I have a 15 year old daughter who has always been very influenced by her friends. In elementary school she had a group of friends who played competitive sports with her. We traveled alot, and it was very fun. Around 5th grade, her friends moved on to nationally competitive teams and she got involved in other nationally competitive sports that didn’t include her close friends. She soon lost interest in sports because she wasn’t as close to the girls on the new teams.
She has became close friends with a few girls whose parents are very lenient and also their parents are all divorced. At first she was friends with a girl who started having sex at 12 and was allowed to get her naval pierced and her cartilage pierced at 11 or 12. For the most part, that friendship faded. When she became close to two other girls, I was relieved.
For about a year now the three of them have been very close. They spend almost every weekend together and my daughter doesn’t understand why her father and I don’t allow her to hang out the entire weekend with these girls. She doesn’t understand that we want her to do family things once in a while. We just got back from our lake house for a few days and she acted like a pout brat the whole time because they couldn’t come. She makes it very clear to us that she enjoys their company more than ours.
I have progressively felt more and more taken advantage of and disrespected. One weekend she had one of them over and while we were sleeping, they snuck out of the house and walked to the other end of the golf course to visit a couple of boys. The police saw them and picked them up and brought them home. Her friend had hickeys on her neck the next day. My daughter said it was her friend’s idea. I cannot tell you how mad that whole scene made me. For one thing, they left the front door unlocked so they could get back in without using the garage door code and making noise when the garage door opened. It just made me feel totally disrespected, sneaking off in the middle of the night while the rest of the family was sleeping.
The latest thing now is that her two friends are going to get their noses pierced tomorrow and she wants to go with them. We have had a major discussion all evening about why I don’t want her to get piercings or tattoos at 15. I am so tired of butting heads with her and hearing how her friends are so lucky because they get to do everything and have everything they want because they have two sets of parents, etc. I just can’t compete with that!

Image by Nika via Flickr

She says we are too overprotective and I want to give her more freedom but I’m just disappointed in her choice of friends. I get the whole story on how I judge her friends because their parents are divorced, and because they have piercings and how they are allowed to go anywhere they want all weekend long, blah, blah, blah. Her friends are all on birth control by the way, and seriously, I feel so old-fashioned by how I raise my kids.

Image by sillygwailo via Flickr

What can I do about this situation? I talk to my daughter all the time. There are things that she’s confessed to, like smoking pot and trying cigarettes and alcohol. All these things were done at her friends houses while their parents weren’t home. I don’t work, but they were still able to sneak out at my house. She is driving (has a permit) and says when she turns 16, she can go where she pleases. I’ve told her I can take the keys. Is there a way I can get her to change friends?? Should I lighten up more? She’s my youngest, I don’t know how I’m going to make it through one more.