Punishment

[Ifyoubuildit]

AIBU to think this punishment for my teenage daughter is a bit much.

14 yo daughter took spare keys to grandparents house without telling us (grandparents are away). Met with her new boyfriend and took him there, lying to us about where she was (she told us she'd gone to a local cafe with him). When we found her out she carried on lying to try and cover up.

She's normally such a good and sensible girl, this has really shocked us.

It's her birthday the week after next and DH has told her no presents from us. This seems very harsh to me even though I'm furious with her but I can't think of a better punishment and I don't want to undermine him.

AIBU to think he's being harsh?

Well think about the potential covsequrnces of her deception-I an referring to pregamacy. In contrast no oresebts really doesn't seem like a big deal.

Only on MN world does everyone immediately assume 14yr old was having sex and it's all the horrible boys fault, he's such a bad influence!

Teenage girls can be bloody sneaky too you know, take it from someone who was that teenage girl!!

I agree with your DH - although not necessarily no presents but maybe just a few small ones but definitely not the main one that she really wanted.

I'd ground her AND I would also let the boyfriends parents know too so that they can deal with him how they see fit.

Maybe they're being intimate, maybe they aren't but if both sets of parents raises it with them and makes them both responsible then hopefully at least one (if not both) will take notice.

Thanks Erma.
Maybe I sound naive but one of my best friends was pregnant at 14 and with that context I genuinely don't think they're close to having sex, yet.

I'm not complacent on this point though, I know she could get carried away so will be pushing the point on protection.

I think they wanted some privacy and with it being a snowy day there was no where warm and cost-less for them to go. We need to make her comfortable bringing him here but with her younger, teasing siblings around I don't think she's keen.

I think we'll stick with no big present and grounding. That's better than none at all.

Don't ground her, she's run off to do something foolish and grounding her forces her to be at home, you want them to be at home because they want to be not because they are forced to be.

If the present she really wanted has gone back and she knows that I would give her other smaller bits but not that. Along with that I would be grounding her and if practical removing her house keys from her for the duration of that as she has been shown she can’t be trusted with unsupervised access to a house

I would also make sure her boyfriends parents are aware what they did too.

ermagerdsnur
I think a lot of people on this thread have said the girl was lying and deceptive.

It's not rocket science ti suggest that girl + boy steal keys to a house and lie about it are probably having sex and that the 2 of them together isn't a good combination. After all, they're both stealing keys to a property to potentially have underage sex.

It's perfectly possible to socialise at home without stealing keys to somewhere else.