This blog has been brewing for a while now and I need to post it now.
I live in a newer neighbourhood in Calgary and as such we no longer get door to door delivery from Canada Post. They have "super boxes" placed all over the neighbourhood and you have a specific box and keys to get your mail. I have no problem with this as I realize the city is bigger and to save time it is easier to have a truck full of mail and place it in the right box instead of going door to door. It would just be nice if they actually put things in the right box. Yesterday I picked up the mail and there was a key (the key is to one of two bigger boxes that they can put a parcel in to) I opened the parcel box and it was a parcel for an address on the other side of the street from me. This wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that they never get anything right. Over Christmas they were actually doing door to door delivery of parcels. My house number is 55. There was a package on my doorstep (they don't ring the doorbell or wait for someone to be home they just drop it on the door), the issue was that is was for 7966 on a completely different street. I can understand wrong street as everything starts the same name but to look at my house being 2 digits and this being a 4 digit house number wasn't a big red flag? Not to mention my house numbers weren't even in the 4 digit number.
Put that on top of my mother in law sending a package to us with gift cards that never ever arrived. It had a tracking number and was supposedly delivered to us at 10:30 one morning. Problem was I was home and the postal contractors never actually get to our neighbourhood until at least 2pm. Nothing ever came of that one.
I also still have not received my package from the US that was sent to me before Christmas. At this point I don't think I ever will get it.
So with Canada Post being useless, it comes down to the fact that I don't know what tell people that want to send me things.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
What to do with a teenager?
Well this is a tough blog for me to write. I have two children one is a 14 year old girl (about to turn 15) and the other is a 10 yr old boy that has Aspergers Syndrome. My daughter is a step child but I have been raising her since she was 2.
With the mixed family there have always been issues but we managed to go get through most of them fairly well. Last year my daughter was failing school and was hanging around with some bad kids. In an effort to wake her up (after finding out the school would not fail her) we talked it over with her and sent her to her grandparents home for the remainder of the school year. Her marks didn't improve greatly but she seemed to be passing everything and had lots of friends and even got a job at McDonald's. We thought things were turning around and she was maturing.
My wife went down for a vacation just after school let out to discuss with her parents about my daughter staying for another year of schooling. They did not see enough effort put forth in school and it was causing them some hardships having a teenager living there so they said no and it was decided she would move back home. At this time we also found out that she had been drinking several times with her friends (we had asked her not to drink til she was 16). After my wife left my daughter had a week to quit her job, pack and get ready to move back in with us. In that time we found out she had a one night stand with a boy without using any protection.
Move forward to this year, things have actually been going fairly well, she was getting along much better with her brother, we were letting her go out with friends, giving her limited computer and cell phone time with the chance to increase her privileges based on school work. Just before Christmas we got her first report card. She was failing three classes, mainly because she wasn't putting any effort in them. We were very disappointed but after talking to her and the teachers we think things are going to turn around on this.
Then comes last night, she had asked to go hang out with a friend yesterday and we had no problem with it as we know this girl and didn't think a big deal of it. She came home on time (after having asked for a sleepover and denied because we needed her to babysit). When she got home she was acting somewhat strange, ran upstairs before even talking to us and changed, was talking about how she had to shower because her friend had put ketchup in here and in general not getting to close to us. She was also wearing a lot of perfume, which she never does as she knows it causes us migraines.
So after a little sleuthing work, looking at her eyes getting close and smelling her hair I was pretty sure I knew why she was acting strange. So I let her shower and then confronted her. No I didn't know for sure but I had my suspicions so I simply said "Do you want to tell me what you really did?" She had that shit look of a busted teenager on her face and said no. This when I knew for sure what happened. So I sat down and talked about why, who, where and if she knew what the consequences of doing pot was or could be. She wasn't very open and was avoiding eye contact and didn't really want to say much so I asked her is she wanted her mom brought into this conversation. She said whatever. So we moved to the living room and had a family talk.
We talked about trust, dangers of drugs, why she did it and who she did it with. After that we sent her to her room so that we could figure out what to do. I thin called the parent of the other girl to let them know what we had found out. She dismissed it for the most part saying my daughter doesn't do that but was still going to have a talk to her about it. She said things like that don't happen in our house and I hope this won't stop you from letting our kids hangout.
The problem with this is I know it was her daughters friend that supplied the drugs, it wasn't her daughters first time and it was under her watch that they did it.
So now the conundrum, what to do with my 14 year old daughter that thinks it is okay to drink, do drugs and have sex because as she puts it "All my friends are doing it and they all say how awesome it is".
I knew growing up was hard but this is ridiculous.
With the mixed family there have always been issues but we managed to go get through most of them fairly well. Last year my daughter was failing school and was hanging around with some bad kids. In an effort to wake her up (after finding out the school would not fail her) we talked it over with her and sent her to her grandparents home for the remainder of the school year. Her marks didn't improve greatly but she seemed to be passing everything and had lots of friends and even got a job at McDonald's. We thought things were turning around and she was maturing.
My wife went down for a vacation just after school let out to discuss with her parents about my daughter staying for another year of schooling. They did not see enough effort put forth in school and it was causing them some hardships having a teenager living there so they said no and it was decided she would move back home. At this time we also found out that she had been drinking several times with her friends (we had asked her not to drink til she was 16). After my wife left my daughter had a week to quit her job, pack and get ready to move back in with us. In that time we found out she had a one night stand with a boy without using any protection.
Move forward to this year, things have actually been going fairly well, she was getting along much better with her brother, we were letting her go out with friends, giving her limited computer and cell phone time with the chance to increase her privileges based on school work. Just before Christmas we got her first report card. She was failing three classes, mainly because she wasn't putting any effort in them. We were very disappointed but after talking to her and the teachers we think things are going to turn around on this.
Then comes last night, she had asked to go hang out with a friend yesterday and we had no problem with it as we know this girl and didn't think a big deal of it. She came home on time (after having asked for a sleepover and denied because we needed her to babysit). When she got home she was acting somewhat strange, ran upstairs before even talking to us and changed, was talking about how she had to shower because her friend had put ketchup in here and in general not getting to close to us. She was also wearing a lot of perfume, which she never does as she knows it causes us migraines.
So after a little sleuthing work, looking at her eyes getting close and smelling her hair I was pretty sure I knew why she was acting strange. So I let her shower and then confronted her. No I didn't know for sure but I had my suspicions so I simply said "Do you want to tell me what you really did?" She had that shit look of a busted teenager on her face and said no. This when I knew for sure what happened. So I sat down and talked about why, who, where and if she knew what the consequences of doing pot was or could be. She wasn't very open and was avoiding eye contact and didn't really want to say much so I asked her is she wanted her mom brought into this conversation. She said whatever. So we moved to the living room and had a family talk.
We talked about trust, dangers of drugs, why she did it and who she did it with. After that we sent her to her room so that we could figure out what to do. I thin called the parent of the other girl to let them know what we had found out. She dismissed it for the most part saying my daughter doesn't do that but was still going to have a talk to her about it. She said things like that don't happen in our house and I hope this won't stop you from letting our kids hangout.
The problem with this is I know it was her daughters friend that supplied the drugs, it wasn't her daughters first time and it was under her watch that they did it.
So now the conundrum, what to do with my 14 year old daughter that thinks it is okay to drink, do drugs and have sex because as she puts it "All my friends are doing it and they all say how awesome it is".
I knew growing up was hard but this is ridiculous.
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