Dear Prudence,
Our daughter grew up with a bad best friend, “Trisha.” Trisha was the type to constantly be skipping school, smoking behind the bathroom, and generally making trouble for everyone around. She would constantly be dragging our daughter along to the point that it had serious legal complications. Our daughter stole my late grandfather’s empty pistol and gave it to Trisha so she could “scare” her drug-dealing boyfriend into giving her money. No one was injured, but the cops were involved.
Our daughter lost her college scholarship, and we had to go into serious debt to keep her out of jail. Trisha pleaded to a lesser charge and went away for a few years. Now she has turned up like a bad penny.
Our daughter is in her mid-20s and moved back home after a bad breakup. The agreement was that she would get a job, look to finish her degree, and she could live at home rent-free. You can imagine my shock and horror when I came home one day to find Trisha sprawled out in our living room like she owned the place.
Apparently, they met again on social media and decided to hang out. I asked Trisha to please leave, and my daughter dared to get upset with me for being rude to her friend. Trisha left, and my daughter and I had the biggest fight. Our daughter ranted that my husband and I can’t dictate who her friends are. Trisha has it so “hard” and is trying to turn her life around, and it was her house, too, so she could have whoever she wanted over. It was like she regressed into the bratty 15-year-old, arguing it wasn’t such a “big deal” that she was caught skipping school again.
When her father got home, we had the mother of all fights. My husband exploded on our daughter for being so “stupid and selfish” to hang out with a criminal like Trisha again, and if she continued to socialize with her, she could move out and not come crying when she ended up in jail again. I understand my husband could have gone about it another way, but the stress of that situation was the worst time of our lives. We took out savings, borrowed, and begged for money from family and friends in order to keep our daughter out of jail. She was facing adult charges because she had just turned 18, while Trisha was still considered a minor.
We are still chipping away at the debt six years later and have two other children that we can’t afford to help the way we did our daughter. Our daughter left to stay with a family friend for a few days, but now she is home and pretending that nothing happened. My husband and I are debating about what to do next. We worry that if we stand by our statement that will just push our daughter back toward Trisha, and we worry about what will come of that. But at the same time, we know backing down will just encourage the same. Help! I can’t believe our daughter would do this to our family yet again.
—Bad Penny