Vicki says her 15-year-old daughter, Josie, has been kicked out of school, steals, drinks, uses drugs, has been caught sneaking boys into her bedroom and is facing battery and runaway charges. “Josie is completely out of control, basically running the house,” she says. “She will do what she wants to do, no matter what we say as parents.”
Josie has stolen Vicki’s car numerous times, but Vicki admits that the consequences, including not letting her daughter leave the house and taking away her phone, don’t phase the teen. “Then she runs away or sneaks out, or sneaks people into her room,” Vicki says. “It’s pretty meaningless.” Desperate for help, Vicki turns to Dr. Phil for help.
In the video above, Dr. Phil tells Vicki, “You spent a lot of her life being her friend instead of her mother. She needs somebody who says, ‘It’s not OK to steal cars.’” He tells Vicki that as the parent, she should be making and enforcing the rules, teaching Josie that there are consequences for her actions — not enabling her. “Parent means that you prepare your child for the realities of life, you prepare your child for the next level of life. She doesn’t even know what grand theft auto means because you haven’t taught her the consequences of a child’s bad choices, so she doesn’t learn the consequences of an adult’s bad choices.”
On his show Wednesday, Dr. Phil speaks with Josie to find out what she says is driving her behavior. Click here to see more from this show.
