So I have a bunch of home automation projects I’ve been tinkering with weather related. One of which is an air quality sensor that determines when the air quality is bad with the intention of displaying some visual notifications around the house. I’ve been working on the coding for it and currently have it sitting on my desk in my home office. My most recent addition to it was having it graphing the data out to a webpage on my home network so I could see the change over time. The day I finished it and started testing was the day before Thanksgiving, my niece, 14 years old, decided she wanted to spend the night to hang out with her cousin, my son, since her mom and dad were coming over for Thanksgiving the next day anyways.
My home office is also our guest room, so the bed she sleeps in is in there. She went to bed about 10, I went downstairs to play some video games and have a couple of beers. I finally went to bed about 1 am, when I walked passed her room, I could hear her talking on the phone.
Next morning comes and after everyone is up and moving I decided to check on my air quality sensor and see how the data looked on the graph. As soon as I pulled up, something was really suspicious. It was basically a flat line with values between 1 and 5 most of the time, but at 1:05 am and 1:15 am it spiked twice to ~150. I took me a few seconds to put 1 and 1 together… “the only time I’ve ever seen it get that high was when food was cooking and there was smoke coming off the stove”… ohhhhhhhhhh.
I called her into the room and showed her the paper and told her, “The only reason these numbers would show like this is there was some kind of smoke in the room”. She said, “I don’t smoke”. I said, “Or something like a vape pen.” Her face went white, “Are you going to tell my mom?” “No, but you need to give me the vape pen”. So now I have a vape pen.
Stop being her friend and be an adult. Give the vape pen to her mom and explain the circumstances and let mom decide what, if anything, to do. At 14 she has no business vaping and you might just save her long term lung damage.
There’s no reason to believe involving a parent is meaningful. Not every family situation is the same.
There’s every reason to believe that. Perhaps not true in tiny minority of cases, but in western culture, in general, this is considered responsible parenting/adulting.
OP is free to make the decision they think is right. I am free to suggest an alternative course. You are free to point out the corner case that may apply.
If I were my kid, and some other adult knew my kid was vaping, I’d be PTFO at that adult first and foremost for withholding that information from me.
Your kid is not my responsibility. And if you think the angry dad is going to get you anything more than laughed out of the room then that says more about your parenting abilities than anything else.
Every family is different. Get out of here. You’d also have a way bigger influence on them if you remain the cool trustworthy aunt/uncle. You can teach them lessons they will actually listen to if they trust you. Not so much if you’re a nark.
I’m so glad you posted this. That’s exactly what my wife and I came to. We know she’s got some more bad decisions coming up in the future, were hopeful she knows we are here for her if she needs it.
You want to Make sure she knows she could call you if she’s ever in a jam. Like sick at a party or her ride home is drunk etc. You made the right move IMO it’s important she knows she could trust you.
Not advocating being a “narc”.
I’m advocating not telling the kid you will keep it a secret from the parents (one of which is your sibling) in the first place. I’m advocating being chill about it. Take the vape away but don’t get hysterical about it. Give the vape and the info to the people who are responsible to make the decisions for their minor child. State only once your position. (e.g. no vaping or breaking the law on my watch and consequences are x). What if she was your neighbor’s child? Would you take the same approach? Is it right to not take the same approach? All questions you must answer for yourself to match your morals and ethical code.
Lots of hard decisions here and we don’t have the benefit of knowing why they were made.
- Underage kid decides to illegally use a vape pen. Use under age 21 in most states is a crime. Use under 18 is the lowest state limit. 14 is well below both. A crime has been committed. Sure, it’s a “small” one and “victimless” (not really - kid is victim, real criminal (provider of said vape to child) goes unpunished)
https://www.vapingcricket.com/legal-age-to-vape/
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Said kid decides to do it in your home possibly subjecting you to aiding/abetting or contributing to delinquency of minor charges if it ever gets to law enforcement.
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You choose to withhold this information from law enforcement. I might as well but means vape provider goes unpunished. (Compounds your risk if this goes sideways later. Still, handle it in the family if you can. It’s a “victimless” crime.)
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You choose to withhold this information from the parents of the child. You are deciding your judgement is superior to theirs. Perhaps you have your reasons, but you are cutting them out and this may go poorly for all if it comes out later. (“But mom/dad! Uncle OP just let me off with losing the vape last time! I hate you!” Ooooops)
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You have chosen to seize the illicit property from the child and dispose of it yourself. So kid learns that you will allow them to get away with things relatively unscathed and tell no one.
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Effectively no punishment/repercussions so hopefully kid needs little guidance to get back “on the right path”. Again, deciding your judgement is superior to her parents.
I would handle this differently, but I’m not there so just trying to share my opinion and maybe sway others to a better decision in future as OP’s has already been made and would be very unpleasant to undo now.
Sure they may have committed a crime, but they won’t be a criminal until you start treating them like one.
How about just talking to them? I noticed that “having a real conversation with them” wasn’t one of your options.
- Take the pen away and let them know that you’re not going to tell anybody else about it. “We don’t need to make this a big deal, but honestly, it COULD be a big deal. Lots of drugs have benefits, but they also have their downsides. Let’s talk about drugs in a real adult way…”
By being “on their side” they will respect you, and will actually listen to the things you have to say.
If you immediately tell their parents then they won’t trust you to tell you anything. They’ll trust their dumbass vaping friends, and will keep doing whatever their friends are doing.
My cool uncle and I went for a drive when I was 16. He told me all about his drug experiences, including “don’t do too much Molly. It will rot your brain.” He was completely honest and my respect level for him went up 1000x
I’ve said No to drugs SO MANY TIMES in my life, and always think about his advice, every single time. Even now, 20 years later.
Not everyone has a great home life, and there are absolutely situations where the right answer, even for stuff that’s quite serious, is to not say a word to the parents.
And that’s ignoring the point everyone else is making regarding having someone that the kid trusts, so that when they screw up badly, they have someone that they are willing to call or tell about it, instead of trying to hide it from everyone, letting stuff get much, much worse.
A whole lot of this can be summed up like this: Sometimes, there are no good answers, and you only have the choice of different kinds and degrees of bad ones.
In this case, I think OP made exactly the right call.
Can she get another vape pen? I mean, let’s be honest, she probably already has.
But now she knows that if she gets into a much worse situation, she has an adult who is both willing to call her on stuff, and who isn’t going to do something to make it worse.
She’s 14, that’s both old and young enough to do stuff with people that she’s not supposed to, in places that she’s not supposed to be, and for it to turn into something bad in a hurry.
you’ll make for an awful parent that pushes their kid away in times of trouble just speaking from experience
If you knew my adult child you’d know I did just fine. Not perfect, but more than sufficient.
Sometimes in life there’s a bigger picture than just the black and white aspect of situations like this. You as an adult have to try to see that bigger picture and make compromises when necessary but also be able to put your foot down for shit when absolutely necessary.
In this situation it’s a small thing now and maybe later it buys goodwill when things get crazy. She’s 14, she’s going to be experimenting with dumb shit going forward. And her knowing that you’re trustworthy and she might come to them asking advice she wouldn’t ask her parents. Wouldn’t you rather he ask her uncle/aunt shit instead of her friends?
So now I have a vape pen.
THC, or something more benign?
give the pen to her parents, and tell them, she got no business vaping.
I thought this was going the “she farted” direction, cause I’ve heard of those modifying air quality sensor values.
Farthing is not lady like. So she can’t use that as an excuse. Dudes are like whatever. I farted that’s why the air quality spiked.
Damn, i was curious about this while reading. Will organize a family event about who got the most toxic fart.
Finally, we can have contests based on quality and not limit ourselves to just volume and duration!
Stop being the cool uncle. Nicotine isn’t something to fuck around with at a young age.
Give her the option: “you tell your Mom, or I do.”