Let's make this clear: responding to your teenage child's words with violence is NOT OKAY.

[renie408]

48. My father, brother, both my sisters and my husband are alcoholics.

My husband is the only one who has managed to get off of alcohol and stay off. Well, my dad doesn't drink any more, but he's dead.

My son, BTW, smokes like a chimney now that he is in college. With our family history I would rather have him smoke than drink, but it would have freaked me out if he had started at 14. I guess my kids never had that much free time. Not from any design of mine, but we run a 30 horse boarding/training/lesson farm and there is just always so goddam much WORK to do. And weekends are for horse shows half the year. I think you are extrapolating incorrectly from my post about talking to my kids. It hasn't all been roses and sunshine. We have had our fair share of screaming and fighting. The Waltons we ain't.

I should see if I could get my son to tell you how NOT like the Waltons we are. He is a member here; he doesn't post much, but he lurks a lot. I do remember one time when my daughter was about thirteen after she had been a sulky, obnoxious monster for WAYYY too long telling her, "You know what? Keep it up. I will always be your mother and I can't help loving you, but I don't have to like you. I would rather have you with us than not, but if you continue to act this way when you hit eighteen you will be free to go your own way. I will be sad, but I will still have your father, my other kid, my horses, friends, dogs and cats. I won't have you, but I will be ok. Will you be able to say the same thing?" That felt harsh at the time, but it was true. She bawled like a baby, but it was a turning point for us.

I am not judging you or blaming you for your daughter's situation. I HAVE been lucky. When school got weird, I started home schooling my daughter. We were lucky because we could; our lifestyle lends itself to a degree of flexibility for things like that. I don't know anything about dealing with the things you have had to go through and would never presume to judge you.

What I do know is that posting that video on Youtube wasn't about parenting. It was about HIS ego. And that is NOT good parenting.

You should judge this guy. Because what he did was wrong. Do you really equate shooting a laptop nine times with a gun because your child bitched about you on Facebook (ok, she bitched pretty hard) with throwing your daughter's bong out? You did the right thing. And no, if she were selling drugs at school, it's a little late for the conversation and sending her to rehab was the right thing, too. You have my truly sincere sympathy. That is such a hard and ugly thing to have to live through. And believe me, I KNOW we are lucky to have dodged so many bullets over the years. I am sorry you had to go through that as a family. How is your daughter now? Are you guys OK?