<p>It’s been interesting to read all the different opinions of co-ed sleepovers and the tangent topics. My two cents: From what I’ve seen, when kids with very strict parents go to college, they tend to ‘let loose’ when they’re finally free from the parents’ restrictions and pretty much lose all sense of what the parents hoped they instilled in their kids by being strict; whereas kids whose parents were less strict and gave them some freedom are less so.</p>
<p>My two cents: The kids who had parents who were not strict enough, did not make it to college.</p>
<p>I’ve had contact with hundreds of kids over the years, both personally and professionally, and I have never seen any correlation between parental ‘strictness’ and ‘making it to college’. I have, however, seen the scenario that Clueless sets out happen time and time again.</p>
<p>alwaysamom - I concur</p>
<p>While the comments by clueless, alwasyamom and teriwtt make sense to me, I have often wondered about cause and effect. Are parents more strict when they have irresponsible kids or do the kids of strict parents never learn to be responsible?</p>
<p>Well it is contradictary to say that kids with strict parents let loose and go wild in college, and at the same time say that if you prohibit certain activities/behaviors in H.S., the kids are going to do it anyway behind your back,( because the second claim means that they are doing it in H.S. already, and don’t need to let loose in college).</p>
<p>I don’t think that the two are related in any way. I have seen some kids of liberal parents get wasted, and others turn out very conservative. Similarly, kids of strict parents could go either way. It’s whatever their brain processed.</p>
<p>I’d love to know what parenting methods were used on the “Girls Gone Wild” girls I see on Fox news. A cautionary tale!</p>
<p>Agree chocoholic. I don’t think the two are related either. I’ve seen wild kids with permissive parents bomb out in college due to partying. I’ve seen wild parents with very conservative kids. And at the other extreme I’ve seen toe-the-line kids in HS continue that way in college and other kids from strict parents go “wild”.</p>
<p>Also, what is strict–who defines it. It also seems that (at least in my family) that we might be stricter with one child than another at the same age based on individual personalities, friends, past actions, etc.</p>
<p>I think if you’re too strict kids never learn to make their own decisions because they don’t understand there are consequences to those decisions. For example, if you insist that a high school aged child be in bed by 10 every night, they will not have learned what it feels like in the morning when they stay up until 2 am. You can’t go from controlling everything they do to 18 and the next day expecting them to make wise decisions on their own.</p>
<p>If you are not strict enough, they may suffer consequences that are not very good. For example, allowing young teens to drink, use drugs or have sex. </p>
<p>I think in order to raise responsible children, a happy medium is required.</p>
<p>Kids need to be given gradually more responsibility; they can’t be so overcontrolled in high school that they have no idea how to behave responsibly in college.</p>
<p>That said, there is no straight path from A to B. I have seen great kids fall apart in college, and kids who were a mess in HS pull it together. But, it makes sense to err on the side of teaching responsibility and consequences, when kids are still at home.</p>
<p>I had to laugh at Bay’s comments. I was one who was “less strict”. My children are so well-behaved that when S was in elementary school I told him that it was okay to get into trouble once in a while. He didn’t agree and never did. Not once. He won his school scholarship for being a “renaissance man.” It was worth $1,000. He didn’t even apply for this.</p>
<p>D always won the leadership award for teaching others responsibility.</p>
<p>I am not saying my parenting style created their personalties; perhaps their personalities did allow me to relax and trust them since they were obviously so trustworthy; I don’t know.</p>
<p>However, I am also “less strict” with my classes. Oh boy, sometimes I don’t think this is a good policy because my classes are always oversubscribed which just gives me more papers to grade! My goal is to teach.</p>
<p>Then again, I am not bent out of shape of kids make mistakes. I stressed over and over again the deadly cost of mistakes about sex (AIDS), but so did their health classes. As long as they’re safe, the rest we can work out.
If my kids were going to have sex in high school, I wouldn’t care if it were at a coed sleepover, in a parked car, behind lockers. Actually, I would. Parked car and behind a locker absolutely yucky. However, I KNOW my children had too much taste and sense of decorum to have sex at a coed sleepover. Just as I would.</p>
<p>Since they never, not even once, violated my trust I had absolutely no reason not to trust them.</p>
<p>D once came to me and said, L is giving a Halloween party. Her parents are away, so I know there is going to be drinking and pot smoking. I don’t want to do either. But I want to go for two reasons: I don’t want to be alone Halloween (Sat night that year), and I want to make sure L doesn’t make herself sick.</p>
<p>Well, some of you may think I’m crazy, but I let her go. First, she was completely honest. Second, I believed her. I did call her on her cell every forty-five minutes to make sure everything was okay, both for her sake and her friends’ sakes.</p>
<p>I thought those parents were crazy for leaving teenagers on Halloween (son had a known drug problem), but I did trust my daughter. Result? She was bored to tears, asked us to pick her up at 10 o’clock, and came home completely straight and sober as a judge. Yes, I would definitely know had this not been the case.</p>
<p>Had I had different children, yes I would have had different rules. Kids who needed more structure would have gotten it. Why are my kids are so responsible and conservative in their behavior? I have no idea.</p>
<p>They also needed no policing to do their homework, as I am sure is true of the kids of most of the parents on this board.</p>
<p>mythmom, we have similar children and parenting styles, although I am saying this only from the above post.
Younger D recently came home and told me that her friends were ‘trying’ cigarettes, so I turned around and asked her if she wanted to try too. “No way. Why try something that’s unhealthy. I know I’m going to hate it.” She knows the hazards of smoking and hates second-hand smoke. I, on the other hand, was willing to go out and buy a pack so she could at least try it. She knew that, but refused to let me do it-lol.</p>
<p>Mythmom, I also agree with your parenting style. Like you, I have a D who is completely responsible, trustworthy, etc. But my S is not. He is more impulsive and less responsible. Therefore, I have different rules for each of them. Luckily, my D is the older one - she is allowed a huge amount of freedom - not so much to go wandering around on her own - but as far as going out with her friends, staying out late and yes - even co-ed sleep overs. She has also told me about some of her friends drinking (this is not too common among her friends - more like something that happens on the rare occasion). I told her she can go out with them if she wants, but she is not allowed to get in a car being driven by anyone who has had any alcohol. If she needs a ride home, she can call me, and I will be happy to come get her. </p>
<p>My S is still in middle school, and this issue hasn’t come up yet (he’s only in 6th grade). I am sure I will have to be much more on top of him, as he is more likely to want to be part of the crowd than my D is. While he was in elementary school he was fine, but now I have to check to make sure all of his work is done and that he puts it in the proper place. I never had to worry about that kind of stuff with D. As you stated, different kids need different rules and some need more structure than others - it’s just hard when those kids are in the same family…lol.</p>
<p>Congratulations on raising perfect children, mythmom!</p>
<p>Bay, you really confuse me here on this thread. I went back and saw you candidly represent your style and make several statements that everyone has different approaches to things and that is just fine. I won’t pull out the quotes and put them “in your face” here. </p>
<p>Now you suddenly swipe at Mythmom for describing her household on these same matters. She expresses pride and pleasure in her kids, as we all feel or we wouldn’t feel well enough to post on this particular site. Nobody here has written “I was strict/not strict…and now my D has AIDS, S is under court order to provide child support…and I feel like a total failure.” No, those parents are feeling more heartsick and not like tapping out their story.</p>
<p>Also, Mythmom has a sense of humor, humility and surprise in her outcomes, as she said,
</p>
<p>And she said if they had different personalities, she’d have responded with different rules, because all kids are different so need different responses. No “one size fits all.” </p>
<p>She’s not taking all credit for their responsible choices, in fact she’s a bit mystified, like those liberal parents on the sitcom (forgot the name; was it “Family Ties”?) with Meredith Baxter Birney as the mom and young (!) Michael J. Fox as the neoConservative “Alex.” The parents could hardly believe they got such a straight-arrow kid, given their own propensities.</p>
<p>Anyway, Bay, I don’t know why you bother to say it’s fine to express other viewpoints and then post as you did in #174.</p>
<p>I never set a curfew for my kids, it was on a case by case basis…and never had any issues with regards to that</p>
<p>And my Ds both went to parties were there was drinking, and the like, some pot, and came home and were picked up no worse for wear</p>
<p>THey also saw how stupid girls look when wasted, how difficult it is and worrisome to take care of someone who is wasted, how girls will do stupid stuff when wasted, how you can still have fun when not drinking, and that parties were more fun and have much less drama when people aren’t indulging</p>
<p>My Ds knew that I would pick them up and their friends anywhere any time, no questions asked if need be and only once was there a problem with one of the girls and drinking…she felt so awful- in all sorts of ways, it never happened again</p>
<p>We can’t protect our kids from life as they grow up, they need to know how to handle themselves</p>
<p>I knew my Ds were gonna be just fine when both came home from different parties and told me about the party they were at, and eh, wasn’t worth going because the kids were just being really stupid, and then when invited to parties, turned them down because they were not fun to be at</p>
<p>As far as I’m concerned, mythmom sounds like a wonderful mother. No one has perfect children. We all do the best we can.</p>
<p>Mythmom, we have a very similar philosophy and have been blessed with a similar outcome. As I said before, not sure about cause and effect. Whether it is the genes or the upbringing, I don’t know but will take the credit either way!</p>
<p>On the subject of trust, I think someone mentioned “trust but verify”, which sounds good for foreign policy but within a family I don’t see how you can honestly trust and still feel the need to verify. It is like a husband who says he trusts his wife but still hires a detective to tail her. Creepy, if you ask me.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree. If you trust, why the need to verify? That sounds like the same thing as not trusting!</p>
<p>I am the one who used the phrase “trust but verify”. It was in the context of discussing coed sleep overs and making sure everything was under control with no inappropriate behaviors with a coed group of teenagers. Trust my kids, yup. Verify that nothing inappropriate is going on in a group setting where some kids may not have the same sense of responsibility as mine - you betcha, and if you don’t you are not only irresponsible but asking for some real liability exposure in today’s litigious world.</p>
<p>And by the way, “verify” doesn’t mean you don’t trust your kids. Trust is earned in increments of successful responsible behavior that build on themselves. “Verify” can mean nothing more than providing opportunities to for a kid to “check in” or for you to make sure that nothing unexpected has occurred - like if you go on a vacation with a 16 year old daughter who wants to hang out with a friend at the nightclub on the premises where there is going to be drinking and you permit it because you trust your daughter but you have her check in at agreed upon times so that you can “verify” that everything is ok.</p>