuff coming out of China or wherever. Can I drug test him for this new legal high stuff? Should he see a drug counselor?
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