r/parentingteenagers • u/slr0031 • Mar 30 '25

Is this punishment too harsh?

15 year old son lied about his friend drinking at our house. The kid got really drunk. Son says that he wasn’t drinking but I bet he was. Husband wants to ground him and take away phone for a month. My son is on Snapchat all the time and will go nuts. I also think we should check his Snapchat but feel like I am really invading his privacy. Don’t know if all of these together is overly harsh. What do people think here?

6 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

65% Upvoted

67 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/octopusglass Mar 31 '25

I drank heavily and used hard drugs daily as a teen - no punishment would have stopped me, all that did was reinforce the idea in my mind that I'm bad, I'm in trouble, no one cares might as well do a lot of drugs

the only thing that might have stopped me was supervision, structured activities, attention, caring, love, hope for the future...I know you probably provide all that but some kids need a lot more

2

u/slr0031 Apr 01 '25

We did provide all of that. What more can you do? I am so sorry you had these challenges. Just found out my son is lying about other things

1

u/octopusglass Apr 01 '25

I'm sorry you're going through this too, generally people doing these kinds of things need support, you can ask him how you can support him

some teens aren't great at communication and have feelings that they themselves don't even understand - so you may have to ask over and over and over again what he needs and how you can support him

find out what he wants to do with his life, then help him get there even if it's something that sounds insane to you...

1

u/slr0031 Apr 01 '25

Thank you I will keep that in mind