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

Im so sorry this happened. Many moons ago i was that teenager (tho a little older - maybe 17). I was arranging a party whilst my parents were away with my younger brother. I had a CB radio and word got out. The party was advertised on the radio. Hoards of people turned up but I saw them coming and got scared and locked up the house and hid. Point being that teenagers are not really understanding of consequences and how things can escallate out of control (even before social media). I tried again to arrange a party but more low key this time. Even when low key word got out and friends brought along friends. The house was not trashed but there was damage - some friends stayed to help me repair or hide the damage. We did a good job. I almost got away with it. But my mum immediately noticed something I missed - the answering machine was missing aka stolen. I confessed to having a few friends over. I was apologetic and tried to get it back but never did. The broken kitchen light that had been glued back up and fell down a few months later - no one connected it to the party. I did learn and was far more cautious in future. I did not do it again. I grew into a responsible adult.

My misadventure is not on the scale of your daughters but my advice would be keep up with the consequences. I agree that she should be funding repairs and replacements from her own money for the next year - its a big consequence but the damage is large so it is fitting. Your daughter sounds regretful and will learn from it. It is good that she learns the consequences. Im so sorry that its come at such a bad time for you.

Of course it's neglect🙄.
Her father was responsible for her while her mother was away, and didn't bother his arse to check she was going where she was going.

I'm sorry but this is absolutely disgusting behaviour and shows absolutely no respect to you, your home and your personal belongings. My parents split when I was 13/14 and I would never have dreamt of doing this to my family home. There is no excuse for this behaviour. If my daughter did this she wouldn't be going out, having her phone or anything spent on her until all damages were paid for.

All good positive advice OP and I'm so glad your ex isn't shirking his responsibilities, but....

And there is a big "but".

Your daughter was his responsibility while you were away, and he is the one who should bear all the costs to put this right, and then it should be up to him (with your input) to discipline his daughter regarding how much she pays and what she has to do to make amends,
In particular the financial loss to all this, should be his to put right, and not yours.

Don't give her a free pass. If she old enough to organise a party, lie about where she will be overnight.( Very,very dangerous btw. Think how much worse that lie could have turned out for her if a couple of those 'randomers' had turned on her) She is old enough to get her backside into gear and make ammends. Your home has been violated and her DB has suffered the loss of his prized medals. You DD has had a reality check. Get her cleaning, saving, maybe selling some of her tech to help pay for repairs. Otherwise I would be telling her to expect very little for Christmas. It goes without saying she has no more parties until you sanction one and It wont be in your family home! Good luck!

My parents would never have checked with another set of parents that I was where I said I was at 15-

You would trust, until you don't. When everyone comes out of it unscathed, without police being required to return the 15 year old to their parent, and no ££s of damage to a place where the 15 year old and 'guests' would not be expected to be unsupervised. After that, would you be content to believe them?

She expected to get away with it and for no parent to be any the wiser. This was a major overestimation.

Is it not normal for teens to have a key to both homes if they have separated parents? Oldest DSD has a key to our house, we don’t take it off her every time she goes to her mum’s so it’s just on a keychain with her other keys.

I am really surprised by the number of posts on here blaming the dad. My parents would never have checked with another set of parents that I was where I said I was at 15- I don’t even think they had their numbers! It would have been a text to me to check I’d arrived safely if I’d walked or got the bus, and then that would have been it. Maybe it is the norm now, though 🤔

I don't suppose keeping you excited is her priority right now. 🙄

...and was also collecting at least 2 children having arrived back at midnight, and had said in a post that she wanted to spend some time with the ones that were not responsible for trashing her property but who were probably in the firing line of the conversations to have when they were home. Quite reasonable.

I'm really sorry to hear about all the things coming together in the same month. No, YANBU to feel so low and not to want to open the door to more conflict and ruptures. I can see that it's not as straightforward as just leaning in to being angry and devising payback.

It sounds as if the bombshell was discovering the house but the next aftershocks are going to be the points where you and your DC have to be back together and back to term time 'normality' quite soon, with feelings and memories as they are.

The thing that I think will be important, and need really firm and non-avoidant discussion, is the issue of how your 'D' D can demonstrate trustworthiness, and this will be again and again in small doses until you feel some confidence in it, which isn't on a timescale anyone can know at this stage. I can imagine if I tried to discuss this with my teenager, there would be a pushback of dramatic "Oh, you'll never trust me so what's the point?" and real avoidance and not talking, so it will be a difficult area.

I don't know how these steps would go, but I am thinking that the immediate reaction should be to fully prioritise and engage with the house disrespect and damage (and a kind of grounding during that time), whether you feel bad, or want to forget it, or non, and then to be able to have suitable opportunities to regain trustworthiness, but on a scale where any party scene will be at the very distant end of that scale. As others have said, be very clear that you will monitor, because at the moment, you cannot trust her. It was one huge night of trust destruction. Good results or buckling down to great things in one area (GCSE work) does not cancel out sly and frankly dangerous behaviour in another, that she seems not to be able to control. She should get that quite easily but spell it out.

As you've said, part 1 has already been sabotaged by the 'Out with friends, nothing to see' from your ex. You need to talk about this with your 'D' D and with him, I think. That the damage that you will have to live with and recover from while still pulling parental weight towards her was not something that exploded under his roof - even though she herself was under his roof and lied to him as well. This is another angle that sticks 2 fingers up at you from him, really.

Really sorry. And hope that the initial return to the house has not gone too badly.

OP has posted 14 times including an update at the end of the day. Did you want her to invent a bit of ongoing excitement for you?

You sound a lovely mum and your daughter didn’t realise at all imo what devastation would occur, it’s certainly a lesson learnt.

These threads are so dull when the original poster just drops and doesn’t come back after a day

Op said she had paid a cleaner. My comment is pretty clear that her dd should pay op back for that before continuing with the rest of the cleaning herself.

The problem might well be not many places are employing youngsters as used to happen. I got a job at 16 filling the shelves at a supermarket when I was 16. I got used to saving money and making decisions of buying what I wanted.

They will just say yes though! Find my friend on iphone you csn look be reassured and dont need to message. I check older DD middle of night if wake up and reassuring. We all have each others locations,

I had what my parents at the time called an out of control party when I was 14.
My parents left me at home for 2 nights I think it was. A handful of dvds and a walkman were stolen. No damage to the house or furniture and there were less than ten people. My parents found out because the front gate got stuck and people couldn't leave so the fire brigade were called and had to get permission from my parents to remove the gate. I was banned from doing anything for about a month, banned from watching the TV seeing friends etc. I remember having to sit in my room for weeks on end in total silence reflecting on what I had done. I felt terrible and I'm sure your daughter does too. Maybe you could insist she gets a part time job to pay for some of the damage? She should be doing everything she can to help clean up also.

I’m sorry but I’d be packing her bags. Daddy also needs to feel the consequences here. Did he think to question where she was staying, who with?
he’s as much to blame here and the pair of them should have got this sorted while you were away!
there’s no way this would be forgiven or let go anytime soon.
ive been the one to have a party and know how devastating it can be all round.
tgey need to see what they’ve done and he needs to see that his actions have also caused this.
be angry and stay angry don’t let her home until it’s put right, if he says he can’t have her then tough, deal with it!
tough love is needed here!

Her father also needs to pay for a lot of this damage and stolen items too as he just let her go to someone’s house without checking and also how the hell did she get into your house??? Why did she or he have a key if they weren’t there?

Jesus Christ. If my DD had done this I think I'd have grounded her until she was 18!

That’s a different scenario. In this case they are separated and father is paid back in his parenting approach and has already allowed daughter to go out with her friends when mother grounded her. So it’s better father also deals with some of daughter’s behaviours so that in future they are on board with disciplining daughter.

At 15 I'd come down hard on her. She doesn't even seem sorry and her dad doesn't care how she is, so he's going to continue undermining you every step of the way.

Assuming she has no savings to pay for damages (or none that she'll give you), I'd take everything in her room and sell it online, including furniture, all personal possessions and clothes etc then use the money to pay for cleaning inside, window cleaning outside and any broken windows boarded. I doubt there'll be any money left over from that but if there is it goes towards replacing ruined carpets, broken furniture, redecorating etc.

'D'D could go live at her dad's, since he's ok with all this. He can sort her out with clothes and a new phone etc. Sure you'll have to pay child support, but at the moment you have no job so who cares it'll be either nothing or a token amount if you're claiming benefits, and it's only for another 3 years anyway. It'll be one less mouth to feed and one less school uniform to buy. I imagine you can easily just not pay child support for whole blocks of time anyway if you start working and are struggling on a low wage, since many men do exactly that and nothing seems to be done about it.

If she wants to live with you she needs to understand she has to earn her way back in, starting with using any money she has to try to make amends for the jewellery and medals you and DS had stolen from you because of her, along with a sincere apology. I can't believe she didn't even clean up. There should have been no egg anywhere inside the house because ladders and cleaning supplies are a thing, broken glass could have been dealt with too both inside and out. Her actions tell you she really doesn't care at all. YANBU to feel devastated, especially on top of everything else you're going through.

Oh, OP. I'm so sorry. I wish I had more helpful advice but it sounds like an absolute shit run of luck.

I'd always advocate speaking to the responsible adult as well (unless you've dropped off your child yourself).

We had friends who trusted their daughter. She was a lovely girl and grew up to be a fine woman. However, even the most trustworthy youngsters can make a mistake, and she and a couple of her friends suffered terrible trauma as a result.

Each set of parents thought that their daughter was staying over at another girl's house - they'd done that many times before. In actual fact, they went to a party at someone else's house. This was in the days before everyone had a mobile phone, but receiving a text or a call from their daughter would have made no difference to what happened unless she'd had the capacity to ask for help.

They lived in a well-to-do area, and none of the parents had any reason to believe that their daughters were in danger.

It was a good while before what had actually happened became known. (The girl finally broke down and disclosed what had happened.) Grampian Police (no longer in existence) were contacted and were less than helpful. When the girl's father asked did they not at least intend to arrest the young man who had given the girls drugs, the reply was that they were only interested in the 'big fish'.

Maybe things would be different nowadays and the police would have passed the details to the Procurator Fiscal, but the daughter couldn't even identify the teenage boys who had abused her because of the drugs she had been given - although she was fairly certain that they attended her school - and there was no hope of finding forensic evidence at that stage.

Our friends trusted their daughter. The OP's ex obviously trusted his daughter. That's how these things happen: it only takes one slip.

So yes, knowing what happened to our friend's daughter, I'd alway err on the side of caution and check that there had been a safe arrival. (I acknowledge that it would in theory be possible for someone to leave without being noticed, however.)

The OP has said that she never had any reason to mistrust her daughter before. I believe that. Given what the OP has said about her daughter being drunk, her daughter has had a lucky escape. It's not just whether you can trust your child - it's whether you can trust the rest of the world.

I get that you cannot wrap your children up in cottonwool, but 15 is a terribly vulnerable age - you think you're grown up, but you're still very naive.

She’s got to own this herself (and it doesn’t seem like she’s going that). I’d be inclined to ask her to go to her dads and you tell her you are deeply hurt that your home was damaged and that her lack of care on cleaning/repairs and finding her brothers medals has been a shock. I think a statement of honesty and impact might be the only thing that can shock her into an appropriate response. (And her dad sounds useless, so you are going to have to lead the punishment alone)

As teenagers, we all do stupid stuff. I’m incredibly easy going usually but this is a big thing, a big breach of safety and trust. If she was determined to make it right, I’d be saying go easy on her - this is a big opportunity for learning etc. But bloody hell. She hardly seems bothered, it’s time to teach her the consequences of her actions. I’m not saying guilt her, or make her think she’s not loved, but absolutely let her know how much she’s broken trust.