My 16 yr old daughter is still rebelling even though she's pregnant!

Natalie - posted on 08/09/2010 ( 2 moms have responded )

Over the last year and a half or so, my daughter has morphed into a whole new person. She has been a good kid all her life, making straight A's and attending one of the top schools in the nation. Now, every day is a dramafest. Last year she got arrested for shoplifting. 2 mo's later she decided she would rather live with her dad. I knew it was a bad idea, because his lifestyle is completely different from ours. She could basically do whatever she wanted and get away with it, but at 16 in our state, she has the right to choose his house or mine. (I kept custody, for a reason.) When she left, the one thing she told me was to "help" her if she even got close to getting kicked out of school. The day before the last day of school, a staff member called me & told me she was making out in a car in the parking lot with a boy that didn't go to school there (AKA; her boyfriend, whom she met while doing community service. Yes, a real winner.) So, I snatch her up (remember, she asked me to "help" her if she started messing up at school) and drag her back home. At that point, she was already pregnant, unbeknownst to me. Several weeks go by and I think she has had an awakening. She was helping out around the house, going to work, and just plain out acting right. I didn't know that it was all lies. All of it. She was completely manipulating me. She was sneaking around behind my back and meeting up wtih her boyfriend and another boy (yes, cheating) the whole time. She confessed that she had being lieing to me in buckets, but only because I told her I already knew most of it (which I didn't). When she finally decided to tell me she was pregnant, she said she didn't know who the father was. She decided she wanted to move to another city with her boyfriend because she didn't want to be here - around me. (Because I keep trying to "help" her.) So, her dad told her to come live with him again. She continued to disrespect our home, our other children, myself & my husband. The stress was unbearable. She had no intentions of "changing" and it was obvious to me that she didn't mind hurting everyone around her. So, we let her go. I don't really think we had a choice though. She would have just run away. She recently left his home to move in with her boyfriend here in town. Her dad didn't have an address, just a general area. He told me he couldn't handle the stress of her anymore: constant disrespect to everyone else in the family, staying out all night and asking him everyday if she could move in with her boyfriend. Again, manipulation to get what she wanted at the expense of everyone else. 16 1/2 and pregnant. Who does that? She had two homes that offered her stability and help but opted for yet another bad choice. She did decide to return to her school in a couple of weeks to see if she can ride it out, but eventually they will find out and she will be kicked out. She and I have a horrible relationship at this point and I think she's in denial about even being pregnant. She has to be. She doesn't understand the gravity of her situation because I have always protected her. I believe now she needs to become strong, for the sake of being a mother. I can't drag her home. I know that's not the right thing to do, for her, her baby or for the rest of the family (I also have 2 other girls: a 14yr old watching all of this with conflicted feelings for her sister and a 1 yr old). When she's home, either with us or her dad, we seem to be enabling her. I think she may need this experience of being "on her own" to help her realize the gravity of what she's been doing and where this road is going to take her, but I'm increasingly concerned. Now, there is another baby involved and things with her boyfriend will get bad, mark my words. What can I do to help her "wake up" and return to her morals and values? I know she's in there somewhere and I don't want drugs to be her next phase. That would just take her completely from us. She's still rebelling. The only thing I can think of is to give her noone to rebel against.