Vent: older teen could’ve caused a fire
TL;DR: f19 hot wires vapes and burned up a surge protector in her room today. Feeling angry and like our home is at serious risk. Sorry for the long rant.
Mostly need to vent, feeling stuck and burned out quite literally. Can’t sleep. Hoping to feel more level headed tomorrow.
Our adopted daughter (19) lives at home, she came into our care at 16, adopted a few months before her 18th birthday. I’ve posted a couple of years ago looking for advice on how to help her to quit vaping, fast forward to 19 and we gave that up long ago and just don’t address it any longer as it was a losing battle and she won’t be ready to quit unless she wants to herself someday. Today she could’ve burned our house down, though.
My husband and I were outside having coffee this morning and she came out to tell us that none of her outlets were working and her surge protector was broken. She had a weird story about how a metal necklace touched an outlet prong and caused a spark; there are burn marks all over the surge protector and a big black burn on her nightstand. My husband took the outlet out to make sure there wasn’t a fire in the wall and thankfully it seems to have stopped at the surge protector.
In the moment, we took the story about the necklace at face value despite it being odd, talked a little about outlet safety, got her a new surge protector and moved on with the day. Fast forward late tonight, I find a usb cord with the wires stripped in the laundry room, likely dropped on the way to the garbage. This is how people Hotwire dead vapes and is almost certainly the actual cause of the burned up surge protector. Several years ago we found a full bag of broken vape parts and stripped usb cords, and learned at the time that teens use stripped usbs to Hotwire vapes. The risks are fire and blowing your own face up. We had very serious conversations about this exact issue in the pat
St so she’s very aware of the fire hazard and chose to do it anyway. Regarding the addictive nature of vapes, I get it, but she also has a part time job and is blowing through her savings account so I assumed she’s been buying vapes and should have no reason to Hotwire them.
We’re going to talk about it with her tomorrow night after we have a chance to cool down, but I’ll be totally honest- we wish we could kick her out of the house. We are pretty easy on her, maybe to a fault, but now I feel like she’s going to burn the house down with us and our pets in it and I’m scared, sad, and angry. Based on old patterns, I feel like we will either have what feels like a healthy/productive conversation, but will that result in the same behaviors, or she’ll commit fully to a lie that will make zero sense. Either way I have no faith that this will be the last time no matter what we say as she is either too addicted, doesn’t actually care, or both, We are planning to find a family therapist to help us work through this but both of us feel angry and fed up. We’re committed but I’d be lying if I said we don’t feel in over our heads as she gets older. Independence feels and probably is years away and parenting someone who is legally an adult is hard. I know in my heart that this is all a complicated mix of normal young adult immaturity and legitimate trauma.