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My mother won’t let me be friends with the person that i like, what should
So there’s this guy that i’m friends with. He lives an hour away but he’s the son of a family friend so he comes over whenever we have parties for holidays. Once, during a new year’s party at his house, we were in the basement with his friends while my parents and his parents were talking. him and his friends were playing on the xbox while me and my friend were just on our phones and talking. while we were in the basement, his parents told my mother that he does drugs and drinks alcohol underage, but they don’t try to stop him anymore. I haven’t seen him do drugs (he’s drank alcohol a lot tho) and he’s really fun to be around. i understand that drugs suck and when we talked about it, he said that he doesn’t do it a lot (i want to see if i can stop him). after my mother found out, she told me to go back upstairs and not to be around him or his friends. I don’t want to stop talking to him or hanging out with him, but my mother told me not to hang out with him on our way home in the car. then, on July 4th, he came over and while everyone else went swimming or ate outside, we were inside hanging out. We started having a pillow fight with the pillows on my couch and just enjoyed each other’s presence for a while. we even cuddled on the couch together. then my mother saw us and pulled me aside to get me away from him and tell me not to hang around him. after that, i still hung around him, but less than usual, and with other people. since we’re friends, he’d follow me when i went somewhere. the day after that, my mother had a long talk with me about how i she didn’t want me to be friends with him. i understand that taking drugs and drinking alcohol underage is unhealthy and illegal, but i want to see if he can change. if not, hes still a really fun person to hang out with and i am confident that his unhealthy habits won’t influence me to do anything i’m not supposed to do. i haven’t been able to talk to my mother privately about it because my sister was in the room when she lectured me and i didn’t want to say that much in front of her. i plan on talking and negotiating, but i don’t see any real possibility that i can convince her to let me even be friends with him. is there any way that i can convince her that he’s not just drugs and alcohol, and that he’s actually a really good person?
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Hi Hon. I am glad you wrote about how you feel. Your parents may be only telling you basic reasons of why not to spend any time around him at all, period...and I remember being a teen and not asking why, or do they not trust me. Pretty much they did trust me, but then I had no friends who smoked, used drugs or alcohol. They have valid reasons but it may be something they are reacting to from their own youth or stories of what happened to friends they knew growing up, etc. When a parent restricts you from seeing someone, yes its easy to think they don't trust you. Maybe they dont trust you and then maybe agsin they do trust you but just don't trust him. All I will share now, I learned as an adult and can understand now why on some things, the parents flat out said No.
Please, don't give up on me now because it sounds like I am backing up your parents. I only want to teach you something other than hearing 'you can't and the reasons he drinks and does drugs' Sure nothing may ever happen to you.
But I know of plenty of people who were with someone drinking and some were drinking too. When a person who drinks is drunk, thewy are impaired mentally and unable to make good decisions. This can and will affect others they are around. I would suppose the same goes for those who take drugs. You may never see him out of control or anything other than his usual self until that one time on drugs he is really tripping, doesn't recognize you, maybe hurts you, kills you accidentally, maybe even rape. I have heard from plenty of college students who have experienced this with a drinking friend they saw was in control most times. People lose their inhibitions onces drunk, What ever is deep down inside will come up. So if they are fun and friendly but too shy otherwise, they can become the happy drunk, fun to be around but the majority of stories are of the mean drunk. Though he's young, so far it sounds like he is not a mean drunk but I think and reason as an adult and I have adult children now. I know something scientists have proven about teens and alcohol. I also have studied and read reports about the pre frontal lobe of the brain in humans. So here if what you need to know, in fact what his parents desperately need to know.
The teen brain is not mature and done growing even when the body is looking mature. The body will be at its mature state long before the frontal part of brain. It grows slower and won't be done until on the average, age 25. So even if you are as old as 17, thats 8 years away and a long time to wait until you will be able to make sound decisions for yourself. Until you get there, your parents are looking out for you. So what could go wrong, if you are as mature a person as I was as a teen. I didn't make hardly any bad decisions but there were still a few. It only takes one bad decision to really mess up your life. Luckily even though really bad, my parents were able to fix things after the fact. So don't think that even you can avoid getting into a bad situation. You may never drink or take drugs, but its what could happen to you from someone who is.
If you are 18 or older, yes you are an adult at this point but I instinctively did the right thing and made sure my kids did the same thing, use the parents as a sounding board, this means people you trust to go to and run your ideas or thoughts past them so they can give their perspective, point of view, and maybe give you some information you may not have thought of. The end decision is still your own but the decision as a young adult before youe brain is mature and done growing, needs the extra input to help you make the best decisions. I taught this to my kids, starting when they were little kids and when I had to tell them no, there was always a lengthy explanation with lots of details as if I was talking to an older child. IT is amazing how much a young child actually understands. It is frustrating to simply hear No and the short excuse given if at all without all the info I am trying to impart to you that your parents may not be doing as they are unaware of it. You might sometime ask them to explain all their thoughts and fears about a future issue.
Theuy may not know the things I know but whatever they do and their rules, are out of the parental instinct to protect you, the job they took on when you are born. You had to be protected from getting into poisonous cleaners with child proofing on drawers, told not to touch the oven door because it was hot and could hurt you. A parent with multiple kids will experience different kids, the kids who hear and trust they know what they are talking about and those who are tempted to find out for themselves what happens if they did touch the oven door. I had one like that but after a few boo boos she realized I was only saying this to protect her. You know you wouldn't start down the path of your friend but a parent can never be 100% sure. From my life, here's a surprise I ran into. Long after the teen years, my oldest told me that depression started for her in her teens years and has never gone away. I knew all the signs to look for, no matter how general good my kids were, signs of drugs taken and signs of depression and yet she hid it so well. Most kids are able to hide it well. So where you think your parents are over cautious, they can't read your mind and know what's going on in there for sure. What irks you now, you will feel totally different about once you get to age 25 or older. Mine are older but still thank me all the time for caring and guiding them as well as I did when they were young and teens.
Here's a fact about drinking and teens. Scientists have proven that drinking retards the growth of a teens brain. This means it can remain frozen at the point it has grown to as a teen and never mature like yours does around mid twenties. This means he is most likely to end up being an irresponsible adult, unable to make good decisions, unable to handle tough tasks that most adults have to deal with often in their lives, he just may end up living with his parents til they die and as a grown adult, still be unable to live the life of most normal adults. I would think this news would be enough to scare him or his parents into not allowing him to drink anymore. They could literally be creating a life long son who as an adult is very dependant on them.
I will add one more thing from my life to share a fact that the kind of people you are around very often, you tend to start mimicking and at worse possibility, begin to actively show characteristics like theirs. One is a sister who has a childhood friend she kept in touch with and see's about once a year since she doesn't live close by. But I saw lots of her in childhood, teens and teens and not as often in adult hood but I have seen her enough to have her mannerisms and expressions imprinted on my mind. I know this isn't a bad thing, but when my sister in early adulthood began to move, tilt her head a certain way, use facial expressions, tone of voice she never had before but were exactly those of her friend, it caught me off guard, as if it was that other person standing there, not my sister. It isn't constant but slips out at least once or twice any time I am hanging out with her. I know thats not harmful, but here's another one/
I had a brother, (deceased now) who had schizophrenia and with meds and regular appts. was fine in special housing for adults with mental illness or other special needs. One time he wanted to transfer but had to wait for an opening so he was put in a large mental health hospital were it is more like a prison, for those who don't respond to treatment and are a danger to themselves or others. One day Mom asked If I;d like to go visit and I was able to get away from my kids. So we were put in a waiting room and told to wait as they would bring him to us. A few minutes later, a young woman came in. She was not acting normally, exaggerated movements of her body and babbling so quickly I couldn't make out a word, not making much eye contact with us and generally talking as if to another person who was not with us in the room. I was shocked that they allowed people so bad off to just roam freely. I aked Mom if they allowed people like her to just roam around freely. What if she attacked another patient. I was even more shocked when Mom and my sister who were along both told me that she was my brothers therapist, not a patient there. I accused them of trying to play a joke on me but they were serious This women probably spent more time and long hours doing a job around people that did not act normalj that she picked up their mannerisms and began acting like them. So it may not be a big stretch to start acting like a certain person who is on drugs or drinking, even if you aren't. Its no big deal if its just mannerisms but as I see in my sister, she is now also making choices and decisions more and more that are not like the person she used to be. She had become more like her friend who had had a very sad life due to may bad decisions she's made. My sis is doing the same, one that could possibly end her life much sooner than otherwise as she is simply ignoring her Drs. warnings and going against what he is recommending since she does struggle with an illness, but its not one that is life threatening in itself, only the things one does that make the issues so much worse that it affects quality of life and is slowly wearing her body out. These are no exaggerations and you may not see the relevance but when you hear about people being a bad influence on you, sometimes its not because you do things like take drugs, become alcoholic, but rather a trick the mind does on you. It is natural for you to subconsciously start to become like those you spend more time with, at least those you have a great relationship with and get along with well. This is why couples who are happily married and have been for decades, as they become older, start to becdome more like each other in how they act, what they say, tone of voice. I see it starting with my husband and me. In some cases, as I've seen on internet, older couple began to looks more alike as if they could be brother and sister rather than a married couple of two individuals from separate families. These are the real things I know that your parents might not as to why they don't want you around that guy at all. Yes he may be harmless, but it still may affect you in some way and it is their job until you turn 18 and are an adult, to make some of those decisions for you. I had a daughter who at age 4 would never listen when we told her something, like it was bed time. It was all because she wanted to make her own choices and so I couldn't explain in full to her in a way she'd understand. Another mom with a daughter who was the same at that age, asked if she could share what she did that worked, and I was open for suggestions. I had to give my daughter two options so she could choose for herself. She always chose what I wished for in the end. You will have to trust your parents are not doing this to be mean, its because they love you, only that you don't see it as anything other than pushing you around, not letting you make your own decisions. I felt that way sometimes at your age, but once I was older, I understood completely why my parents had the rules they had me follow. I am glad I had parents who loved me enough to truly be making the best decisions they can. I am sure your friends parents think they are doing the same. Heres a few things off the net:
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Have your parents know about this so they can choose if they hopefully do to the boys parents so they can become aware of how important it is for him not to drink at his age. While at it, look and see if there are any bad effects to a developing teen if drugs are being used.
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