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

[riderinthestorm]

207. I've said in other places that I don't think we have enough info to judge. I've also told my story

in other threads but will try again.

My 14 year old daughter began using drugs 2 months after she turned 14. She quickly escalated into hardcore drugs: heroin, meth, crack cocaine... she began prostituting herself to get the drugs and dealing them at school within a year after starting.

I have destroyed her drug paraphernalia and her drugs. I've also destroyed her 'special" hats, jewelry, clothing and other items that signal that she is 1. ready to have sex for drugs and/or 2. that she has drugs to sell at school that day. Sometimes that destruction has been done in fury, sometimes in rage, sometimes weeping, sometimes calmly and rationally. You can tell me that it's "negative" behavior til the cows come home but you aren't in this family, nor are you working with the school, police, rehab center and substance abuse counselors to try to save your kid.

Furthermore, my husband is a professional athlete in an extreme sport. We model extreme risk taking daily. My daughter is on track to be one of the top athletes in this sport if she chooses. OBVIOUSLY she is having some trouble figuring out what's "mature" behavior from our "behavior" but I'm not exactly sure what you'd have us do at this point, 25 years into this career. We're in an extremely honorable profession with long roots in our culture - but it does lend itself to blurred lines. It can and does have positive effects, except of course with this kid, whose troubled indeed. FWIW, she's 15 now and 2 months out of rehab and 2 months sober. That in itself is a major victory but I doubt you'd see it that way, or the steps we've taken to get there, since a LOT of what looks like really "bad parenting" from the outside was necessary to get here.

Until you have walked a mile in my shoes, or any other family's shoes, it's impossible to judge. And I'll be damned if an issue like Laptop Dad and his daughter is so black and white. We do NOT have the whole story, I'm sure.