To think her parents are totally unreasonable..

[BeigeDarling]

(16 year old girl so you know)

Recently i went to a small social gathering at a friends house, there were only 10 of us and everyone is 16/17.

There was alcohol but nobody was drunk, just very relaxed and watching films/talking ect. We can all be sensible when we want to be.

The girl who's house is was had a bit of a break down (another story) and started crying hysterically, threatening to kill herself and walk out and never come back. She does have mental health issues and isn't incredibly emotionally stable but her brother was there and we were all looking out for her.

This was around 11pm when my best friend was supposed to be getting picked up. She rang her dad and asked for an extra half hour because she wanted to be there for the girl, making sure she calmed down and explained the situation.

The dad proceeded to shout at her telling her that she is forbidden to see any of us ever again, can't go out and see us and must avoid us at school- her main focus is her A Levels and that's all the matters, us friends are not important. She does already have problems with her parents and told them that he cannot chose her friends for her- to which he responded with "Your friends are all sluts, drug addicts, alcoholics and mentally fucked up, and you are not allowed to see them anymore"

This really hurt all of us, baring in mind we hadn't done anything wrong and his words were a massive over-exaggeration.

She's my best friend and neither of us know what to do. I don't want her to get into any more trouble, because her parents already treat her badly and cause her to be upset all the time. I don't really know what to suggest but i don't want to lose her just because of the way her parent's are being.

Are they just looking out for her, or are they being totally unreasonable? Need advice on what she and i can do to make this better!!

Her Dad sounds very over the top HOWEVER consuming alcohol when you have mental health conditions and on most medication for them is not good at all. You'd all be doing her a favour if your gatherings didn't include alcohol for a while.

They are being unreasonable. At 16 she's perfectly entitled to spend time and be friends with whoever she likes.

Not really sure what she can do to change their minds though?

RandomMess i totally agree with that- although she didn't buy any alcohol herself and none of us gave her any, she took it from others when nobody was in the room, but i understand exactly what you're saying.

The thing i worry about most is that my best friend has in the past self harmed over her parents, they are extremely controlling and one of the best ways to stop this and make her forget about it temporarily was by coming out with her friends; which makes the situation harder as i'm not really sure how to get around it.

Sadly I think if she can stand it bide her time and when she's done her A-levels leave home by any means possible.

If she left now and could find someone to give her a home that is an option however the impact of that sort of emotional impact are huge - the fear, the guilt - all of those could impact on her ability to do her best educationally. It's really tough.

Do you have a counsellor at school that she could see regularly, having some impartial to talk to that will help her deal with their unreasonable may be enough to help her through it? Fighting with her parents may well get her nowhere I'm afraid.

Random Leaving home now is something she's been considering for a while, but i don't think she could bring herself to do it yet.

When doing GCSE's she did go and see a counselor at school regularly, but i think when she told her things, 'somehow' they managed to get back to her parents and she's lost a lot of trust in adults now.

Thanks for the advice, i will show her this and hopefully find a solution- at the moment she has a job so she's been pretending she has loads of shifts but actually has been meeting up with us- which i think will backfire eventually and lying is not the best move, but i'll speak to her about that as well!

She could always ring childline - that will be confidential.

I don't have much experience in this area but I think if she did leave she could not be forced to return, but realistically who would be prepared to give her a home for 18 months and potentially have a lot of grief from her parents over it?

Life is grim if you have controlling/abusive parents, I went to uni and never went back.

While her parents may seem to be going over the top from her dad's point of view he has arranged to pick her up at a certain time and that will be impinging on HIS plans too. He might like to have a drink which he can't if he is driving. So he is waiting to pick her up and thn she rings and asks for more time. Or maybe he is tired and just wants to get to bed. I don't think it is entirely unreasonable for him to not be happy. Whether he over-reacted or not is another question. Possibly.

Also with regard to your friend who had the breakdown - I some ways it might have been better to have left her with her brother and maybe one friend rather than a group. It may have been easier to calm her down then.

Beige my daughter's friend ended up under house arrest from her parents due to lying to them about a boyfriend. She got her head down worked hard and is now happily enjoying life at uni a couple of hundred miles away from her parents. It was 18 months of no freedom but she knew her friends were there for her and if it got too much she had places she could go and now she has all the freedom she wants. Just let your friend know that this won't go on forever and you're always there for her.

I think that she will just have to keep her head down and work - she has only between 12 and 24 months to put up with it and then she can get to university well away from home and have freedom. It isn't worth messing up her future for such a short period of time.

One of dd's friends has parents like this. He was only allowed out one night a week and was threatened with all sorts by his dad. They tried to make him apply only to local unis so they could still control his every move but he has wisely buggered off to Stirling and is having a whale of a time - finally away from his, quite frankly, abusive father.

Your friend needs to keep to the rules, keep her head down and get a shed load of work done and count down the days until uni. It really isn't that far away.

Make sure you keep the lines of communication between here and you open, Beige. It's probably all you can actually do.

You sound like a good friend.

I have to say I wouldn't be happy to being asked for an extra half an hour. I like to be in bed by 11pm!! I don't like my eldest out late because it does wake me up when she comes home and then I can't get back to sleep - it's not always about control it's about having to compromise, the joys of shared living! I am one of those that will be "when you have your own home you can do x y z" although my dds all have far more freedom than I was ever allowed and I don't critise their choice of friends, past time etc.

I think at 15/16 if your parent has arranged with you that you can go to a friends house and have a drink as long as you come and get picked up at x then you should be there at x

if you then atthe last minute ask for y then that will affect him too

if he then hears that you have been drinking with someone you know has mental health issues then he has every right to be frustrated at how irresponsible that is

it could be argued that your friend also has some mh issues if she is self harming. (lets not pretend she took some without permission, you were having a drink together)

he could be very very worried about all of this. what you see as 'controlling' he may see as 'parenting and trying to protect his vulnerable young daughter.'

I would be very wary of saying he was UR

Hi Beige. I have a DD about your age, and I can tell you this: your friend's father is an abusive twat.

A little wine amongst friends? Pfft. 30 minutes longer because someone needed help? Also pfft. Calling your friends all the names under the sun? The man has Issues. If she has brothers, I'll bet they don't get this treatment.

Counselling: it would be much more secure if Friend approaches her GP, because confidentiality is absolute. DD got hers through the surgery at 16 and we were told that nothing would come back to us.

Is the abuse coming from both parents? There is a rather nasty subset of DMs who see DDs as competition for their DP's affection, to say the least.

Disgrace that is a ridiculously over the top reaction, which is a shame because your advice about going to the GPs for counselling is excellent.

Beige can I ask did you hear all of the conversation your friend had with her father first hand?

How has your friend self harmed and who has been made aware of this?

JaquelineHyde I stand corrected, but...I was very nearly one myself. I was saved by a lecture kick up the arse from a good friend and my sense of the ridiculous. And a DM competing for affection? I've seen it and it is ugly.

The dad isn't being unreasonable to be annoyed. It seems like it now, but when you're older and a parent you'll see where he's coming from. When we're younger we forget our parents have lives too and that they weren't put in this earth to be at our beck and call.

However, slagging off her friends isn't cool. Not sure what he was hoping to achieve there. For starters, how he's supposed to police who she hangs out with at school I have no idea! I guess he's worried about her future and is just going about it all wrong.

Not much you can do but be there as her friend. If possible maybe your friend should speak to her mum or other family member to see if they can act as some sort of mediator.

The friend may have mental health problems but drinking will have contributed to it.

She was taking the piss with the lift, asking her Dad to come out at nearly midnight because there was a drama going on. The girls brother was there, no need for her to stay.

To be honest if my 16 year old was to ring up and say one of their friends was having an alcohol fuelled breakdown I would be extremely unimpressed and think the friend was irresponsible for drinking when it exacerbates her problems and I wouldn't be overly keen on the friendship. Particularly as it sounds like she was pinching the alcohol. From what her father said it sounds like it wasn't the first time there had been incidents with her friends either.

I'm not surprised her Dad lost his temper, she had been allowed out late and given a lot of leeway but took the mickey.

I think that it was probably said out of anger and when he calms down she won't be banned from seeing you. I think the best thing your friend can so is keep her head down and stay in for a few weeks until he calms down so that she can show him she is serious about her A'Levels. Then when she is allowed out again to go home on time and not to involve her father if any kind of incident occurs.

If she's 16 and her parents let her go out and drink until 11.30 it doesn't sound like they are the strictest parents in the world, so I suspect this will blow over if she keeps her head down for a couple of weeks.

How has this turned into a jealous mother competing for affection? Her Dad got pissed off with her because she rang him tipsy and wanted him to go traipsing round town at nearly midnight to pick her up. And somehow this has been turned into abusive parents and a mother who's not even mentioned is having labels stuck on her for no reason?

Although what he said was not nice parents aren't saints and a tipsy teenager asking you to come out late and relating some sort of convoluted teenage drama would be enough to set most people off.

The way I read this, the dad isnt freaked out by half an hour.

Dad's daughter (lets call her Rapunzel) has had a difficult relationship with her dad (Giant) in the past, including self-harm.

Rapunzel rungs Giant and says, I am left holding the fort as the party was hosted by Very Fragile Friend (VFF); VFF has just had a major breakdown and I can't leave until there is a respnsible adult here to look after her.

Giant is scared that Rapunzel is harming her own mental health by having to look after VFF; he is also scared that this party is unsafe as there is a very vulnerable girl there and no adult backup.

So he freaks out. Bear in mind that dads get angry whe they are scared, while mothers tend to burst into tears.

I think Rapunzel needs to reassure Giant that in fact she is better from the self-harming; that she is stable and happy partly as a result of being allowed a social life; and that she will be able to manage a respnsible social life.

Rapunzel should use Mrs Giant for this; Mrs Giant is probably already wishing Giant had not flown off the handle, as it will not help.

But both Rapunzel and her friend, the OP, ought to be realistic- mental health is not a joke and Very Fragile Friend was either exaggerating, or if really ill, she should not be left alone like this with fellow teens. Do not take too much on yourselves. peer support is one thing- making yourselves responsible for possibly life-threatening Mental Health issues is something else.

I think your friend was taking the piss.

She wasn't holding the fort though was she? The girl's brother was there looking after her. And 'holding the fort' wouldn't wash with me because quite frankly I would say it was not my daughter's responsibility to be holding the fort for a drunk friend with mental health issues.

To be honest given that her brother was there it sounds like she was simply enjoying the drama and didn't want to miss it rather than genuinely being needed and it would be frustrating for her Dad to be mucked around because of that.

I also think her Dad was probably angry because allowing a sixteen year old to go out drinking until 11.30 and picking them up is incredibly generous. And in response to being given such trust she took the piss.

And I'm not buying this controlling parent business. What sort of controlling parent allows their 16 year old out on late night drinking sessions? It's not like they've got under lock and key wearing a burka.

I suspect that these girls definition of a controlling parent is any parent who won't allow their 16 year old to do exactly what they want, do some school work and give them a bit of respect.

It sounds like the dad over-reacted a bit. However, the fact that he was coming out at 11.30 to pick his daughter up shows that he cares about her. His reaction was probably due to worry. Neither of my parents would ever have picked me up at that time when I was 16, I was expected to make my own way home from wherever I was.

I agree with the people who said that your friend really did not need to stay. It was very inconsiderate of her to expect her dad to hang around for another half an hour while she stayed to participate in a teenage drama.

The dad's reaction in slagging off her friends in that way was well over the top. Guaranteed to alienate rather than get anyone onside. He almost certainly was getting his gob into gear before his brain.

That said though, if we had already agreed to collect our daughter at 11.00pm then we would not have been to pleased to be asked for another half an hour, because in a family situation it impinges also on both parents, who may or may not have work the next day. We would probably do it as a one-off, but would make clear that it shouldn't happen regularly for xyz reasons.

The dad does sound unhinged, and if he is then a request like that late at night is often going to trigger an outburst. I agree with the poster who suggests that it is not too much longer. If she gets her head down, gets into a good uni or other college then she will soon be spending long periods away with as much freedom as she wants, free of the clutches of unhinged parents. She should see that as her target, work towards it and rely on her friends when the going gets tough (and it will at times).

Well, we may not think she was left holding the fort. The point is, thats what she told her dad; and he got angry on the basis of what he was told.

I agree that neither girl ought to have felt responsible for trying to deal with a serious MH issue- its not something for amateurs to do. What feels like a fun teen drama may actually be something much more dangerous.