Continue Reading Below Advertisement

This actually does have something to do with Stephanie's living situation, so stay with us: When you go through 20 homes in six years, it's basically impossible to discipline you. After all, if you were a teenager and you knew that after a few months you'd probably never see this particular set of substitute parents again, would you strictly observe your bedtime? Of course not, which means that most of Stephanie's free time was spent smoking weed and partying. When you get a bunch of troubled kids partying together, they don't always sing campfire songs and teach each other to break dance.

KatarzynaBialasiewicz / iStock

No campfires, but something was getting lit.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Once Stephanie found herself in a rougher group home, it only got worse, much like how locking a bunch of drug dealers up together for long stretches of time mostly just makes them better at dealing drugs. "There were two incidents in juvenile [detention]," she says. "I got an extra six months for cutting a girl's hair off during arts and crafts. ... I got another 12 months because this girl verbally invited [me and another girl] to fight her, and we took her up on it. It was pretty bad. Charges were pressed. So it was three assault charges. I'm definitely not proud of that."

Thanks to the impossibility of discipline, Stephanie went from a terrified 12-year-old abandoned by her mother, to a 15-year-old with three assault charges on her record. The system works!