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?

^ this from cory ^ agree totally.

Wow. You wouldn't be happy living round our way then.

Children of 12 are generally considered able to look after themselves for a few hours in the daytime by that age...do you take time off work ,if she is unwell, to look after her? Most people I know would leave a child of that age while they go to work. It is a case of needs must. There is no childcare provision after the age of 11. Mostly because nobody sees the need.

I think some just live in a different world to be honest.

Oh, and I work and have 3 children :2 boys,(nearly) 21 and 13 and a girl age 16.

My daughter has been on Duke of Edinburgh Award expeditions since the age of 14. After these, to suggest she couldn't look after herself would have been laughable.

Also agreeing with cory. You either leave them with your mobile/work number in case of diificulty - and let them get on with it. And learn.

I am genuinely that so many people are happy to allow their 12 year olds to go to peoples houses that they have never met/ spoken to, at the very least. I have never thought I was overprotective, if anything I am the other way (and have had my arse badly bitten as a result, recently) but I met all of my children's friends parents until they were older than this. Once I have met them, and introduced myself I don't insist on accompanying my kids to their houses everytime, or even that the parents are always there, but if I give my children a lift/ pick them up I expect to say hello to the parents (if they are there) and thank them for having my children. If one of their friends gets dropped off/ picked up by their parents, vice versa - they always come and say hello, sometimes horror! we even have a cup of tea together! I always confirm that a sleepover is convenient with the other parent (as I have seen far too many cases of children lying about where they are at night).

So what about if your child goes to the park or into town with his friends, Justforlaughs, and then pops into his mate's house on the way home to pick something up? Do you take them everywhere? (do you perhaps live rurally?)

Looking at ds, his weekend afternoons seem to be spent constantly on the move. But then we live in a town and it would seem very wasteful to get the car out to take him places; he is young and strong and can make his own way.

This is freaking me out My dds are 8 and 3, is it normal to be scared to death at the independence thing when your children aren't that age yet?? I hope so

We know all dd's friends families, this will prob continue as its a small school and goes from 3 months - 18 years. I can't imagine dropping a 12 year old off without speaking to the other parents though, just making sure they were in and happy to host really.

And if your 12 year old went on their own to someone else's house, how would you know whether they'd got there ok or not? Would you just not know till they were due back and didn't turn up? So they could be 'missing' 4 hours before you knew they were?? Serious question by the way, not being snippy, want to know for when mine are older.

At some point you will just have to trust your child. Just like our parents trusted us when we were younger and for a lot of us that was before mobile phones!

Yabvu and a total snob

Well I'm obviously odd but I do know most of my 16 yo daughter's friends parents and these are all people she has met at secondary school. She's going into 6th form next term and her dad and I do quite often drop her off at the door ... sometimes we stick our head round the door and say hi ... As do their mums and dads. Certainly the first time we drop off/ have had parents drop off it appears to be what's expected...it seems incredibly rude not to introduce yourself/ say hi ... Not everytime but certainly the first time and i say definitely at 12.
We do live in a village but have good public transport links though some friends are very rural which may explain a bit but even those down the road tend to operate the same policy.

I wouldn't be bothered by the state of the hall or whether the house was smelling of smoke but if they were going to be unsupervised it would have been fine if we had agreed in advance ... Discussed and put a few rules in place.

I agree you have to let them go to let them grow... But you don't have to just chuck them out the nest to teach them to fly ..

I'm chuckling now cos we must all be weirdos round here...

that's what mobiles are for!!! my kids at 12 /13were catching the bus/train, cycling, going to the shops and cinema with their friends. they had a social life.

I generally checked in with them as needed and we had agreed home times.

don't any of you work??? most of my kids 12 year old friends are home in the hols as parents work?? I am a TA so lucky but minority.

if I insisted a parent was present for every drop off my kids would be home bound.

My DD's 10 and starting secondary school in September. I don't care how pathetic it may be, but I will not be dropping her off at anyone's house I do not know. Sorry if this is mummy coddling, being over protective, not giving her enough freedom, refusing to let go, whatever term you want to use, it won't be happening. Despite it seeming to be the norm on mn I'll trust my instincts.

Spartacus, they really do change a lot in these years.

My 16yo is very like an adult in most ways: somebody who makes decisions about her own life and sometimes gives me very good advice to boot. In two years time she will be moving from home and I think she will make a good job of it.

My (just) 13yo is not there yet, but he is a very different creature from an 8yo. I give him a curfew and he has a mobile if he needs help; apart from that, I would expect him to sort out most situations on his own and use his initiative to know when a situation is dodgy. I know he has good judgment and will use his initiative because I have seen how he deals with unforeseen situations (including when an older family member had an accident and he had to sort out the ambulance etc- there was nothing an adult could have done that he didn't do).

He often goes into town on a Saturday with his mates or goes for long walks around the neighbourhood, him and his mates descending like a horde of good-natured locusts on each other's families. I do not demand to know exactly where he is, any more than dh demands to know the same of me. Yes, either of us could have an accident and go missing. But no reason it should happen to ds more than to me. (in fact, he is probably safer around traffic than me, since my 3 D vision is non existent and I am half blind on one eye).

To me, there is nothing more reassuring than to see my dc growing in judgment and independence. Because soon that will be the only thing they will have to rely on.

I too was brought up in the era before mobile phones. Even now, I have reservations about our reliance on them; I think it can give us a false sense of security rather than ensuring that our children develop a sense of safety and responsibility to go with their independence.

When I was young, I learnt to use a phone box for an emergency. Most of the time I would have a 2p or a 5p yes I'm old so that if I needed to, I could call home. I also knew that if I really needed to, I could reverse the charges.

But more importantly, I learnt to look after myself and not put myself in danger. After all, my mum or dad might not be at home if I rang (they might for example, be out somewhere with my brother) - and this was in the days before mobile phones or even answering machines So then what? Fortunately such a scenario never happened but if it had, I would probably have rung one of my other friend's parents or gone to a neighbour we didn't have family in this country

cory if my 12 yo is at the park, he can go to any of friends houses, providing I know where he is, but I know all the parents. As I said, I don't insist on taking them everywhere but I would feel rude if I didn't at least say hello, if I was giving them a lift, and all the parents I know seem to feel the same as they always come and say hello as well.

I don't think it's right to judge people the way you have on their house. And I wouldn't expect always to meet the parents if my child was nearly 12. A clean house isn't an example of what a person's character is. They just might think life's too short to find scrubbing and dusting a worthwile occupation.

When I opened this thread, I thought I was about to read that something dreadful had happened but, no, the DD who has already done a year at secondary has just been to visit a normal friend at a normal house where nothing untoward happened. It is not as if they were even home alone if the dad popped his head round the door.

So, it was a dark hallway - surely just the nature of much of our country's housing stock. Perhaps it is dirty because they have recently moved in and are planning to do it up. Reeks of smoke - well many adult do still smoke although smoking is thankfully going out of fashion. Beer bottles piled up - maybe they have had a party, maybe it is a month's supply waiting to go to the recycling.

I have no idea why at 12 years old you would feel the need to meet the parents. I am sure my parents never met my friends' parents because they didn't drive so I had to make my way under my own steam. I've probably met most of DS's friends parents because we lived in such a small close-knit community but he had probably been to their houses a few times before this happened.

Spartacus, if you are worried for when your children are older, you can always get them to call you to keep you up to date with their plans as everyone seems to have a mobile these days.

mumof, what do you mean by knowing people? Do you mean know that Y is X's mum and recognise her in passing or knowing as in having had a chat for more than 5 minutes, been shown around their house etc

Genuinely interested in how well you want to know someone before letting your DD going over there.

So OhMerGerd, if you still have to agree in advance and discuss rules (doesn't she know them?) if your 16yo dd is going to be unsupervised, what are you going to do when she turns 18 and tells you she is moving from home? And what do you do now if she says she wants to get a job? Insist on meeting all the customers?

To me, leaving independence this late does seem like chucking them out. But then I speak as a university tutor and very aware of the dangers of university towns for youngsters who have not developed a good sense of judgment of their own.

OMG, do you want to discuss in advance if your 16 year old is seeing her friends 'unsupervised'? Or is this just for 12 year olds?

Quite a few of DD1's mates' parents do stop and say hello but in all honesty she seems to have a peer group who are in the main very sheltered.

Nothing wrong with driving your dc to places because you live in a remote area, and once you get there nothing wrong with stopping to say hello because you are a nice friendly sociable person.

Everything wrong imho if your dc (always assuming no severe SN) has got to their mid-late teens and you are still giving the message that they are not to rely on their own dodginess radar because mum and dad will always be there to do it for them.

Even if you met the parents it doesn't mean anything really .

They won't have a sticker on them to let you know if they are dangerous

I vaguely know most of my DCs friends. I don't really, really know them or their families, but I do vaguely know them. I would be slightly uncomfortable dropping either of mine aged 12 to the house of someone I didn't know at all. At 15 or 16 I wouldn't feel so strongly, but I would about a 12 year old.

If either of my two organise get togethers when I am at work, then I make sure that the other parents know about it - might just be a text or an email. If something goes wrong, the other parents are not going to turn around and say "oh, but we thought there was an adult present". I also want to know who is going to be in my house at any given time.

At 17, I had left home and was staying in Uni Halls of Residence. Definitely needed to have developed a "dodginess radar" before then

But that's a good few years after the age the OP talks about. The point is to do it in small steps so that you don't just abandon them. Once they're going to secondary school, they are or should be going to school by themselves, so starting to go to friends' houses by themselves is part of the same process.

You'll not necessarily get to meet friends' parents - but keep the channels of communication open as your child morphs into a teenager monster so that you can get a sense if they have any friends you have genuine cause to have concern about. If you have shown that you respect their judgement, then they are more likely to listen to you if you can come up with a concrete reason for concern.