It's the classic "DD15 threw an out of control party while I was on holiday" thread. AIBU to be this upset/angry?

And then the gatecrashers will no doubt keep watch and knick anything left in the box

I would be raging and so upset. I have adult DCs and whilst they pushed me to the limits at times, nothing as bad as this.

OK... so she lied to her Dad. I would go beserk at that.
She has probably lied again saying she doesn't know which Y11 leavers it was. Course she does.
Talk to her about trust and how it is destroyed and she has to earn it back.
You like her friends but surely they weren't all paralytic? Are they covering for her?

The only thing that worked for my DCs (one in particular who took me to the wire but never anything that bad! She is mid 30s now BTW!) was embarrassment to her friends. I made sure they all knew what DD had done. There was one occasion she let me down taking a boy up to her room. I can't go into detail, there's more to it than just that, but I made sure all her friends knew about this incident. She hated that and never did anything like it again.
I was very verbal to anyone that would listen, public embarrassment if you like!

Mostly sending unmumsnetty hugs OP as this sounds awful especially on top of everything else, and you're definitely not unreasonable.

Would also highlight to her the very real dangers of being drunk and unsupervised where there is a pool - the consequences of this party could so easily have been the death of a friend or classmate and that wouldn't be fixable with any amount of cleaning, brick phones or chores.

I hope you're ok and that another client emerges to replace the lost one (also freelance and know how stressful this can be).

We had something similar but the damage was less. However, we had months of random older boys trying to kick the gate in in the coming months and that traumatised my youngest.
Heres what I’d do. From an immediate practical position, I’d have a conversation with ex and explain that you need him to take some financial responsibility for the situation too. It could have been his house that was trashed. I’d look for a sizeable donation.
I’d not lose my temper with DD but I’d sit her down and explain calmly how angry and violated you feel and how upset you are that she chose to put herself and her family home in such a vulnerable position. I ask her to think about how you feel and how the holiday has been ruined.
I’d then tell her to recount in minute detail everything that happened from the conception of the idea to the police coming and taking her to her dad’s.
This will be the most uncomfortable thing for her. She’ll want to rush through it and minimise it but insist she goes back and explain in detail anything she glosses over. Do not react or try to comfort her if she is in floods of tears (which she will be). This is all part of the learning process. She needs to feel this.
I would then ask her to write a list of everything that was damaged or stolen right down to the last glass. I’d ask her to look up the value of replacing or mending or cleaning everything. This will take her a long time and will focus her on the value of the damage.
I’d then ask her to come up with a plan for compensating DS for the loss of his medals and any other siblings for any loss they suffered.
Once you believe you have the truth out of her you can decide what recompense she has to offer. You might want to involve the other kids and her dad too.
But the idea is that she does the working out/ comes up with solutions. The process of taking responsibility is going to be very difficult for her and it will be both the hardest punishment and the biggest lesson. I really feel for you. I hope you DD learns a really important lesson about consequences and taking responsibility for actions. Good luck

OP she needs to stay at her dad’s for a couple of weeks while you get the house sorted and get your head together. You have a lot of things going on right now. The headache of dealing with this right at this second you don’t need.

After 2 weeks she is allowed home, tell her:

• You will not be paying for her phone contract
• She is tasked with finding and paying for replacement medals
• She is billed for cleaning/furniture repairs. This clearly will take her a long time to pay off. She pays every penny.

You don’t have to have a chat or tell her how disappointed you are.You remain strict and adamant she will find new medals and repay what she owes.

Your DD needs to use the same SM channels that advertised the party to try to get your DS’s sports medals back. If they have no monetary worth, hopefully she can appeal to the better nature of whoever took them. Now they are sober, the culprit might be prepared to return them anonymously or for a reward (which your ex can cough up for, seeing as he failed to supervise his 15 daughter properly).

Obviously the hitting was very wrong but your mum was right to punish you in some form. The OP’s DD needs consequences and to realise what she did was very wrong. Obviously, she didn’t intend for the party to get out of hand but if she hadn’t organised the party it wouldn’t have happened, It appears the house was trashed, jewellery stolen, her brother’s medal collection stolen. Hundreds, probably a few thousand pounds of damage done.

The OP should demand her DD gives her a list of who she knows was at the party and then the OP contacts the parents and spell out to them exactly what happened to/in her home.

Something like this shouldn’t be brushed off as a teenagers being teenagers thing.

Could yiu try getting DS medals back through Facebook???

Where were you when this happened?

What have the police said?

I would love to understand why 3% think YABU..Does anyone understand that ? Haven't read the whole thread though..

Mine did this and I contacted all the parents I knew and told them what had happened. Some were shocked, others didn't want to accept that their DCs were part of it. DH and I did consequences and kept together on them.

Your DD also needs to clean the house until it is back to a standard you are happy with. No helping her, it is down to her. She was a total brat having a party while you were away and your `ex husband should bear some responsibility too as she was in his care.

It’s awful your mum hit you and tried to humiliate you. However, there still needs to be a punishment here.

So sorry for you. That is awful and so violating. She needs consequences. If there is no pocket money, does she have any source of income at 15? Can she pay you back £5 a week or £20 a month for a year? I would be taking her phone for a week, making her clean the house once a week at the weekend for the foreseeable, and forbidding seeing friends after 5pm for a month. She would have to earn back the trust.

I think your DD should send a message to her friends and ask them to forward to their friends too and ask that anything taken from the house be left in a box in some designated spot at some specific time/date - maybe outside your front gate. No questions asked, mum would just like the items returned and maybe anyone who was at the party might consider leaving a £5 or £10 in the box to cover cleaning costs.

I’d make her actually clean it, not pay for someone else to do it! Even if it does come from her bank account. It’s too easy otherwise. She should have to hoover every last lentil, and scrape raw egg off a window. That should be a minimum.

I would be absolutely raging.

1. House key taken away.
2. Smart phone sold and replaced with a PAYG brick - texts and calls only.
3. DD to clean the entire house and make good as much of the damage as she can.
4. You and DD together to research the cost of repairing the damage she can’t make good and replacing all the stolen items. Present her with an itemised bill. Ask her to suggest how she intends to pay it (it doesn’t matter if you don’t actually intend to make her pay for it all - she needs to come up with and present you with a solution to the problem she has caused).
5. You and her father work out how long she is to be grounded for and both stick to it.
6. Ask her how she intends to make reparations to you and her brother for those items that can’t be replaced.

1000% (not a typo) you are not being unreasonable. This is an extremely serious situation with police involvement. I would be absolutely livid and this would be something with clear and multiple consequences for my child. The talks about why, safety etc would come, but later, once initial consequences and clean-ups done.

I would think:

1. Grounding from going out and socialising for two months (long but IMO definitely not too harsh. If she does things like sports or music, she can maybe restart those earlier, after a month). Try to get her dad on board but if not, it applies to when she is at yours.
2. No devices for a month.
3. She cleans up every single aspect of the house until it’s done and there is no sign of the party. This is what she does every day alongside schoolwork.
4. She has no money - so she ‘earns’ it from you with additional chores (separate to the cleaning) to provide some recompense for damage. You have no money to give her, but the point is she learns the value of her time and how it will be spent after something like this.
5. You do everything possible to find out every single attendee from her school and contact parents. Some parents won’t be interested, but most will absolutely want to know that their child attended an illegal party that was gatecrashed by presumably older (and potentially dangerous) people and involved the police.
6. Spread the word about stolen items, especially the medals. You may get them back if you’re lucky.

My parents would’ve (rightly) gone absolutely nuts about something like this.

Whatever you do, do it fast. So it's immediate and not in a few weeks.

I think natural consequence are good. She pays and earns for the damage. Her trashed things are replaced last. She can't be trusted with her phone as it resulted in this. Someone has to phone the sleepover parent if she wants one for x .months as she can't be trusted. I'd ground her personally for months. This is a major fuck up. I feel if your going to be harsh it's best to do that immediately while they still feel guilty.

But mostly she needs to know you will not be soft and save her from every major fuck up she makes in life. Kind but firm I think. But I'd not be able to stop myself flipping my lid honestly. I think staying calm is better if you can but if you was me I'd remove her phone and ground for for a very long time. No parties ever again. How could you ever trust her to? Good luck and I'm really sorry. Good kids can be stupid. But she planned this with well thought out lie too ultimately. I don't think I'd be in risk to replace the damaged things either. So if you want to watch your tv, laptop though shit if it's broken you can't. But that's not fair on siblings

I’d be inclined to share a post on your local Facebook page to say what happened, and ask that you don’t expect parents to out their kids but that if they think they were involved and know anything about the missing items, they get them to do the right thing.

I’m actually really glad I read this post now while my kids are in primary.

She and her friends will have taken photos at the party, so possible to ID from there? I would also have a big scout around the garden and along the street. Things like DS's medals may have been thrown into a bush.

I would total up the entire expense - all the losses, all the costs fixing it, including the hours you spend on it - and present DD with that total so that she knows the cost. I wouldn't harp on about it too much as she can't afford it so it will be pointless. But I think it's important that she properly sees what she did

So sorry, OP. Hope it's easier to clean up and fix than it seems.

I'm sorry to hear that you have a "ball of anxiety" about this 40 years on. It's really important to try to put this behind you - can you get a referral for counselling?

Laid-back dad needs to step the fuck up. She was supposed to be in his care, so he is partially responsible. What kind of idiot doesn’t check up on where his 15yo daughter is, knowing that her mother is away and the house is empty? I would argue that he should also be round at your house to see the damage himself, and he can get involved in supervising her cleaning up.

He should also be paying for some of the costs, and DD can pay him back. See how lenient and laid back he is when it costs him money.

The costs of this are long term. There needs to be a long term impact on your daughter in terms of making reparations.