<p>emeraldkity4, don’t decieve yourself. It takes one kid - just one kid - whose parents either don’t care about drinking or don’t supervise (they may well be home but they may well simply stay in their room and not look at whats going on) to make all the parent involvement in the world null and void. Further, as stupid as most kids are about talking about drinking/partying around adults, you would be absolutely amazed at how easy it is for any reasonably competent kids to confine the talk of drinking, partying and other such activities to forums free of parental supervision. Aside from 24 hour monitoring or equivalent, there is no way to stop a motivated teen from drinking/partying, especially once they and their friends start driving.</p>
<p>Dont worry I am pretty aware of what happens-
but of course it wasn’t my daughters who called a taxi at a recent overnight of 14 year olds, to take them to a party for seniors, they weren’t missed till 3 in the morning!( but if I had kids overnight- I wouldn’t expect them to call a taxi when I thought they all had their pjs on and were watching a movie either)
when the parents allowed them to go out unsupervised the very next week on Friday night without a solid plan- they explained it by saying- " the girls are going to prove we can trust them"- when I said that they had already proven they couldn’t trust them, only one of them got a du’oh look in her eye</p>
<p>My older daughter( when she was a senior) was at an overnight where the mom fell ill and retreated to her bed and it just took one girl with her cell phone to call up all sorts of boys that they had a heck of a time getting rid of( who brought beer)- I only found out about this after the fact- not because my daughter recognized the situation was sketchy and called me. </p>
<p>I never said that if a teen was determined to have sex/drink whatever that parents could stop them.</p>
<p>However- when alternate activities are available- that can give teens who don’t want to drink or have sex- or pretend like they are- something to do.
At the sake of sounding like a overly controlling parent- I have to say I knew where my oldest was- basically all the time during high school.
If she wasn’t home she was at a school activity- like drama/vocal rehersal-if it was the weekend- she was at her volunteer job working with ponies, and if it was after 9 on a school night , she was in her room doing homework. She did go to dances- but very few of her friends had cars or drove- I usually gave her and her friends a ride-.
Summers she worked at a residential camp- they were allowed time away from the camp- but if they were caught doing anything like drinking, they were sent home- she wouldn’t risk that.
It wasn’t controlling- she was doing activities that she wanted to do- certainly there isn’t anything wrong with that :)</p>
<p>Like I said, if teens WANT to drink they can. If they really don’t, then they won’t. If they are undecided, then their situation and surroundings come into play.</p>
<p>some teens dont want to- so they make those choices ahead of time.
They don’t go to parties where they know there will be a lot of drinking- they don’t want to have sex- so they don’t have long makeout sessions or they don’t choose friends that they know have a lot of issues with substances.
Fr instance after( high school) graduation, one of my daughters friends parents allowed the senior class to stay at their cabin for a few days. This was pretty much open invitation to party unsupervised. She decided not to go, not so much because she was afraid that she would drink to excess, but she didn’t want to be around others who were.
When we had the parent meeting to discuss graduation- the party came up. Some parents had known about it- and were tentatively ok with students drinking in a “safe” place ( no driving- although I don’t know if they all put their keys away or what) other parents weren’t too thrilled, but they didn’t want their kids to miss out on the class experience, my daughter had to begin her volunteer training soon anyway, so it wasn’t really a bfd for her to stay home- she had a billion other things to do- but I had the impression, that there were other kids who were also uncomfortable with it- but were dealing with the fact that both their peers and their parents expected them to want to attend.</p>
<p>We have to be careful what message we send our kids- I see parents moaning and groaning about their kids wanting to do “grown up things”( not just driving but sex/drugs/& rock and roll- would you allow your 14 yr old daughter to attend a 50cent concert?), but at the same time I have the impression that they are excited about it, and encourage it.</p>
<p>lucifer how do you know so much about the teenage mind? It seems to me you are making a lot of generalizations and a lot of what you say doesn’t seem true according to my experience.</p>
<p>Heres a problem I see, some claim its about “trust” that is whooey</p>
<p>Oh, trust me i can drive that Hummer, trust me, I can lift that sofa</p>
<p>Sometimes, we as parents, have to make the decision, and no matter how responsible, and “grown up” a minor is, we make the call</p>
<p>And its not “not trusting you” its knowing that sometimes, we do in fact know better from our experiences</p>
<p>For instance, in our town, there is a place teens go to “hang out” whatever that means, oh yeah partying, well, I told my Ds, no way could they go there, and they said no problem, they weren’t in the least interested, but even if they were, and swore to me and I believed them, that they wouldn’t drink, or have fool around, they would be surrounded by drunken boys, high girls, so though I trust my daughters, this place, as a parent, is off limits. Period. And they have said no to going when asked, but if they had wanted to go, and planned on saying no to whatever was offered, I would still not let them go</p>
<p>There is a time of trust and a time of making a decision as parents</p>
<p>My Ds know I trust them, but they also know I have more information and experience than they do, and no matter how much I trust them, sometimes<I, the adult, get to make the call</p>
<p>Somestimes it amazes me what parents will let their kids do when the word trust is thrown around</p>
<p>My D went to a party and several sweet, responsible frosh had partaken of the alcohol before getting there. And this party was well supervised, just the parents “trusted” their good kids when they said the party was at 7, and when they said they were getting rides or taking the bus, and getting a bit tipsy before hand. And these parents trust their little angels</p>
<p>One mom had to get her D who passed out about 5 minutes after getting to the party… Mom was shocked, that her good little girl, whom she trusted was smashed…well, that good little girl had several hours where mom trusted she was at the party, when in fact she was with nice boys who provided the beer and took her to the party</p>
<p>Another time, my H saw a girl, about 15, passed out on the sidewalk on St Patricks day, her male “friends” were standing nearby and just were gonna leave her there in her little skirt, my H, called the cops and an ambulance and made those nice boys wait until the police came and chewed them out for letting their female friend just lay there on the sidewalk and doing nothing for her</p>
<p>That is what some nice boys do</p>
<p>Its not a matter of trust, its a matter of judgement, checking in, and consequences</p>
<p>You earn trust with time, not with age or “intellectual maturity”</p>
<p>I agree with that- there are some situations taht you just don’t put yourself in- no matter how mature and responsible you are.
Like Jennifer Grey told her husband " Dont ever leave me alone in a room with Eddie Vedder".
Sometimes you just don’t want to have to deal with the temptation.</p>
<p>Wraider, I just graduated from high school all of ~6 months ago, so personal experience. I don’t see any generalizations I’ve made that aren’t typically true - most seniors don’t make freshman friends (save for seniors and freshman on the same sports team or equivalent), and most seniors who ask freshman to prom either can’t get better dates or just want to hook up. Are there exceptions to these ideas? Certainly. Are they rare? In my opinion, yes.</p>
<p>Yes IF they double date with her brother! Otherwise, no.</p>
<p>i am a senior male. and i would like to put forth my two cents on behalf of all senior males who’s getting torn to shreds here.</p>
<p>if you want a SURE bet that your daughter will be ok, well, you can make sure she goes to the dance when she should and here’s the important part: MAKE SURE SHE GETS BACK AFTER THE FORMAL. i’m not gonna lie, seniors party, especially after a formal, that’s an occasion for an after-party. besides chancing it that your daughter will be responsible, she’s better off at home</p>
<p>of course, this is based on an assumption that senior guys party a lot. an assumption that holds true for most senior guys, but who knows, maybe the senior that’s asking your daughter out is a good guy. maybe he’s responsible. look into that, that’s the big thing. if he’s a jock, watch out. again, this is kind of fallacious too, since there are jocks out there who are responsible. </p>
<p>whatever you feel.</p>
<p>Let me start off by saying that I love my parents to death after reading this forum.
I am 18 years old and a senior at a small private school in Washington DC.
When I was a freshman, 2 weeks shy of 15, I started dating an 18 year old senior boy. My parents trusted me and pretty soon trusted him. They had many rules about what I could do but they had nothing to do with our age difference. They knew that I was up to his maturity level (I had already had one longish relationship for that age) and I could make my own smart decisions. I wasn’t allowed in his car at first but not because of sex or anything like that, but rather they were scared that he was a young driver. We went to prom together. I was 15 and he was 18.</p>
<p>Whatever my parents did, they did it right.
Over three years later, at 18 and 21, we are still happy as clams=-)</p>
<p>Last year, sophomore D (15) began dating senior boy (18). Both are wonderful, responsible kids and very devoted to each other. But he now attends college - - 35 min from D’s boarding school - - and she has begun asking to visit him on weekends.</p>
<p>My point: the soph-dating-senior scenarion isn’t a real problem while both are in high school, but once the senior boy is in college, it’s a diff ballgame.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4 , I couldn’t agree w/ you more, “trust” is not synonymous with “infallibility.” I may trust both D and her BF but I also understand that situations can get out of hand, so as a parent I make certain that she’s not in certain situations. </p>
<p>Uber Laura, how did your parent’s handle things once your BF was in college? Were you permitted to stay overnight at his dorm?</p>
<p>This thread quickly came to mind about a week ago when my freshman daughter told me a senior boy had asked her out but she turned him down. Ironically, she said he’s a nice guy but that he was too immature. A little bit of goofy can be charming but there’s a point at which it’s too much. It did open up the discussion at least. I told her it would be okay, on a case by case basis. She’s very picky so that helps in this situation.</p>
<p>Yes, forget the idea of whether or not freshmen girls should date older boys. But LOTS of these girls as sophomores and juniors (as in people I know first hand) are also allowed to go on road trips to the boyfriend’s college dorm. I keep wondering what these parents are on. Are we so afraid of our kids that we don’t know how to set limits anymore? It seems that some people feel this is the only way to maintain a positive relationship with their child (maybe better than the one they had with <em>their</em> strict parents?). Whatever happened to being the parent first? Doesn’t mean we can’t also be our kid’s friend.</p>
<p>I know a family where the older sister took her freshman sister to senior parties. Why I have NO IDEA. Anyway, now the Frosh is dating the Senior guy that her sister was friends with and liked. The older sister is not happy, the Frosh is hiding it from her parents as she is not supposed to date, and this Frosh girl goes to Senior parties without her sister. And does what the Seniors do.</p>
<p>Needless to say, she has a rep, and the older boy goes to Senior parties but doesn’t take her cause he gets razzed.</p>
<p>If the Frosh girls parents ever found out she was dating a senior, they would be furious, but they don’t seem to care, if they know, that she goes to Senior parties…</p>
<p>How do I know this? Well, kids are talking.</p>
<p>This Frosh girl is headed for trouble. But if her parents let her go to senior parties, that is their thing.</p>
<p><i>Uber Laura, how did your parent’s handle things once your BF was in college? Were you permitted to stay overnight at his dorm?</i></p>
<p>I live in Washington DC and Justin, the once senior at my high school when i was a freshman, started college at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland when I was a sophomore. I was obviously devastated that he was going to be so far away. Everyone kept telling us that we couldn’t do it. It’s funny, but I think my parents were the only ones who thought we could and supported us. I am surprised to hear so many parents on here so different from mine, but different areas and more importantly, different kids.</p>
<p>Back to the point, the first time I went to go visit him, was fall of my sophomore year, I was 15. My dad went with me to Cleveland and played golf with his buddies. My dad and I stayed in a hotel room and Justin stayed at his dorm. I was fine with this arrangement as I just wanted to see him desperately. The second time I went to visit him was that winter, I was 16, my mom went with me. Again, we rented a hotel room. This time though, we rented a suite so Justin could stay with us. My mom and I slept in the room and Justin slept on the pull out bed.</p>
<p>That summer my parents got way more lax about things. We went camping together, just the two of us… we slept in the same tent, haha. My mom was way more worried about lightning striking our tent than us being in the same one. I guess at that point, we had been going out for a year and a half and she knew whatever we were doing, she couldn’t stop it? I dunno if that was what she thought but that sounds about right.</p>
<p>That is how she handled it when I was a sophomore but as you can see as I got older the rules got looser. I won’t go on with how she has continued to deal with it unless someone asks becuase this is long=-)</p>
<p>Put me in the “no” column. My older daughter is very mature and she started getting asked out by seniors as a freshman. I decided I would not let her date (other than groups) until age 16. She was forbidden to be driven by a boy or to go to his house. Somehow, the boys would wind up at the same movie with her and her friends, etc. Well, at least I tried…</p>
<p>wowowow… he’s not DATING her… he’s taking her to a dance… I say you let her go if you meet him first. I’m a senior male and you guys are rippin us apart here. Most likely he just needed a fill-in date.</p>
<p>Uber Laura, like your M, I have been supportive of D’s relationship w/ senior (now college frosh) bf. During the summer, D and bf visited each other every second or third weekend (a time consuming and expensive endeavor - - trip is 4 hrs by train or car). She spent 4th of July w/ his family; he spent a week in the country w/ us. </p>
<p>And certainly, as she gets older and they have been together longer, I give them more freedom. But, as much as I trust them both (he is attentive, protective and kind), the reality is that once in college, bf is a member of a decidedly more mature community. At the very least, D will exposed to that community’s standards and conduct earlier than she otherwise would be. She may even attempt to adopt those standards and engage in similar conduct earlier than I feel is appropriate and that is a cause for concern. </p>
<p>Thus far, however, I have observed nothing isufficiently troubling that I feel compelled to discourage the relationship - -beyond saying “no” to this weekend’s porposed visit to his dorm. But college boys have gfs who sleep over and, now that he’s in college, he too may want that, and at that may be the point of impasse.</p>
<p>NYC-</p>
<p>And though I understand that he might want that, I think it is his job to also understand that his girlfriend is a lot younger than he is. If he can’t understand this, then I do think he is being unfair to your D. While I cannot imagine banning dating or banning my future S or D from dating someone because of the frosh/senior thing, I do think your daughter and her boyfriend have to understand that things are different when you are a freshman in HS (or in her case boarding school) versus at college.</p>
<p>In response to your PM, I will tell you how my parents changed their rules as I got older…</p>
<p>As I said, over the summer between my sophomore and junior years is when it did start changing. I had surgery on my jaw and was in the hospital and then bedridden and required to eat liquid foods for a month. Justin was fabulous. My parents got tired of waiting hand and foot and Justin was there. I couldn’t get up myself for awhile so we stayed on my basement pull out couch together so he could help me during the night when my parents were asleep. He had to help me shower so the water wouldn’t get on my face and sometimes I would get so dizzy and just fall. After this experience, I guess my parents realized that we were in a “mature” relationship (whatever that means! hah!) and decided that I could go visit Justin alone. When we discussed it, they seemed SOOOO much more worried about the fact that college=drinking than about Justin and I being in the same bed. Which I guess makes sense since we had already slept in the same bed that summer. Justin had an apartment in Cleveland so I stayed with him there twice in the fall. We then unfortunately broke up as a couple and stayed best friends because both of us agreed that he needed to experience true college life without long distance preventing that.</p>
<p>He then transferred to University of Maryland because the real reason he wasn’t liking college was not because of me but rather that he hated his college and Cleveland! We got back together this past June (I was 17). My parents let him stay here but he has to stay in the guest bedroom even though I am 18 and a senior. They said not under their own roof. Haha. I completely understand that. I was not allowed to stay at his apartment either but more because, again, my parents are worried about drinking!</p>
<p>Now he is in Toulouse, France doing a semester abroad studying Aerospace Engineering. I don’t know if all of the rules have ended, but this June we are going travelling around Europe together. I do not know what the rules will be over the summer when we are both home. In the fall I will be attending Tufts University in Boston and at that point it won’t be their domain anymore.</p>
<p>Again, sorry for the wordiness, I hope I have proved to people that it can work! People are always surprised because of the age difference, the long distance, and the whole bit but hey, sometimes things are meant to be!</p>
<p>Good luck with your D!</p>