Would you let a group of 16 year old boys have a sleepover without you there?

[Spudlover]

We are going away for NYE and letting DS stay home as he’s been invited to a new year gathering he was desperate to go to.

Now he has asked if they can have it at ours instead. 6 of them, total geeks and none of them drink apparently. I do know DS doesn’t.

They will play games all night and eat every bit of food in the house but I don’t anticipate (perhaps naively!) much debauchery. I’m more concerned with noise for the neighbour.

I can’t work out if I’m being totally irresponsible considering it or if it’s pretty normal!

How well do you know his friends? If they really are geeks , don't drink or smoke then maybe.

Totally fine

I'd allow this if you can trust him and his friends. Would be overly worried about noise to neighbours, it's New Year's Eve! I have 2 small children and noise is a pain but on New Year's Eve you surely expect people to have parties and get togethers!

I wouldn't. Impressions could be far from the reality.

No to be perfectly honest I wouldn’t even be going away on NYE and mine are 17 and 18. As I wouldn’t want to risk a party or get together and the house possibly getting all or partially trashed or one of mine or one of someone elses kids bring ill or getting into difficulties in my home.

God no. Not in a million years, only takes one little scumbag to get a whiff of a free gaff and your house is trashed.

Yes my son the same age and himself and his mates are geeky

Nope.

No

No way. If it gets around he’s got a “free house” you could be inundated.

Not a chance. DS had his geeky no drinking friendship group round for a sleepover while we were there and some sneaked in booze led to vomit everywhere.

Yep I would be OK with it

No way on earth

I'd be ok with this, subject to some serious chats about what is and isn't allowed, how many people, back-up plans etc. I also wouldn't assume that a group of 16yos who "don't drink" can be guaranteed not to drink on NYE in an empty house.

I wouldn’t be going away and leaving a 16 year old with an “empty”. As others have said, it’s not about your ds and his mates, it’s the other idiots who’ll hear about it. No way

No way

I think not. Surely no 16 year old officially, to their parents, 'drinks' anyway so I'd pay no credence to that. All of mine were sensible and geeky enough at that age, boys and girls, but they were pretty susceptible to peer pressure TBH. Remembering back to me and my friends and a similar age it was the same, all it would have taken was a slightly 'cooler'/more popular kid or anyone remotely attractive to us (which, let's face it, at 16 is a broad spectrum ) finding out we had a 'free house' and wanting to join in for everyone to beg the 'host' to agree to it and well, we can all see how it would go downhill.

We left DS at a similar age in the apparent care of his sensible older brother for a weekend, older DS promptly disappeared out for the night on the Saturday to see his girlfriend or some such leaving DS £20 for pizza and an empty house. DS then invited his two very quiet/sensible mates 'to play on the playstation' but some extra girls 'somehow invited themselves along' (never got to the bottom of exactly how they knew the house was free and who did the inviting but never mind) - nothing truly terrible or irreparable happened but wine was drunk, crockery broken, vom all over the bathroom and lipstick/makeup trodden into the carpet, neighbours annoyed because of midnight squealing and shouting in the garden etc etc., annoying enough to come back to on the Sunday morning. And this wasn't exactly a social-media free for all pile in of hundreds of kids, just a couple of previously sensible and level headed lads and two or three over excitable girls all no doubt never having had much by way of alcohol before and mutually keen to impress one another. That was it for unsupervised parties at the house until they were at least 21 from then on in!

Right, I’m definitely convinced this is a bad idea now, thanks for your thoughts. I do trust him, and still don’t think he would drink, not to excess at least, but I don’t know his friends very well.

Sorry DS, you have to go out and I have to trust the ring doorbell.

I wouldn’t trust DS 16, but he’s easily influenced by others and I imagine would drink if his friends were!

He’s too honest for his own good though, told me he’d tried one his friends vapes, was asked if he wanted to buy one 🙄, thankfully he declined! Thankful that that’s all he was offered!

I’d be fine with this

I would of let my oldest son as also a non drinker and a really good kid, meet a few friends and know their like him
would never let youngest son as he’s a totally different kid and I’ve meet a few of his friends that are like him

Ah we used to call that an empty.
no I wouldn't unless I was happy for a party. Stay in and stay upstairs it'll still be good for them.

Glad you've decided no op coz I was about to say. That's an empty or a free house and there's gonna be a party.

I’m still going away but SDD will stay over just in case. He was actually ok with it, I made a big thing about it being risky with the kittens getting out and getting lost in the cold as well as the risk of descending hordes.

Kittens sealed the deal, he’s stupid over them.

Best outcome @Spudlover SDD can call anything untowards happens. Even kitten lovers have a wild streak with an empty.