Annie,
I am in many ways your daughter. By the sounds of it the right age too. Im 35, I have a beautiful 5 year old girl and a dad that went to Nam and came back so screwed up all he did from age 5 to 13 for me was drank and got high until my mom finally left. I spent that entire time watching him. So what did I do when my ex husband, my daughter's father left for Iraq Jan 3, 2008 for a year? I HAD A TOTAL BREAKDOWN. I felt like that same little girl from the seventies and early eighties. I represed here for so long, and NO no one ever smacked me because I was in pain. Your daughter has a life outside of you, respect that. She ended up in jail and doing drugs for a lot of reasons. Hold her hand, dont smack it away.
Jo

Sometimes, Anonymous, slapping the hand is the best thing to do--It's called 'tough love.'

Did you get counseling while still taking drugs? You see, this is what I don't understand. How can a reputable counselor counsel a drug addict who's still using? That seems to me to be a waste of time and money.

The first thing should be to get Annie's daughter off of drugs.

I can not hold her hand any longer, I have done it long enough. Only to watch her become worse blaming others for her own actions. Even the fact that she abuses her children. It's their fault. In her eyes she is not at fault for anything she does, which is total bull, and not the way that she has been raised.

If I should continue to hold her hand, as I have through all these years, I continue to enable her. I can't do that any more. I am to busy raising her children and my own children who are about the same ages.

At some point she has to grow up, and face the life that she has created.

She has been a mother for almost 11 years, and if she has not figured out what to do by now, I don't think she ever will. For those 11 years I am the one that has constantly put her first, run to her rescue, rescued her children in the middle of the night. The only time in their short lives that they've slept and felt safe is while living with me.

I'm not saying she's not important, but I am saying that when it comes down to choosing, the children win hands down.

All children should be given the chance to 'win.' If your first child wasn't able to do so, through no fault of your own, then she must do so on her own.

My youngest brother has tried for years to get me to condone his alchoholism. He's sent pleas to me to 'talk to him.--Call him!.' I refused to do so, until he got help.

His wife, also an alchoholic, is now in jail for attacking my brother with a knife to his face. She's in jail, he's in de-tox. We got a very garbled message from him the other night, saying that under no circumstances were we to answer any pleas made by him to get him out of de-tox.

Of course, we wouldn't have. But, to me, it may show that my little brother is willing to take on his own fight.