Before I go on with my story I’d like to bring up an important point. Ashley smokes. I know some people don’t appreciate how damaging cigarettes are, especially to teenagers. My mother has smoked heavily all her life, and I have had close family members die from related diseases, and it’s not pretty. I am vehemently against tobacco use- I can’t stand the smell or really anything about it. But we caught Ash smoking a couple of times that summer, and she told us she began when she was fourteen. Despite my best efforts to get her to cut down, if not stop outright, she insisted she couldn’t.

The only thing I hated about Ashley seeing Heidi was the smoking issue. Ash might claim she’d been smoking since 9th grade, but it wasn’t from watching Mike or me. Mike said he was allergic to cigarettes (his mother, Luanne, was also a heavy smoker), and it made a great excuse not to have them around the house. We figured out early on that whatever cigarette use Ashley was indulging in, it definitely was not at home. I guess she could easily bum them off friends at school or in the hospital. We knew she wasn't buying them because we didn't give her much money. And probably not more than a few cigarettes a week, but enough for her to develop the habit, at least in her mind. From my way of thinking, her so-called dependence was new enough that just stopping should've been enough.

We figured out the smoking angle pretty quickly after Ashley ran away in March. I think Mike caught her with a cigarette after he picked her up from New Hope, and she stole some cigarettes out of her grandmother's pack. Ash all but admitted it one of the times she went to Charleston. And once the secret was out in the open, our daughter began to campaign to be allowed to smoke, saying she was addicted and smoking calmed her down. I might add here that at the time she was 15, and in our state it's illegal to smoke underage.

Before Ashley stopped getting therapy from Heidi, we had discussed her smoking during one of the sessions. It was around the time that we were asked to set up a written contract with Ash, because I remember that smoking was part of that contract. See, one thing that Heidi had done which horrified me was siding with Ashley about smoking. Heidi was a smoker, and she herself claimed to understand the release in anxiety she received from smoking. So when our child pressured us about smoking, Heidi told us it was the "lesser evil" among Ashley's vices and said we should let her. I was furious, not only because she was a minor but I didn't want any daughter of mine smoking for health reasons and the message it would send to our younger children.

Mike disagreed with me. He was willing to go along with Heidi’s views, with the understanding that we were going to manage her habit in such a way that she would be working to scale back her cravings and eventually stop. Suddenly without my knowledge, it was a fait accompli. I was taken aback when Mike came to me during the camping trip and said he’d decided that Ashley could smoke a certain amount of cigarettes per day, and he would buy them for her and monitor her smoking. I flew off the handle, and Mike admonished me to calm down and said he knew what he was doing. I was very angry and hurt by his attitude and his over-protectiveness of Ashley, but he didn’t seem to care.

He was focused entirely on her, and since I was outnumbered and couldn't fight both of them, I gave in. At the time I didn’t recognize the danger signals. Our vacation ended the following Sunday, and I was glad to leave. The final three days almost ruined the trip for the younger kids and me- Mike had no time for anyone except Ashley, and he seemed depressed. He acted oblivious to the other children other than being annoyed with them. We argued quit a lot, and Ash lorded it over the other kids what she could do vs. what they couldn’t. There were no other physical outbursts from her, but she seemed like a ticking time bomb. So we came home, and we were all angry.

From the very beginning of the hospitalizations, way back in April, Mike and I had been attempting to find a place in the event that Ashley became so difficult to handle that we had to send her away from home. We were looking for a treatment center for out-of-control teenagers, preferably out of state. The county had the funds to send her to a local center, and there were many within a day’s drive with openings. But I knew the end result would be having to send her out-of-state. California does not allow lock-down facilities. In other words, we could place her someplace within our locale, and the minute we’d driven away, Ash would be allowed to walk out the doors, and nobody could stop her. So what was the point if she was able to run away?

Finding a residential treatment center that suited Ashley’s needs was time-consuming and stretched our patience to the limit. Of course, there was miles of red tape, including the necessity of trying other resources first, what our county department of education termed the “least intrusive”. The fact is, the more you have to do for a child and the further afield you must search, the more it costs. Government agencies are all about saving money. So we cooperated and sent Ashley to our local school district for IQ and psychiatric testing. She met with a psychologist for several sessions of counseling, and for once we were happy to allow her to vent all she wanted. Under state law she qualified for an IEP due both to her behavior disorders and the fact that she was behind in math and reading comprehension. In August, County Mental Health took over, and she began seeing a CMS social worker named Maria.

Ashley, by mid-summer, was no closer to taking responsibility for her outbursts and defiant behavior now as she had when she was in San Ramon in the spring, and even if Mike was unwilling to admit it, I realized we were running out of both time and options. At some point in the future, she would probably have to move into some kind of school or treatment center because I wasn't willing to devote my entire existence to forcing wellness on the girl at the expense of the other children. Ash figured out very quickly what our long-term goals were, and naturally she put it in terms of “trying to get her out of the way” and “locking her up”. She refused to see that we were acting in her best interests; if we couldn’t help her get better at home, then maybe professionals could outside the home. But Ash was very hostile to the testing and counseling sessions, and I was glad Mike was driving her and not me. And at the end of the month, as a first step, she was assigned to a day treatment program called Oakside Institute, and Mike and I signed the paperwork to get her started. It was her last chance to stay home.

The rest of August was fairly stable for Ashley. At least she wasn’t running off or using that we knew of. She began going to our church group’s Bible study, headed up by Marilyn, the woman we’d met at the baptism. Marilyn loved teens and had taken an interest in Ashley, and Mike asked if she would mentor her, since our daughter obviously didn’t want to listen to us. Or I should say, she didn’t want to listen to me.

Something was going on that I decidedly didn’t like but was powerless to do anything about. Mike was beginning to champion Ashley and give in to some of her requests. It started with the cigarette smoking- I complained but Mike said it was not my concern, as if Ashley wasn’t my concern, and she continued to smoke. Then snacks started to appear in our pantry which she said Mike had purchased for her, and nobody else was allowed to eat them without her permission. She refused the food I fixed for meals and chowed down on cereal three times a day, interspersed with cookies, chips, soda and Rocky Road icecream. She always wanted acrylic nails, so Mike paid for her to have them applied (and re-applied and re-applied, since she rarely lasted more than 3 days with all 10 nails attached). The same for going to the movies- there was always a new release she wanted to see, so Mike took her. Talk about jealous? The other kids were livid, and so was I. How was the child who caused the most problems also the most deserving of attention and rewards?