update; son stole meds

The only advise I can offer is that in the front end, on the back end and all throughout this process, throw out to him all the love that you can. It will help cement the bond between you, and show honesty you come to the process with.

Thank you for helping to restore my faith in the younger people. But then, I guess since you are a big part of why this is working, I guess part of that is faith is in us older folk as well.

Good luck as you continue to move forward.

Great job Sam and I think this is exactly the right thing for you both.

I have always tried to stress to my kids that anything short of the truth is difficult to deal with since it isnt real. So far I have had good luck out of that and I have raised 4 kids and taken them to adulthood thru those horrible teen years and cant say it wasnt a He** of a ride at times but as long as the truth was kept we always managed to deal. I have one more to go and she is 11 now so if I can keep her on the same track as the others I have done my job well.

My Mom's minister use tell us that anyone that raised 6 teenagers and they all made it deserved a front seat in Heaven! I know where my Mom is today at least and looking hoping I can join her! LOl

Parenting is by far the hardest job with the most rewards I can think of,just seems there are days the rewards are hard earned by both parent and child.

Good luck to you both and hoping your son learns a valuble lesson in picking friends here in this mess.

pete's trip and everyone else,

no, no, dont ever use those over the counter drug kits, they are useless. I had a friend (not really a friend actually, just someone in one of my classes)that lost her daughter to her parents cause of drugs, and she has been trying for a year to get her daughter back, and a few months ago her mother accused her of doing drugs and gave her one of those at home drug kits and it said she was positive for drugs, well she paid several hundred dollars to get a hair follical test done, and those can tell how much drugs you've done for the past 6 months or so (they're one of the most reliable drug tests besides fingernail tests cause you cant mask it up with anything like people can do with urine tests), and it came back negative, saying she hasnt done drugs in a while and rubbed it in her mom's face. Always get it done at a lab, even if you have to pay out of pocket, it may cost quite a bit more, but it's worth it to get the truth, and also those at home drug tests will give the wrong results after so many minutes anyways, they are very useless, ask any perfessional that knows about drug use, they will tell you also. And I'm sure anyone would feel aweful to accuse someone of doing drugs when in fact they where clean, I know cause when I was younger my parents always accused me when in fact I NEVER did anything, my brother who they thought was so wonderful was the one who drank all the time and did illegal drugs, it really made me severely depressed cause I never did anything to make my parents think that, they just thought so cause I slept all the time when in fact I did cause my chronic pain and fibro started when I was 14. And til this day I never really forgave them, it still haunts me.

-hellokitty

As to the advise about giving him a drug test, That was brought up at the meeting and we decide not to do any drug testing unless the situation calls for it, he has never done anything like this before and I am going to trust him on this, however he knows that drug testing is an option and hopefully he will not give me any reason to go down that path. My son has already lost a lot of my trust and he knows that, I believe that he wants to have that trust back and he knows that he is going to have to earn that trust, that I am not just going to give it blindly anymore. To be honest with all of you I believe that my losing trust in him has hurt him the most.

                                             Sam