"Advice for Mom Dealing with Trust Issues with 17 Year Old Daughter

you can get gps tracking on her cell phone as well as her car. you can explain to her that she should not have a problem with this if there is no reason not to trust her and as long as she lives there, this is whats going to happen.

my cousin does this with his daughters.

also he has an alarm in the house that activates the front door space camera when the girls arrive home from school. they do not know about it. it shows if they have people come over or not. so far they have been really good about telling the truth. but if they ever did lie, that camera would tell them and there would be no way to get out of it.

a lot of security companies install these now as a package and it isnt that much more a month. we had some installed and its something like $48/mo.

cell phone companies will do that for you if youre on a family plan or paying her bill.

personally, if my kids grow up and i have a trust issue, yet im paying their bills - i would have zero problem monitoring them in this way. i do not consider it a violation of privacy. i consider it a protection of safety.

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Nanny cam!

Give her a chance to show she can be trusted, with little things. Build on that. Stress that lying about something is worse than the something itself and will be punished more severely. Then stick to that.

Casually check up occasionally. I don't mean sneak because you are going to let her know in advance that at any time you could check up on her or send someone else to.

Why does your daugter still have keys to your house? My son did this (he's 16). When he gets out of school, he has to come to my job (he is timed) and goes home with me. Once the trust is regained he may get keys again. When he is away at college he will not have keys to my house, will need to call before he comes home and be home at a decent hour while there. The beauty of making my house uncomfortable enough for him to spread his wings and fly. I love it.

L., great question-- and to the two other mamas, amen sistas. I don't think there is such a thing as privacy when you're a child; to a reasonable degree, I mean. I know it's a learned behavior to be completely honest with your parents, or anyone for that matter, and I still work on it as an adult. I would tell her (which you probably already have) that she will be in more trouble for lying than telling the truth, no matter how bad the truth is. I tell my 10 year old that even if he murders someone, he's got to tell us the truth. Hopefully that's an extreme example, lol, but we want him to come to us with anything, even if it's horrible.

Kids will lie though, no matter what we tell them or model for them; it's a natural reaction to being caught red-handed I think. Don't give up on your daughter, just tell her from now on it's totally honest communication between the two of you, and then you can always check the cameras that you've probably installed by then just to make sure :)

Best of luck!!
J.

Well, she's 17! You can still have the rule, but at 17 I wouldn't -maybe amend it so that she can't have more than 3 people there while you're gone. Parents shouldn't condone lying or let it slide, but they should expect their teens -whether in middle or high school -to lie to them about something at least once! What was her punishment when you found out she had disobeyed you and broken the rule? Has she lied to you multiple times about many things? If she lied about this one thing one time (even if it had been going on for awhile -did she lie to you only once or every day?), then you do need to move on! If she's constantly lying about everything, you should talk to her and ask her why she feels the need to lie to you. You should probably talk to her about why you have your needs and rules and that you can understand her point too, but give her the reasons you don't want her having people over when you're not around.

As far as neighbors alerting you to anything, most folks feel like it's really not their business unless they see flagrant illegal activity going on at your place. The last thing almost anyone wants to do is step into a situation between a teenage girl and her mom. Unless you alerted the entire neighborhood to your rules, most people probably thought little of it. Unless there was a raging party going on, I would never think anything of seeing a boy go in a teenage girl's house in my neighborhood.

It's not your problem that you cannot trust your daughter. She broke the rules and got caught. Now she's trying to manipulate you by making it everyone elses problem. She didn't "play a part", she is the entire reason why your this way.

If I were in your situation, I'd be exactly like you. I wouldn't trust her, and I would be stressed when leaving her home alone. I would also only leave her alone when absolutely necessary.

I was having a similar situation with my daughter and computer usage. She would give me the inocent "you don't trust me". To me it had nothing to do with trust, simply trying to be a good parent and supervise and monitor her. I'm glad I did, because she was doing immature, stupid, potentially dangerous activities, which I put a stop to immediately. And I told her straight out "NO, I do NOT trust you!". It was tough at first, but it has improved our relationship.

I'm sorry I don't have any real advise for you. Just know that your not alone.

Best of luck to you.