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Originally Posted by Suzz04
I'm not asking everyone to agree with me. I asked for their experiences.
To quote myself to you , Shadowex3, I did say
If it becomes too much for her mentally, given her age, I will step in and adoption will most likely be our next step.
She does know the option of adoption. But I'm not giving her that option unless she has at least tried. How can she know that she's going to be able to do it if she doesn't even try?
Being pregnant is a responsibility. Not a thing that can be solved by just handing the problem over to someone else to deal with. That's what it sounds to me. Let someone else deal with a problem that a 15 year old has.
What if she has another child and she's over 18? Do we give her those same options to give up this child like the first? Let her refuse to take responsibility for her actions?
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No Suzz allow me to quote myself to YOU:
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...or by forcing them one way or another into a bad situation because they "deserve" it.
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I wasn't sure at first so I gave you the benefit of the doubt but you've now made it very clear that what you care about right now is forcing her into a situation that you think will "teach her a lesson". You're not talking about any of this in terms of what's best for her, you're talking about using this pregnancy to punish her, everything you say revolves around the idea that she needs to "learn a lesson" and that you're going to lie to her and force her into whatever situation you think will do that.
They are HER options to choose from, not yours to give or take in order to ensure that she suffers enough to satisfy you. It's 2010, not 1910, she doesn't "deserve" any kind of punishment because she was on birth control and using condoms and something still went wrong. The line of reasoning you're using isn't logical, it's emotional. And while that's understandable given how huge this is, it's not going to help either of you as you've already seen based on what you've told us.
Think about it in pretty much any other terms and it gets really clear just how crazy this line of reasoning is:
What if she smoked and developed cancer? Would you let her know all her treatment options or force her down the path with the lowest survival rate and the most pain and suffering to teach her a lesson? Would you consider the other choices "letting her refuse to take responsibility for her actions"?
If she were in a car accident and the doctors had many options would you force her to have a painful amputation and take a poor prosthesis just because anything else, from a better functioning prosthesis to saving her limb, would be "letting her refuse to take responsibility for her actions"?
I think you really need to step back and ask yourself why everything you say and do comes back to punishment rather than helping your daughter have a better future. This is an incredible emotional strain, and having grown up in Virginia I don't need to imagine the kind of cultural shock it is as well, but I really wasn't kidding when I said that it's 2010 and not 1910. A pregnancy is not something you use to discipline someone.
If you really want to try and help her have a chance at a real future, you can start by changing the attitude you're taking here from "How can I teach her a lesson she'll never forget" to more or less anything else and working with her with
honesty. That way you don't have to deal with the irrecoverable fallout of her finding out on her own that you've been lying to her, and the odds are very much in favor that she will find out on her own. She's 15, not 5, she's going to talk to people, she's going to read things on her own.
She's pregnant Suzz, there isn't a thing in this world you can do that will punish or hurt her more than that already is, and if it isn't then there's really nothing you can do to her. You're dealing with someone who more than likely, whether she shows it or not, feels like she's got nothing left to lose. Ultimatums, lies, arbitrary punishments, and using the pregnancy itself as a weapon against her are not going to do anything productive.
The fact that she hasn't run off for a backalley abortion already shows you that she's taking (or trying to take) responsibility, stop trying to find ways to force her down a path you think will punish her enough, it's just working against what you say you both want. I grew up in Virginia, I know it's going to be hard to find any kind of support that goes further than "Punish the promiscuous" in that state, but it does exist and are people who can help all of you whatever choice she makes.
You can't have it both ways though. You can't keep trying to "teach her a lesson" AND help her have a better future.