to tell DD she can't visit this friend again

[missimperfect]

DD has just finished year 7 and just turned 12. I am finding it a bit of a shock getting used to being "out of the loop" when I was quite involved at primary school and knew the other parents etc. So maybe I just don't know the etiquette here and am being unreasonable but...

DD asked if she could visit a friend today - arranged by text. I have never met this friend. So I took her over to the house expecting to see the mum (or dad) when I dropped her off. This is what I would usually do. Quite often the parent will even say "come in" etc when we first meet.

But today we turn up, the girl answers the door and clearly just expects DD to go in and me to leave. No sign of a parent. I hang around for a moment and ask a couple of friendly questions hoping that a parent might come to the door if they hear us chatting, but no.

Now I know I will get slated for this but I am not comfortable - the hallway is dark, dirty and reeks of smoke. No other rooms are visible as there is only stairs and a closed door through to the rest of the house. Empty beer bottles piled in a box by the door.

But I decide to risk it - tell DD to call if any problems, say I will be back in a couple of hours to collect her. When I return to collect - again no sign of any parent. I ask DD how it went etc, seems fairly harmless although they mostly just sat around. She saw the dad once briefly in the kitchen. No one else.

So should I not let her visit again? I just don't feel comfortable about it but am I just being a bit precious?

In my case, I don't worry too much about the boundaries of ds' friends' parents, because I know that he knows where our boundaries go and he knows perfectly well that if he oversteps them I will hold him responsible and nobody else. And if he gets into trouble with us for letting himself be led, he knows I wouldn't have the least sympathy.

Brilliantly put. You've succinctly stated what I have inarticulately been trying to describe :)

I think cory's post is brilliant too.

I agree with cory- mine have always known my boundaries and that I will be holding them responsible if they go outside them- not the person who led them. HOWEVER if I had not had them since birth,and they had very different experiences from before they met me, I would have to handle it completely differently.
I think that you have to educate them and then expect them to make judgements- obviously if you can't start from a really young age then it will take longer and be harder.

agree Cory and exotic.

I think all you can do now is hope you've done the groundwork in instilling self discipline, confidence, respect, ambition, social awareness and morality and can continue to build on this. Help her to trust her judgement and build a relationship built on love, respect and trust and keep talking :-)

Of course there are situations where you would intervene.

To make my position clear,I speak to my DSs friends parents mostly out of politeness, not to vet them on their suitableness to be a responsible adult. As they all do the same with me, i assume that we have the same idea.
Having always trusted my extremely sensible 15yo DS I have just found out that he and his friends have been smoking cannabis , now maybe some of you will make light of this, but i'm afraid that it is a big deal to me and my DH. He has never shown any indication that he would think this was a good idea, we have had a very open relationship with him and he tells us everything (he told me about it himself - admittedly not immediately). Yes, you need to allow your children to grow up and make their own decisions, give them the tools to make informed decisions and all the other things that some of you are advocating, but they are still children and sometimes you need to be a bit more careful about where they are and what they are doing than you think.
As for the OP, if there was something that didn't sit right with her about this situation, whatever was making her hackles rise, shouldn't just be ignored.

Sorry to hear this JustForLaughs and can well understand why it is a big thing for you, would be for me too. But are you sure this is due to something you should have done differently as a parent? (my own inclination would be to put the blame on the 15yo). What could you have done differently that would have ensured that your 15yo never, ever got the chance to try cannabis? Don't you at some stage have to trust to them rather than to yourself?

Meant to say: Even if you had supervised every moment of your ds' leisure there would still have been a risk that somebody would bring the stuff into school.

You are not abdicating all responsibility! You need to be between the extremes. You can't expect to vet the parents when they are about to go into year 8 but neither do you leave them free to smoke cannabis.

cory Honestly, I don't know whether I could/ should have done anything differently. He has had a lot of trust and spends a lot of time outside with his friends. He was always playing sport, footbal, rugby, anything at all that involved running round rather than sitting indoors on the computer. I encouraged him to do so. I would still prefer them to be outside in the fresh air. My only point was that some people seem to be saying that you should trust your children to see the dangers/ pitfalls etc and i'm just trying to make the point that actually there are occasions when that is not enough. (not talking about the OP here, just where the thread seems to be going and some posters comments)

no agree cannabis would be a huge huge deal for me too.

however not sure how you can blame your parenting as at 15 your son cannot be watched over all of the time can he?

I think in the contrary your extremely good parenting allowed him to trust you enough to confess it to you.

sure he has learned a lesson.

thebody i wish I was so sure, he may have told me about it but he has no intention of stopping

To me, it be just as big and unacceptable deal if ds smoked tobacco as if he smoked tobacco. I probably hate tobacco more than cannabis (even though I've never smoked either ok, I had a single puff on a cannabis spliff at Uni, aged 17, but because I'd never smoked, I didn't know how to inhale so it had zero effect on me ) but ds knows dh and I disapprove of both.

Fortunately, ds is also a really keen on sports - both rugby and (even more importantly) cycling, which means that drugs, any drugs, are out. His grandad died from lung cancer, having started smoking aged 14 and literally on his deathbed made ds promise never to smoke. Ds already hated the fact that his clothes used to stink every time he had been to his grandparents' house.

But at least your ds told you justforlaughs - shows that he knew what he was doing was wrong.

Of course there are times when trusting your children is not enough in the sense of guaranteeing that they will do what we expected them to. They might grow up into horrible adults, or criminals, or anything. But sooner or later, the time comes when we have to recognise that what they do is their responsibility.

I know how horrible it is to feel you are losing control. I have talked about it on MN before: dd went through a period when she was suicidal and CAHMS made me realise that a) if she really wanted to go through with it I would not be able to stop her b) that her only longterm hope of safety was for both of us to accept that the responsibility lay with her.

There is some similarity here, is there not? You wouldn't be able to watch over your ds 24/7; he could still have access to the stuff and to unsuitable friends at school; he could even sneak out at night when you were asleep, there is no such thing as keeping a teen 100% safe unless he chooses it. You are not to blame, JustForLaughs.

well at the end if the day we all just do our best don't we and cross fingers to get through.

it's bloody hard this parenting.

JustForLaughs, really hope he sorts out,

Mrs D hugs as ever and in awe of you.

You have to start early. Once they start school they will make friends with children you don't know and they will get invited on playdates that do not include you. You have to decide whether to let them and accept that you can't inspect the kitchen, expect a CRB or ask them their parenting philosophy! I would have thought you could make a judgement on whether you were comfortable. You have to make them clear on your expectations on their behaviour.
Once they start secondary school you have to accept that they will have close friends where you will not know the parents and sometimes may never know the parents. By this time you will have to hope that they have gained some common sense and their own judgements.
It will get harder- they will want to go into town with friends in the day time, there will be parties, evening events- you can't rely on all parents having the same views on alcohol and freedom. You have to tread a fine line between independence and guidance. They will get to 17 and be driving- or even worse going out as passengers with other new drivers. While still at school they will become adults and legally allowed alcohol. They will have part time jobs. It is the hardest part of parenting!
By the time they get to 18 yrs and leave home you have to hope that the lessons have been well learnt and they can cope. It needs to be gradual. The ones who are most likely to go off the rails are those who have been overprotected and over controlled. 6 years may seem a long time ahead when they are 12 yrs but it goes very quickly!

Wow, justforlaughs - that's really tough. It's good he can confide in you, but he's still at home, still legally not an adult, so surely, as the responsible adult you can take steps to ensure he gets a lost no chances to smoke it again.

My DC ar enot quite that old yet, so maybe it's very naive of me to think this, but can't you take away his rights to go out and about if he is abusing them by breaking the law and endangering his health? Does he know about the links between cannabis and psychosis? Does he know it can trigger schizophrenia and that the illness won't then go away if he stops smoking? Does he know schizophrenia could wreck his life forever? Does he know the links between cannabis and severe lifelong depression? It's a far more invidious drug than some people think and it's impossible to know whether he's going to be sensitive to it or not. Not everyone is, but starting that young is a really bad thing. He needs to know the full facts and he also needs to see some people with schizophrenia to know whether that really is a risk he;d like to put himself under.

OP - she's 12. I'd trust your instincts. Invite the girl to your home and suggest, if they get on, that they go out shopping together or to the movies. We can't choose their friends, it's true but we can help them steer clear of places and situations that don't seem desirable - that's part of our responsibility, imo.

One of ds1s friends bought cannabis into the school and they were caught smoking it in the school. Ds1 know all about the effects and how I felt about it, at the time I was working in a detox centre ffs.

Sometimes whatever you do they make their own stupid mistakes. Luckily that was 3 years ago and we've had no problems since.

I went to visit a similar house at the same age, for a sleepover.

Flame me as much as you like, but age 12 I was scared, felt a severe awareness of lack of care/boundaries, and just wanted to go home.

Stayed friends with the girl, but I never ever went back to that house.

Nobody's going to flame you Cormoran - you showed discernment in not liking your friend's house and chose not to go back.

Thanks pretty

We wouldn't flame you, Cormoran: if I had been your mother I would have been very proud. That is precisely what those of us with looser reins would hope to achieve: a child who uses his/her own awareness to evaluate a situation.