<p>At book group last night I was blown away when several other parents admitted to what their children were doing . About 4 of their 14 yr old daughters were taking the bus downtown to go to a movie and then taking the bus back- sounds pretty innocuous right?
However, they also disclosed that last week, 3 of the girls were at an overnight, when they called a cab after the mother had gone to bed, and went to a senior party. They weren’t discovered till the mother woke to find them gone, early in the morning, when she called their cell phones and tracked them down. They all were picked up by their parents and taken back home- and when I asked then why were they going out to a movie unsupervised a week later, the parents replied that they were going to let the girls prove to them that they could “trust” them.</p>
<p>I realize that I haven’t had to deal with this so far, my oldest didn’t drink until her senior year- and then she found that she didn’t like it or like to be around people that did,( I believe that has changed by her senior year in college ) and my youngest at 15 doesn’t “party” with substances, unless you consider at a friends 16th birthday gathering that she is fitting in today around soccer game and homework, where they will be drinking English tea which is liable to be heavy on the caffiene ( they are having a “tea” party with fancy dresses and china- kinda cute but something I would have never have thought of)</p>
<p>But doesn’t allowing them to go out on a Friday night only a week after they snuck out to crash a party seem a little blase?
Calling for a cab seems pretty premeditated.
I realize that things happen-and I am not trying to suggest that my parenting or my kids are “better” simply because I didn’t have to deal with them attending a drinking party at 14, but I also didn’t imagine that I would be considered conservative because I would insist on a restriction severe enough so that they would realize that I took this rule breaking seriously.
I am trying to anticipate things that might “happen” and discuss them so that expectations are more transparent- but using the excuse that " you didnt tell us we couldn’t do it" might have worked when they were 4, but by 14 I would hope they had a little more restraint.</p>
<p>Wow! It is pretty amazing they weern’t grounded for quite a while. I know if either of my kids pulled anything like disappearing on a parent when they’re at a sleepover, they’d not be allowed to go out & about with their frineds unsupervised for a LONG time.
As it is, neither of my kids have energy to do much & are usually grateful that we’ll pick them up from school when they need to go home. They are just 1.5 months shy of 16 & 18 years of age & neither has much interest in drugs. Both say they have had far too many prescription meds they’ve had in their lives for medical conditions to want recreational drugs.
Our kids are generally either with us or in school supervised activities most of the time. Parties they attend are well & closely supervised by adults. I don’t mind being their driver & they appreciate knowingthey can always call mom or dad & we’ll be there & offer to drive their friends as well.</p>
<p>My D said that quite a few students she knew in high school were able to vanish from their houses without their parents knowing and go to parties, etc. I find this lack of situational awareness on the part of the parents to be incomprehensible. Admittedly, I’m something of a nighthawk and go to be about the same time my daughter did. But.</p>
<p>I used to sneak out of my house all the time- my bedroom was in the basement and my parents were in the habit of not checking to see if we were actually in our rooms.
The Friday night tradition in my neighborhood was go to the football game- find a party- hit the party- find someone who had gone to the football game and knew the approx score to tell the parents when we came back home- pretend I was going to bed- sneak back out again.
So I perhaps am more aware than some of how duplicitous kids can be. My parents pretty much wanted to believe so they did.
My oldest mostly socialized with groups outside school- the other zoo volunteers was who she spent most of time with, and they usually worked on weekends starting at 8am so the inclination to party Friday night wasn’t as strong as for someone who was looking for a way to spend time.
My youngest also now works at the zoo, but she doesn’t have to be there till noon, but she also plays sports so that takes up more time, and at least for kids on sports teams, the coach usually has a rule that if they are caught at a drinking party or even if there is proof that they were there- there are repercussions.
Probably depends on the coach however, when I was in school, the cheerleaders and football/basketball teams were usually the attractions at some of the parties if not the hosts.</p>
<p>My mom used to always tell us" don’t point the finger at anyone’s kid, it will come back and bite you" What does amaze me though is how many parents truly believe their children are angels and have no idea some of the things that their darlings are doing.Often in our school district they are the ones talking about what their friends kids are doing. We believe what we want a lot of times and for the most part these kids are great kids,with good values and big hearts, but angels…? Actually if you really look the teenage brain scientifically it is surprising they do as well as they do.</p>
<p>Maybe that’s a “blessing” & curse also of having kids who are so exhausted (due to medical issues) they have literally no energy to drag themselves from our house. Oh well–we all deal the best we can. I’m a very light sleeper anyway.</p>
<p>EK…we all have our own way of dealing with our kids. As a parent, I’m a talker, not a punisher. Whether my daughter gets permission to do something new might be based somewhat on past conduct, but I have never “grounded” my kids or imposed a “punishment” beyond the fact that they have always been expected to clean up their own messes and pay to repair or replace whatever it is they managed to break. It’s not that I’m a permissive parent- it’s just a different style. My d. is a people-pleaser who gets very upset if I yell at her or seem seriously angry – so I long ago toned down my style with her, knowing that it doesn’t take much for me to get the message across. </p>
<p>So all I’m saying is: don’t judge, and don’t assume that parents who are letting their kids out this weekend haven’t dealt with whatever happened last week in their own way. Maybe they haven’t… but you don’t know. What I have noticed among my daughter’s peers is that the ones with the most punitive or controlling parents are also the ones who seem to be running the wildest – that is, if a story comes back to me about a kid with a drug or drinking problem, it always seems to be the kids with the parents who ground them over the slightest thing. That’s only anecdotal, of course - and I honestly can’t say which came first: the rebellious behavior or the parents clamping down – but my point, again, is that many of us non-punishers do talk to our kids, and do have a very good idea of exactly what our kids are doing or are likely to do.</p>
<p>Your own childhood memories illustrate the point: there will always be kids who sneak out behind their parents’ back.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize I was being so judgemental-
I was actually very taken aback by both the kids sneaking out and the parents deciding to allow them to be on their own the next week.
Generally these parents know where their kids are every second, in fact when one friend came with her daughter and myself and my youngest, to visit the older D at college last spring- she had been given instructions by her H, to never let her D out of her sight the entire time.( even when she was with my daughter) Portland isn’t exactly Bagdad.
I guess that is what the biggest surprise for me was, that one year, they had very close rein, and the next year, going to a senior party and dating an older boy from another school wasn’t a big deal.
I know that for my older daughter and now for my youngest- it is an enormous relief for their friends parents to have similar rules and expectations. I know that always wont be the case, but right now, for her friends that she does things with after school and on weekends it is.
I feel like I have been called “punitive” “controlling” and that I am “pointing the finger”.
I don’t really get that but whatever- I posted this because one- I hadn’t had to deal with a similar instance and I wondered what other parents would do in a similar case.
I realize it is probably easier not to discipline kids, because if you do restrict them to certain activities/ or the home, then you pretty much have to supervise them. Many people are too busy for that I realize.
Kids can be very whiny and worse, if they aren’t allowed to do something because they have lost privliges.
But being a parent is never easy, they push buttons and hit at walls just like they did when they were 3 and 11, but we need to show them that those boundaries are still there.
They have moved a great deal since they were 12, and under certain circumstances they might be temporarily lifted, but since when has it been acceptable for teenagers to disrespect an adult so much that when she has agreed to be responsible for them at a sleepover, that they can sneak out, go halfway across town in the middle of the night, and don’t come back till they are caught the next morning.</p>
<p>I use my own experience as a warning to myself. My parents were too doped up( with prescription drugs) to care much what I and my brother were doing. It didn’t matter to them what I and my brother was doing, so why should it matter to me? I made progressively larger and larger mistakes in the hopes that someone would notice and call me on it. It is easier not to have to intervene- for someone might call you a strict parent. Heavens!</p>
<p>Personally, if my kid had done something like that, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere for a VERY long time. We were actually very lenient with our boys when they were teenagers; however, the reason was that they proved themselves trustworthy. They told us where they would be and called if they would be late. My son even told me if there had been alcohol at parties he attended–but he did not drink himself. When he left for college, he told me he would let me know the first time he got drunk. Much to my surprise, he DID. (and said he didn’t plan to do it again, as it really wasn’t much fun)</p>
<p>I actually did NOT wait up for my younger son. (My older never had that much of a social life in high school.) I did look out the window if I got up in the night to see if the porch light was off, but that was about it.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, the boys both knew that the situation would change drastically if they ever proved themselves untrustworthy.</p>
<p>I am a morning person and find it very difficult to stay up past 10… But I get up in the night and wander, as my kids know. The rule is (and continues to be) that they wake me up when they come in, and their ‘curfew’ is negotiable in all cases. (Want to stay out until 4? Explain why…)</p>
<p>As for the dog, she only barks at people she doesn’t know. The night our son brought friends home at 2 AM (to watch movies the rest of the night), she cornered them in the hallway until I came down to tell her it was okay. </p>
<p>My kids could easily be going back out after I go back to sleep—except for that problem where I wake up at 4 AM and check on them! (I’ve woken up in the night to make sure they were breathing since they were babies. Good thing; the night we got back from Africa (Tanzania), I found my son trying to crawl up the stairs, with a fever of 105 and “the worst headache I’ve ever had.” No, it wasn’t meningitis, we never did figure out what it was, but he was on Cipro from five days and doesn’t remember three days of it! On the fourth day, I checked on him at 4 AM to discover he wanted chicken noodle soup.)</p>
<p>EK4, I’m with you on the “I know what kids can do, because I did it” front–my parents were completely oblivious! I, too, would be making sure those kids EARNED my trust back before I gave them a second chance.</p>
<p>EK, I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to come across as being judgmental of YOU – I am simply trying to express the other side of it. My point is that families have a different ways of dealing with issues. In my house things get discussed, there is an agreement or resolution, we move on. </p>
<p>I don’t try to judge families that are more strict, because I realize that I might just be lucky to have 2 kids who tend to behave very rationally - that is, I know that if my kid says “it won’t happen again”… then it won’t. Maybe other families have a different experience. But the point is: just because you don’t see a kid being grounded or restricted, doesn’t mean that the parents haven’t dealt with and hashed out the issue.</p>
<p>Wow, those parents are blind. And I have no problem judging those parents that let their kids out after what those little twits did. They were freshamn hanging out with adults, only disaster can happen.</p>
<p>I know parents that DO talk to their kids, but there are also consequences…if the girls realize that nothing will happen, that they can talk themselves out of punishment, what is the point of talking: well, you shouldnt have snuck out, partied with seniors, naughty girls, oh yeah, go out again unsupervised, cause we “trust you” hogwash</p>
<p>Why not judge, those parents are idiots…those girls will do it again cause they got away with it…</p>
<p>I went to a parent meeting at D school. one kid talked about his parents, sure, they discussed his misbehavior calming and rationally, he was still grounded…</p>
<p>Why wasn’t one of those cool or modern parents dropping those girls at the movies and picking them up, were they too busy amusing themselves and having fun? It appears the parents were just to lazy or wanting to be to cool to bother taking care of their girls who know how to get invited to senior parties, know they can get away with it, know how to get to the parties, etc. Those parents are enablers and none of them will step up and disagree with the other parents of the girls lied.</p>
<p>I would have gone after the cab company picking up minor children at night…pretty poor judgment on their part</p>
<p>I once found a keg left in park. I called the Alcohol Board, I called the store that sold the keg. I called the police who tracked down the purchasers of the keg, who had trashed the park. </p>
<p>As for it not happening again, well, we can only pray…it for sure won;t happen again with 14 year old girls if those parents would take the time to drop them at the movies and pick them up…,is that too much bother for them></p>
<p>I know I was given a great deal of freedom, all my life. My sibblings also had considerable freedom, but we all earned it by showing we were trustworthy & would be where we said, when we said. Our parents always knew where we were & with whom. </p>
<p>I too know kids whose parents had been very strict & sheltering, some of whom had trouble adjusting to the increased freedom of a college setting. For me, college was the same accountability & freedom I had always had–actually a bit less responsibility, since I no longer had to tutor sibblings.</p>
<p>I don’t think EK is being particularly judgmental, in expressing surprise at how differently children are being treated by their families. It is tough when we think we share common values with others around us & find that the values are actually vastly different.</p>
<p>I was a real goody-goody kid generally. But when I was 12 I spent the night with a very “fast” girlfriend whose mother worked nights, leaving the very hard-of-hearing grandmother in charge. We snuck out and met up with her 16 yo boyfriend and his buddy who took us out driving in a stolen car. I did not tell my mother about it until I was 40 years old and had a child of my own, but I think she still would have liked to ground me if she could.</p>
<p>I have never “grounded” my kids - it just isn’t a punishment that I believe would have worked for our family. So, add me to the list of parents who probably would have allowed my kids out the next weekend to take a bus to the movies. They definitely would have been under a much closer watch. I remember my daughter getting in trouble with a group of friends at age 15 - some of the girls were grounded for a month. Others like my daughter were allowed out the next weekend, under a very close eye, with lots of discussions about making good choices before hand. I’m not saying this approach would work for every family, but she just turned 19 and we never had a similar problem again.</p>
) and my youngest at 15 doesn’t “party” with substances, unless you consider at a friends 16th birthday gathering that she is fitting in today around soccer game and homework, where they will be drinking English tea which is liable to be heavy on the caffiene ( they are having a “tea” party with fancy dresses and china- kinda cute but something I would have never have thought of)</p>