Is DH too overprotective of DD (14)?

[suri80]

Eldest DD (14) has currently barricaded herself into her room because DH will not allow her to go to a "hang out" at her friend's house. The friend is a boy from her school who we don't really know and apparently his parents are away. I tried to compromise by suggesting to DH he could collect her at 10pm if he was worried, but it turned into a huge argument between him and DD and now he won't allow her to go at all. He says it's because this boy has an older brother and no doubt there will be older boys there, alcohol and probably drugs He says he trusts DD, but she is too young for all this. Now he has stormed off to help his brother with something.
AIBU to think she could have gone for a while and DH is being over the top here? Or is 14 too young as he says? I'm not sure what to think anymore.

I was trying to get the details of it all when DH intervened

Effectively overruling you.
And decided for you.

Not good.

I'd be telling him to stop, that in was getting info first and that he doesn't get to decide alone.

I hope this doesn't happen in other aspects of your relationship.

So you think your H has some sexist attitudes: best seek to address that.

No I hadn't given permission but I might have let her turn up for a couple of hours, I suppose. I would have gone with her and assessed the situation on arrival Having said that, I wouldn't leave DD for the weekend and would not have a housefull here if I wasn't around.
I have told DH that he will need to relax and trust her a bit because it's not as if prospective boyfriends ate likely to be asking his permission to go on dates with his daughter. That's days they do it on Tinder or whatever else! He says other people can do what they like, this is his family. In reality he will have to adapt because nobody really carries on like that. I am on the case!

Are you also on the case of him not discussing it with you first?

So OP never gave permission but because dad said no its a problem. Better to be over protective then under protective or even worse absence.

As for the barricade in the room. I would be taking that door off the hinges.

suri80

It's also your family. It is not appropriate for him to intervene like that in front of your DD when she is asking you whether she can do something. What should have happened: he should have said he would like to talk to you about it.

It sounds like you think you will win him over to a more relaxed stance, but actually from your most recent posts I think my initial impression was wrong and the issue is between you and him. He thinks he is in charge.

Trifle I don't know if he thinks he's in charge in general because he's often away 2-3 nights a week and most of the direct parenting is down to me. He is lovely with the kids and he really tries with them, but he has a quite fixed attitude on things like this - probably more so than the "average dad" (if there is such a thing).
I'm just used to him so if he has moments of "high handedness" with me I just ignore it, sidestep the issue or mostly I can talk him round eventually.

suri80

Sounds like he is one of those men who thinks that he has the ultimate say and he delegates parenting authority to you.

I take back everything I said. He is being unreasonable, not in his judgement (which I still agree with) but in his approach. He is showing you very little respect. In your shoes I would not 'talk him round eventually'. I would say this stops now.

Your DHs reaction is driven by fear. Fear that your DD could come to some sort of harm she's allowed too much freedom or choice.

This is completely understandable but also very unfair. As parents we need to trust them and hope they make the right choices. I think a compromise could have been reached on this occasion, such as going for a couple of hours with you dropping off, and picking up. You now run the risk of her being sneaky and less upfront about social plans.

It is a worrying time these teen years and I think some dads find it particularly difficult with daughters.

I have two 16 year old DDs and DH is currently freaking out about the after prom party involving camping in a friends garden, boys and girls.

Oh, enough with the grandstanding and 'I'd take the door off its hinges' and so forth.

I'd have let her go; I have a daughter who'll be 14 in two weeks' time and one who's 16. I agree with leonard that they need to be able to try out the world with the safety-net of supportive parents.

And frankly your DH is in cloud bloody cuckoo land if he thinks it's viable to forbid everything until lunch dates at 17. He might possibly be able to enforce it but it would profoundly unkind.

She could, of course, be having enthusiastic lesbian sex with those rules, of course.

cowgirlsareforever "As the mother of two boys I am sad to read this thread. Most teenage boys are not predatory monsters"

I have a son too, I don't think all boys are predatory monsters. But some boys do behave badly towards girls and if you do not know the boys, you may find it hard to know who are trust worthy ones.

leonardthelemming I am not sure everyone thinks boys are always a danger. But realistically they can sometimes be a danger.

"I think the OP's husband is treating his daughter as a child. Some PPs on this thread clearly think so too. She isn't. Legally, yes ( someone is bound to point this out) but not in any realistic sense."

That is actually a very scary statement to make, do you really think a 14 year old girl is an adult. Because they are not. But if course you do not think that as you go on to say...

"So what she wants more than anything right now is to be an adult. She isn't, of course, but she is far closer to adulthood than childhood, and the adult privilege that she wants especially is the right to make her own decisions." (the bold is mine of your statement).

So we are all clear, she isn't an adult. So what does all this growing up mean? Does it mean she and her peers can make lots of sensible decisions, not driven by their own or other people's hormones? Avoid dangerous situations, even if it means appearing uncool? I don't think it means that at all necessarily.

I think it means freedoms that are not too risky are a good thing.

Lots on here have said yes to the boating trip and no to the empty house non-party. That is where I would start, with a freedom that is not too risky.

There will be growing risk as the child proves they can handle it. Just as we let our kids cross the road by themselves for the first time, or go to the shop alone, or walk to school alone, or whatever - when we pretty much knew they could handle it.

I think the OP's husband does sound a bit strict, the no boyfriends before 17 etc rule. The problem with this is if she does meet anice boy she will not feel able to tell her mum or dad about him, to share info, for them to meet him, it will all need to be hush hush.

As i said before, one important thing to impress on kids is that they do need to gain trust and if they do ever lie they need to know they can still call home, still get help, they will not be faced with consequences etc. There may be consequences for lying etc in normal situations, like mum or dad find out after the fact, but if in the middle of a lie a child needs help, there will be no consequences for asking for help. IMHO.

Not a grandstanding I have done it before. Sometimes yoh have to parent tough.

At 14 when my parents let me out at unsupervised parental events what did I get up to now where shall I start that list.

As are man with a daughter I have fears mostly nothing wrong with that.

Also when OP daughter ask to go the decision should have been a joint one not the Mums alone or the dads.

Most teenage boys I know (which is quite a lot) are decent Italiangreyhound. I find the attitudes towards them on here extremely depressing.

Of all the types of parenting I despise, macho man fathering of girls is the one I despise the most.

Well, abusive men and women have to come from somewhere. It stands to reason that some are awful when they're younger too, especially in big friendship groups where they're riled up and can act very differently from the way they do to mums and dads.

Taking the door off the hinges would have felt like an unforgivable invasion of privacy to me, I'd have never trusted my parents with anything again. What were the circumstances to that?!

I'd have let her go personally - safety in numbers and all that. I'd trust my DD at 14 and my DS. Having fun, exercising her own good judgement, learning how to handle things. Its not as if its just her, a strange boy, his brother and all their friends. I went to parties and 'evenings in' with mixed groups from 14 and no parents on site and really didn't get up to much at all except talking a huge amount.

Plus I have a DS14 and he'd be scared stiff of what to do with a girl - though he has a lot of loud fun with his friends. i dont really like the way boys are spoken about here either.... Poor things. At 14 they are way less confident than girls underneath the bravado.

When I was in my early teens, I had friends who parents were much more liberal and laid back than mine. My friends didn't really have a curfew, and didn't have to update their parents with their movements. Their parents only had the very vaguest clue as to what they were up to, where and with who.

Their parents, no doubt, thought they were encouraging independence and 'character building.' But, I know my friends often felt a bit anxious and vulnerable, having been thrown into all this freedom, and would have preferred much firmer boundaries, and the comforting sense that their parents were a constant safety net for them.

I know one friend was really wistful that my parents were the sort to happily taxi me about, and wanted to know what I was up to, and who with, and were perfectly prepared to put their foot down and say no, if necessary.

suri I really hope your husband and your dd will work out this complicated relationship. I fear that he is 'protecting' her in general too much and he needs to learn to ease up and give her some space. Maybe space to prove that all will be well. Although I have agreed he is right about the empty house non-party I do feel the no boyfriends until 17 rule is really unhelpful.

"I am starting to see differences in the way DH responds to them as opposed to DD as they are getting older. He has been far more concerned that I have "the talk" with DD than DS1"

That is probably because on some level he is worried about your daughter's 'moral's' and not your son's, which is very mixed up but quite common.

It is also the case that a teenage pregnancy could have a massive impact on your dd and a much more minor impact on your son. Maybe that is what he is worried about?

I do not agree with the way he is going about this! But it is quite common. Why not talk to him about this and use this as a way in to working out what to do next. I am guessing, if he has a sister, that this was how things were for him and his sister growing up.

As for the barricade in the room. I would be taking that door off the hinges.

I think this would be in contravention of the 1998 Human Rights Act. And Article 16 of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child. (Child in the legal sense - right to privacy.)

My nearly-14yo isn't a child. She's not an adult, but she's not a child; I am guilty quite often of thinking she's younger than she is, because she looks v young for her age, but she is turning into a bright enquiring young woman.

Well abusive men and women have to come from somewhere.

Really? I can't get my head around the overcautious and overly suspicious attitudes some people have. It's a wonder that some of you ever let your dc out in public. You do know that they have to be exposed to people in order for them to develop their own instincts about people. Personally speaking those people I know who have found themselves in abusive relationships have often been those who had the most sheltered childhoods.

cowgirlsareforever "Most teenage boys I know (which is quite a lot) are decent Italiangreyhound. I find the attitudes towards them on here extremely depressing."

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sexual-harassment-schools-teachers-pupils-girls-lads-culture-porn-a7238236.html

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sexual-harassment-girls-school-widespread-8821640

Yes, I agree it is very depressing. It is depressing so many girls get sexually harassed at school. If these attitudes are around at school what may be happening when teachers or parents are not around?

I am no assuming your children or the ones you know are like this, but some are!

I've tread threads on here where women have told of sexual attacks at school, by teenage boys, and read about and heard first hand how some teenage get coerced into sex and raped and all the rest.

Massively depressing.

It doesn't mean I walk around looking at teenage boys assuming the worst of them at all. It does mean that I would think carefully about what I allow my pre-teen daughter to do and where I would allow her to go.

As I mentioned before my friend at 14 was hanging out with her teenage (18-year-old) brother's friends, including men in their 20s. Some of whom she ended up sleeping with at what I would consider a very early age. This was over 35 years ago.

I'm not saying teenage boys are all bad, I have a son, I hope he will be a great teenage boy.

I am saying that as a parent we have a duty of care to our children not to assume all situations will be equally safe for them.

she is turning into a bright enquiring young woman

Exactly. I used to really enjoy teaching Year 10 (in a girls' school) because they were mature enough to have an intelligent conversation with - on any topic - and they were still enthusiastic, without the exam stress of Year 11.

Try continually slamming your door which is only done when mum tells you off but not dad. Rude and not acceptable despite being told over and over again.

I can assure I am not a macho man father but a father that loves his daughter so much that he worries about boys as he knows what they are capable of.

Plus I can guarantee you if my mum was on here she would say I was a decent teen little does she know the things boys discuss when they get together and egg each other on.

I am sure if the OP husband was confident that it was going to be girls only he would not have a problem. Plus it's not that he does not trust her it's the boys he does not trust.

So your duty if care towards your teenage dd means keeping her away from teenage boys *Italianhreyhound?