Aibu about Teens new year party disaster

Insane to allow a 16 year old to host a party with no adults present, particularly NYE!

Bet there was shagging in your bed and all sorts 😳

I think this is the problem with not having adults on the premises. We have let 16 year old DD have a couple of parties and we have stayed upstairs out of the way.

I can hear if things get out of hand (if there is something like I heard someone say give me the knife! - I texted DD and it was a toy wolverine knife part of someones costume) but me and DH are there to go down and intervene.
DD has a nice group of friends but knowing we are 'there' I think prevents people from inviting others and putting it on facebook etc.

The problem with parties as even if your kid is mature and sensible, you cant control others - apart from chucking them out if they get out of hand which if you are not there you cannot do and peer pressure often means your child wont want to be the bad guy and ask people to leave - thats why as parents we are there to to do that if needed.
DD has only had a couple of parties and we have had no problems so far. The first party she had last year was just girls and they had a couple of drinks they brought with them - mostly 4% cocktail cans etc but one girls brought a bottle of mermaid gin and was sick. I heard them saying someone had been sick so went down and by the time I went down they had put the sofa cushion cover in the washing machine and bleached the bathroom!

I've said YABU - leaving a 16yo boy to have an unsupervised NYE party is madness!
He would have had no control over who came - friends of friends of friends and anyone else who spotted it mentioned on SM. At 16, many would have brought alcohol - especially if they knew there were no adults around. At that age, most youngsters have little idea about their limits with regard to how much they can drink.
Even if he had tried to stop people trashing your house or dyeing the dog, I doubt that he would have had much success. Short of ringing the police, I don't think he could've done much.

I think you were very lucky that the damage wasn't much worse!

Yes - he should've helped with the cleaning. And if he can hep with DIY repairs, that would be good. Grounding him, if that's your thing, but you can't really determine how much he was responsible for.
Paying off £2.5k - ridiculous.

I also don't think it was wrong to let him have a party without an adult present.We did it at that age.

However, there should have been a nearby adult he could call for assistance if things get really out of hand. Parties get invaded by ransoms, teenagers can act badly, a 16 year old isn't going to be able to stand up to them and sling them out. Or they may feel unsafe doing so.

I would make him pay for the damage, yes, but he also needs to tell you what happened and why he didn't feel able to call you/another adult/police when it turned bad. This was more than a 'normal' amount of accidental damage. If he comes clean, I'd let him off some of the costs and make sure someone is around for future parties. If he doesn't, full cost and no more parties.

I don't think he should pay the full amount because you are both partly responsible. Regardless of whether he had previously hosted parties that passed off without serious incident, allowing a child to hold a NYE party completely unsupervised is highly irresponsible.

It's probably fair to expect him to contribute something, say a couple of hundred pounds, but you should pay the rest and accept you made a mistake in trusting him.

As the parent you need to question your decisions, now and in the past. Either he caused/allowed the damage or he wanted to prevent it but wasn't able. In both cases, his decisions and mistakes are the result of his upbringing.

My 18 Yr old had a small party on NYE, I said 10-15 max and I was at a friend's and came back before midnight to assess the situation. It was fine, they were a bit drunk but that was it.
I'd have never let a 16 yr old have an uncontrolled party with zero supervision.
It's done now, but I'd just tell your DS that he needs to invite some friends over to help repair the damage (if its painting or something) and make him contribute but £2.5k is too much. It needs to be a contribution that's all

It’s not an unreasonable response: if you or your guests cause damage somewhere, even if you didn’t intend for that damage to happen, you’re responsible for having it repaired - and that’s an important lesson to learn for life. But you also really need to acknowledge it was a really daft idea on your part. Even had this been a mature 16-year-old inviting a few of his mature 16-year-old friends around for a small gathering, a bunch of 16-year-olds are powerless in the face of potential situations such as e.g. the party being crashed by a load of other uninvited teens who’ve heard on the grapevine that there’s an empty house and a party going on.

I think you should go 50/50 on this with him, you are the adult, it is a completely reasonable expectation and realistic to think that this would go wrong, and it did. You with the knowledge of the fact that having a load of unaccompanied drunk teenagers would possibly result in damage accepted that you were ok with that and gave permission for it to go ahead.

@Hungry123666

was in a similar situation before, my 28 year old son had rubbed chewed up Banana all over my cat and it didn’t come out for almost a month!

I can't work out whether this is sarcasm?

you wot?

Not unreasonable. I don’t agree with those saying 16 is too young. You know your son and as you say all has been ok before. The fact that he will not tell you what has gone on is part of the problem and makes the punishment more deserved.

if things got out of hand or people showed up who shouldn’t have he should have phoned or messaged you so something could have been done to stop the party.

He's a child, you are an adult, and you left him alone to hold a party. I think this is largely on you. I'm not saying he shouldn't contribute at all, or face consequences, but I don't think it's especially reasonable to ask for £2,500 from him for something that was partly your fault. I'm sure he is a responsible kid, but surely it occurred to you that his friends might not be equally responsible and that he clearly wouldn't be able to keep things under control if lots of extra people turned up (which I'm pretty sure is what would have happened)? This is largely on you.

My 17 year old (on the verge of being 18 and incredibly responsible) wanted to have a NYE party while we were away. While we initially considered it, we eventually said no because if something (eg an injury) happened (and alcohol was involved) we would likely not be insured. I don't think it's fair to allow kids to have parties with no adults around because it's too much responsibility for them to have to police everyone around then and everything that happens.

I think getting him to help sort out the consequences is fair enough - however I wouldn't be to hard on him. Once a party gets out of hand, there's very little the "host" teenager can actually do! Getting a bunch of drunken overexcited people your own age to stop doing stupid things in your house is really hard.

I think the main consequence would be: no more massive unsupervised parties on key dates such as NYE (smaller gatherings okay).

Absolutely no way would I leave a 16 year old unsupervised overnight to have a party, doesn't matter how mature they are, the mates will be the ones causing the damage. Tbh I would have made him clean up, I wouldn't have done it.

I assumed you didn’t know about the party. I think leaving him home along and allowing him to have a party at 16 is quite irresponsible. Parties can easily get out of hand especially around New Years.

I would expect him to have helped with the clean up and get a job to contribute to the repairs but I doubt he will be able to the majority.

Did he do any cleaning? I can’t believe that you were left to do that?

Your son should get a job and pay you back but can you really make him at 16 if he said no? You bear some responsibility because you allowed the unsupervised party and it was unrealistic to think that he could watch lots of teens and prevent it happening. I guess that you’re lucky that they didn’t damage the neighbours’ property.

I don't think that your son would have been able to control his friends. There must've been a big group. The issue is you trusted a 16 year old boy with your house and a house party. This had disaster written all over it. I don't think it's fair to punish him for what others probably did. Word probably got out and friends of friends probably pitched up. He obviously felt uncomfortable to turn anyone away for fear of being rejected or bullied.

I think if he'd had the party after you said no then that would warrant a punishment. But you agreed to let him have it.

Sounds like it got out of hand, friends invite friends, invite friends etc etc. Recipe for disaster especially over NYE.

YABU because he is a child and you were VERY naive to leave him to it. You made a bad choice as a parent, and it's not fair on a 16 year old to leave them in charge of a party that clearly got dramatically out of hand.

Punishment re grounding is fine, but it's not reasonable to expect him to get a job to raise £2500 - that's nearly 400 hours of work at the NMW for under 18 - to reimburse you for your bad judgement, which is time he needs to be applying to his GCSE revision, or A-levels if he's in year 12.

At most I would say that he has to shadow and assist the handyman who does the repair work, and sit with you while you pay the invoice for it, to impress upon him that that there is no Mummy Magic Wand that just magically fixes things while he's at school - it takes labour and cash to do these things.

I said YABU - I would have never left my 2 at 16 without some form of supervision, checking in and especially over NYE. The temptation is too much for a 16 year old.

Did you know he was having the party? If so then you are as responsible as he is for the damage, which as a pp said none of which was likely caused by him.

If you didn't know then he is fully respondible

Well, 16 is too young to host a party with zero adult supervision, that’s on you. He might be mature but clearly ‘all his friends’ aren’t.

I would ask him to watch all the relevant YouTube tutorials possible and get handy with DIY to help fix things.

How did they dye the dog? That seems a bit random.