Well, here is what I have to say about preparedness. I was the same kind of parent ~ I still am. I think every responsible parent is just that way, too. We try to steer a clear course. The difference between us and other parents though, is that our kids are not responding the way "normal" kids respond. I have thought about this issue alot, actually.
Where did I go so wrong is the gist of that kind of thinking.
What I have concluded is that I did nothing wrong. When things began to go wrong, I did all the classes, went into therapy, slipped into and then, took a header into, depression, and tried every way I knew to change my ways. But that did mot help our situation. NOTHING helped our situation. The difference there being that the same people who were taking my money to help put our family back on the right course ~ those same people disappeared when the course of treatment was over. Know what they said? Incorrigible, that's what they said.
If I had not been so desperate to save my family? I swear, I would have demanded my money back.
But I was desperate. there was no time for anything but to keep chasing and chasing, so I could learn what I needed to change about the way I was parenting to save my family.
And what we are trying to help you understand, Carolanne, is that IT IS NOT YOU WHO IS DOING SOMETHING WRONG HERE.
Your daughter is behaving in ways she was raised better than to do. Part of this is that when they get into a bad treatment situation, they try to one up one another as to who has had it worse. Those who love them are always the ones who are blamed, who are acused of terrible things in the heat of the moment. But someone is writing all this down, and the child is left either to admit she lied or at lest, stretched the truth, or stick to her guns.
So, your daughter is being victimized.
You cannot change that, as you have no control over what she is choosing to do at this point.
But you can remember that she was raised to know better than to do what she is doing. You can understand that she is an adolescent, that she is confused, that she has fallen into a really bad situation through her own foolishness ~ and you can try to hang on to your own understanding that this is what adolescents do. They dramatize, they imagine, they see things from the strangest points of view imagineable.
What each of us is trying to tell you Carolanne, is to be still.
Be still, just for now, and watch.
The best way you can help your child now is to be strong, yourself. She needs a stable point, a light, to fix her eye on so she will know what direction to go to come home again.
Because the site is just words, the emotional component ~ the warmth of a smile or a hug ~ don't come through. So many of us have been just where you are now, Carolanne.
No one is judging you, however judgmental our responses may sound.
The solutions any of us come up with have been figured out in blood, sweat, tears, and loss.
Sometimes, the clearest way to say a thing is just to say it.
My heart aches for you, Carolanne. You are going through the worst, most painful part of what will turn out to be a very long journey right now. The reason this part is so hard, I think, is because we are in that part of the journey where we learn we have been betrayed. Our dreams for our children have gone all wrong.
You need to be strong now, Carolanne.
Every one of us has heard the things you are hearing, has watched our children slide into hell and been unable to stop them.
We are helping you know how to survive it.
Barbara
