<p>Well, the school year is coming to a close and the seniors are getting restless. I have a neighbor with a senior daughter; we are friendly, but not friends. We chat when we are both outside with the dogs, but otherwise I do not see her socially.</p>
<p>Last night there were many cars in front of her house with teenagers to go along with the cars. This morning there was an empty case of beer in my yard. A few cars remain in front of the house, but most are gone. I am assuming my neighbors are out of town, but I don’t know for sure.</p>
<p>So, do I mention in passing when we are out with the dogs? Do I keep my mouth shut? I am not looking to get the kid in trouble, but I feel like the parents should know. Maybe they were home and do know; hopefully if they were home they didn’t allow the drinking.</p>
<p>I’d speak up. You can be pleasant and stay relatively neutral—an oh, by the way, thing. You couldn’t help but notice the number of cars on the road (and the number of people), and the empty case of beer in your yard is your entrance to say something. The first question is whether the parents knew about the party – and were they home? If the empty beer container really did come from there, there were lots of kids breaking the law, and probably also putting their, and others lives, seriously at risk by driving. We are pretty friendly with our neighbors, and altho I wouldn’t expect it from my daughters, we’ve made it perfectly clear that anything “suspect” that the neighbors see gets reported to us.</p>
<p>As tactfully as possible, by all means let them know. They are legally liable should anything amiss happen because of issues happening in their home or on their property even if they had no knowledge or implied consent. Their daughter is abusing her relationship by placing them in a position of severe financial jeapoardy for a few beers, a toke or two and a bit of nookie.</p>
<p>She may well be a good kid, but she needs her leash shortened fast. Trust me on this one.</p>
<p>You can rat her out without saying “I think your kid and her friends were drinking.” How 'bout “Y’all must have had quite the celebration at your house last night. I found an empty beer case in my yard, but I was just happy to see you asked any guests who may have over-indulged to stay the night.” It doesn’t point the finger at her, but if they weren’t home, they’ll know.</p>
<p>We just had an incident in our town where the kid invited 30 friends to a party. Parents were home but some of the kids text messaged their friends and oodles of kids arrived who had been drinking before they arrived, also brought water bottles filled with vodka, etc. The kid involved was NOT drinking and neither were her friends that were invited. Parents quickly found the situation out of hand and tried like heck to control it by taking the alcohol away or trying to curb entrance. One girl who had been drinking before arriving passed out and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The parents and the girl who had the party were fried in the press - they were charged with providing liquor even though they had not and had tried like heck to hold back the crowds of kids, etc. The girl was told that she would not be inducted into the National Honor society, etc. Things were finally ironed out and the charges dropped against the parents, who likely saved the girl who was later diagnosed with alcohol poisoning, and the girl was ultimately inducted but not without a lot of evil press and personal stress. This week there was an article in our local newspaper about the importance of parents alerting other parents and especially about not leaving your teenage kids home alone over weekends! I am always astonished at the number of parents who “trust” their kids enough to leave them home alone on weekends away. Maybe you can trust your kid - but you cannot trust the other 300 hundred who might show up or the influence of mob mentality, peer pressure. This student and her friends are honors students. Is your kid able to control 50 kids, 100 kids, 300 kids? Today, IMing and text messaging quickly alert everyone to the parties. I say stay home or ensure that someone is staying in the house with your kids. </p>
<p>I think you should tell the parents. The kid involved may not have wanted the kids who were drinking to be there, she may not have been able to control it. I guess the best test for this question is to ask if you would want your neighbor to tell you. Then, if she didn’t but knew, would you be upset that she didn’t tell you.</p>
<p>The couple of times we went out of town with teens at home, we took three steps: told teen no one was to be in the house but him; informed the neighbors we would be away and what the rules were, invited them to serve as bouncers; called the parents of his closest friends, told them the rules, asked them to be on call for any problems. We never had any! We told son that we trusted him, and these steps would be his insurance policy that none of his friends would put him in a bad situation he could not control, and he was fine with that.</p>
<p>Following up on what Rileydog posted, did any of you stop to think that finding an “empty case of beer” - I’m assuming this was a carton with nothing inside - tends to indicate that there was no consumption of alcohol allowed in the house, and not the opposite? If alcohol was allowed in the house, the case would be there, not next door. What I’d take from th events described is: (1) there was a party next door; (2) whoever hosted the party, parents or kids, did not allow alcohol inside; (3) probably some of the attendees brought or consumed alcohol on their own, either before coming or outside because it wasn’t allowed in the party. So what do you do/say about that that is of value to the neighbors?</p>
<p>We’ve had this exact problem at our house, which wasn’t helped by gossipy neighbors who called the police (anonymously) and spread rumors that we were allowing high school kids to drink at our house, and used as “proof” a beer can found in a neighbor’s yard.</p>
<p>Kluge, you’re making a lot of assumptions there. Many parties with kids “expand” from the house out into the yard. The house gets crowded or hot, and people move outside. Or they want to throw a football around or smoke (which may not be allowed in the house if the kid is trying to hide the party). I don’t think finding a carton outside means there wasn’t alcohol inside. </p>
<p>Normally, I’d say that it’s none of your business, but I’m going to betray my fellow teenagers and say that you should bring it up. Practice what you’re going to say so that it doesn’t sound as if you’re blaming the kid. The parents would want to know, and it’s a good neighborly thing to do, in my opinion.</p>
<p>As a parent, if my neighbors found empty alchohol containers in their yard that looked like they came from mine, I would like to know. If you see my child doing somthing illegal, I’d like to know. Maybe it’s something totally innocent, and I could explain it. Maybe it’s something not totally innocent, and I can help put a stop to it. Either way, I’d like to know.</p>
<p>Well, a lot of assumptions are being made. My point is that the assumption that drinking was occurring inside the house isn’t really demonstrated by finding an empty beer carton next door. (And we’ll ignore the possibility that it just blew out of the back of a passing pickup truck.) If the only actual facts you have to go on are that you found an empty beer carton next door the day after a party was held, I don’t think you’ve got a strong basis for concluding that there was underage drinking occurring in the house. It’s entirely reasonable to check with the parents to see if they were home; if they were, I’d drop it. And I would be careful not to assume to much on too little evidence in the future.</p>
We did the above plus a fourth step: In our town, the police like to be alerted if parents will be leaving an older teen alone in the home overnight. We were away for about a week and part of the time a favorite adult cousin (over 30) stayed with DS, but not the whole time. Police cruise by from time to time during the period to see that all is copacetic. DS knows that we trust him but that there is such a thing as temptation as well as things that might get beyond his control. Just the kids knowing that measures are in place is usually quite an effective preventative.</p>
<p>The role of the police dept. might be a benefit of our small town life, but there might be the same arrangement in other areas.</p>
<p>“There was a big party at your house last Saturday while you were away. Kids were hanging around the outside of the house until <time>. I found a bunch of empty beer bottles in my front yard. I thought you would like to know.”</time></p>
<p>WashDad, that just about nails what H and I would want to hear. And when I mentioned this hypothetically to my H at breakfast this morning, he was very clear that he would definitely want to be told if neighbors observed something like this.</p>
<p>To clarify- What I found was an empty box from a case of beer; no cans were inside. This neighbor lives 3 doors down from me at the front of the subdivision. When I can home at 10:00 last night, I only saw 4-5 cars, my college daughter came home at 11:45 an said “Susan” must be having a party as there were several cars. I don’t know if my daughter saw kids or not, but she jokingly said maybe she should go crash the party! </p>
<p>I did not see kids only cars, so for all I know the parents were having a party. Of course, I am pretty sure it was the daughter with the company. </p>
<p>I will most likely mention the number of cars to the mom when I next see her. If mom was in town, then I will go no farther with the conversation.</p>
<p>Would ya’ll leave HS teens home with over 21 sibs?? </p>
<p>It is difficult to be the “rat” and many times the shock of the news causes it not to be well-accepted. Present the info in the way which most assumes the most innocent explanation, let the other parents find out what really happened before jumping to conclusions, then you really are being helpful.</p>
<p>I once shut down a planned party, I had no knowledge that the party was going to be unsupervised and my D was not attending, but I was going to be picking up one of her friends from the party and keeping the friends for some other weekend events. When I mentioned picking up friend from the party, it all came to light as the other mom knew the party girls parents were out of town…luckily for my D no one ever knew who blew the whistle.</p>
<p>I think we parents/neihgbors have to be on the same team, but still be senstive to the potential for both misinterpretation of the circumstances and the shock felt by the person hearing the news.; not every one will be ready to listen.</p>
<p>Well, I didn’t get a chance to speak to the mom, but my husband did. He said something along the line of, “How did the house look?” It seems the parents were just out for the night and the daughter said she was having a “few” friends over. The mom was aware there was drinking as she told my husband that she had to take one of the boys home at 2:00am because he was drunk. The kid said he would get in trouble if the mom took him home, but she told him tough, she wasn’t letting him drive home.</p>
<p>So whether she allowed the alcohol or it was not suppose to be there, she did know kids would be in her home. I don’t know how many kids were there, but it didn’t look like an unmanageable number. I also do not know if the younger siblings were home that evening. I do talk to the younger sibs, might have to pump them for info!!</p>
<p>^^^
“Pump sibs for info” doesn’t make for a good neighborhood dynamic. This is an adult problem. I’d stick with communicating among the adults only. SIbs only go back and tell big sister what a witch of a neighbor you are…</p>
<p>Do you still have the empty box? Maybe when it’s garbage night bring it over and say, “I think this might have come from your daughter’s guests; we found it Saturday morning on our lawn.”</p>
<p>OR, over the doggies with the other Mom, “My H says you took home a kid who needed a ride. I always wondered about that. How did that go?”
Then if she seems like she wants to talk about it, or is troubled, or needs a FRIEND (not an interrogator), you can ask, “If I saw some things unusual around your home that night, WOULD YOU WANT TO KNOW?”
Then if she says yes, you can mention the cars and the box on your lawn.
If she says “No” then she’s happy in her denial so leave her be.</p>
<p>Put another way, if she says “no” she;s one of the no-good parents I’m constantly having to watch out for who hosts parties while hiding in her bedroom, or has a party where kids tell the parents like me it’s a supervised party but really the other parents think supervised means they came home the same night. </p>
<p>RANT: it’s getting harder and harder to stomach the poor decision-making I see all around me. College will be an improvement over dealing with poor parenting. At least the kids know they’re walking into a kid-dominated party at a college, instead of being blindsided into thinking there was “supervision.” Recently we supervised a youth event in our home and the only way I’d agree to it was to tell the youth leaders my H and I would walk through the party every 15 minutes. Take it or leave it. Had a great party. We put out nice food, not just chips, on good tablecloths. Treated them like kings and queens, talked to them as if they were people. They were kind of surprised.
At the end of the night, they cleaned up everything for me, without being asked. Go figure.</p>
<p>Paying3, how refreshing to read your post. I’m so sick of it, too!! It seems like the parents of my son’s classmates (younger than I am…they’re post baby boomers) just want to be pals with their kids and not rock the boat. They love all of the “fun stuff” of parenting, but refuse to do the dirty work. No disciplining, etc. As a result, the kids in his class (13) are already starting to get into trouble. It doesn’t surprise me, but it is frustrating. I don’t even bother calling these parents anymore. I figure they don’t want to know.</p>