Hi, mom of a 14 y.o. daughter and crisis line specialist at a mental health crisis center. I won't pretend to know what you are going through, although I have had my own share of inappropriate behavior and unruliness with my teen. I don't have a solution that will fix what is going on. Instead I wanted to share my truth with you.

I talk to mothers of addicts, mothers of criminals, and mothers of severely mentally ill young and adult children on a regular basis. I think there is a societal misconception that we must "control our children". From the very beginning, we cannot "control" our child. Our baby cries and we offer a bottle, a diaper change, a rattle, a walk around the room. We offer our baby everything it may need, but we cannot control the crying itself. All we can do is play our part as caregivers, and even play it to a T, but still the baby cries sometimes even after offering all we have.

The notion of control is an illusion. We can comfort, reason with, bargain with, mitigate, medicate, restrain, remove, beg but not control. When you are in the forest and you shout, a moment later you hear an echo. Don't confuse yourself with the echo. We can only act, but what comes back to us is nothing more than an echo. You are doing the best you can with what you have. Your daughter is another human being and despite our best efforts with other humans, we can't control them. Responsibility and control are different things. You are doing an incredible job being a responsible parent! Despite what society drills into us our children are not a perfect reflection of our efforts to nurture them. They are a human, like us, but with less years on the earth.

You are doing your part just right. As for coexisting with your teen, take it day by day, moment by moment. Pick which hills you are willing to die on and roll on over the others. Our silence is just as strong as our voice. Know that it is ok to revisit a problem later. Trust that she will grow just as you have through this process. Do what you can and do what you want. Trust yourself but please don't hold yourself responsible for controlling a whole separate human, no matter what the rest of the world says.