Would you allow your DC to drink at this party?

[PyongyangKipperbang]

DD is 16 and her friend is having an end of GCSE's party. Friends mum is allowing them to have alcohol, but she is sensible so I am sure it wont be gallons of the stuff. Even so I have said that DD is to have no more than 3 drinks on the basis that she will probably have 4, so if I say 4 she will have 5....!

I am happy with this but due to a couple of raised eyebrows after I mentioned it to friends, wondering what others would do.

@Loopytiles 😂
It’s shocking how naive some parents are

And I agree with the above poster... no spirits is a good rule. Send her with some alcopops or cider/beer

I (reluctantly) hosted the post-GCSE prom after party

No drinking anything that the host hasn't provided was THE RULE. I stocked up on low alcohol lager, made a very low alcohol punch, and made some vodka jellies with next to no vodka.

Approximately 100 teenagers turned up with bags containing their changes of clothes following the prom. And other things.

Three children passed out. I got into a routine of finding their mates, calling their parents and asking them to collect the drunk ones. One mother arrived in a taxi clearly drunker than her infant, and started sobbing about the shame he had brought on the family and then threw up.

It was a good thing that I had recruited bouncers. They repelled another 50 or so boarders (they were climbing in over the garage), mopped and tidied and helped sort the kids out

It took me and two cleaning ladies 2 full days to clean the house afterwards. And then I realised I needed to tidy up the garden. Literally under every shrub, I found a few alcopops, a few bottles of lager, multiple halves of vodka etc. I think I must have counted 20 or so bottles of vodka.

Daft kids. They're all at university now. But trust me, they're not going to be stopping at 3.

pyongyang sounds like you have this completely covered. Ignore the eyebrow raisers!!!! They'll be the ones who forbid drinking & it will be their DC who spend the whole of freshers week throwing up or passed out in the flowerbeds!

@Thymeout . I am delighted and very surprised to hear of such teenagers..

At 16, I'm hoping that most of them won 't have experienced being drunk.

Almost all of my 7 dcs/sdcs follow this method of post GCSE partying technique.

I would have had 10, lurched home blasted, puked all over the place, sworn to you that I'd only had 3 and passed out*

To the extent that I am genuinely surprised if they are sober.

Ignore the weird looks OP. They are mostly all doing it , or lying about doing it - unless culturally unacceptable. Sadly - getting absolutely wankered is an actual post GCSE objective.

They'll be the ones who forbid drinking & it will be their DC who spend the whole of freshers week throwing up or passed out in the flowerbeds!

This would be my worst nightmare. Away from home, not knowing the best place to go for help, or how to self care if she does have too much, perhaps ending up in an unsafe situation........ it gives me shivers just thinking about it. I did the same re: alcohol with DD1 who is at uni and although she does go out and have a good few, she always has taxi money and stays safe. Doesnt stop her texting me at 3am to tell me she loves me though....:o

A PP’s believes that her DD won’t drink because she reportedly dislikes the taste of alcohol - that’s an old chestnut!

Neither of my teens like the taste of alcohol, never have, I have never made a big deal out of alcohol at home but they just dont like the taste, never drunk at parties even when pressurised by so called friends.

Unlike friends puking up at so called 'supervised' parties and being told to go out for a walk as the parents "werent being responsible for them in that state" Well dont let teens drink 3 or 4 bottles of strong cider in a couple of hours then? My ds was the only one sober enough to keep an eye on said friend. He got fed up and came home early as nobody could hold a conversation including the adults!

I find it a bit sad that young teens are expected to get drunk and puke up at parties, its hardly enjoying themselves is it?

PyongyangKipperbang
DD is 16 and her friend is having an end of GCSE's party.

It'll get you in practise for the prom afterparty!

To be honest, I'd keep your phone close by just in case, but otherwise relax and enjoy a peaceful evening yourself x

@Loopytiles to be fair to PP while I wouldn't believe this for a second as a parent. This was in fact me.

I got drunk at a party when i was 15, for the novelty, but actually didn't like the taste of alcohol. I used to go to the pub every Friday night from the age of 16 with my friends and never drank.

On my gap year when I was 18/19 prior to going to university I discovered my tastes had changed and found some things I liked though.

I drink like a fish these days mind... I blame parenthood

But trust me, they're not going to be stopping at 3

A lot of assumptions on this thread. What is this obsession with parents providing alcohol for under 18s at parties??

Contrary to popular belief, not all teens are interested in drinking. My two are 17 and 15.5, they have no interest in trying alcohol and neither do their group of friends.

willow I completely agree with you. Drinking until you throw up or pass out is pretty disgusting at any age.

I would let her have a couple, but I would be wary of spirits. The stories of alcohol poisoning terrify me.

My DD is 16 and she has never really drunk alcohol except for a couple of low alcohol drinks. But you can't really stop them I guess?

Just had the same conversation with DS. I’ll get him 3 bottles of beer to take.

We had unlimited access at a friends' 15th. Although parents were there. Only one girl was puking in the toilet, everyone else was drunk but not wasted. I got a taxi home. Grandma had a laugh when I told her I almost fell in the rabbit hutch in the garden, it was the first time she'd ever seen me drunk. Nothing but good memories.

Or was she 16... You know I can't remember now, I think it was 16 actually.

My parents were pretty rational about alcohol and it led me to behave fairly responsibly for the most part. They would usually provide alcohol for parties from when I was about 14 but it was always beers or wine, and they encouraged me away from spirits (not to say I didn’t drink them as I definitely did, but I was way more controlled than a lot of my friends). I can count the number of times that alcohol has made me vomit in one hand and haven’t actually thrown up since I was about 16. I wouldn’t necessarily try to put a limit on how much your daughter drinks as you have no idea what effect x amount will have on her and it just seems like you’re trying to control things. Why not just have a discussion about knowing when to stop?

Using the word allow is surely the ultimate triumph of hope over experience, as far as 16 year olds are concerned. Teenagers more often leave you feeling Canute-like in the the face of a force of nature!

Some young people will get drunk and some won't. It is somewhat of a right of passage in this country - for whatever reason.

I believe that arming my DC with all the knowledge is a good idea, so I've explained that mixing isn't a good idea, how different types of alcohol can have a different kind of effect, what units mean, what actually happens inside your body & your mind and so on. I've also talked through the risks of spiking, as this is so commonplace in bars & clubs (and bloody parties). Nobody took the time to explain any of that to me, there was just an air of disapproval at home & I was forbidden to drink at parties.

My DC know that I'm not going to be sour and disapproving but also that I expect them not to be stupid and put themselves at risk.

I agree that it's more important to make sure she knows how quickly you can go from happily drunk to totally incapacitated, and warn her how dangerous it is to drink too much, etc. Hopefully that will encourage her to limit herself a little.

Beyond that, she's likely to drink as much as she wants anyway, and at least you know an adult will be present to step in if anyone goes too overboard.

I got drunk enough to puke numerous times as a teenager. Personal experience is really the only way of learning how to control yourself better.

From about 18+ I became much more sensible, I knew where the point was that I should stop, because I knew how horrible that feeling is when everything is spinning at 1,000 miles an hour and I didn't want to experience that again!

What are the eyebrow-raising parents raising eyebrows about? I read it that they were surprised at the idea of you suggesting a limit of three drinks and that teenagers are likely to ignore it anyway. But I see most on here have read it the other way - that you're allowing drinks in the first place. I think it's fine for the teens to have a drink.

I've been through this with each of my 3 children - I decided that, as they would undoubtedly drink anyway (like we all did at that age!) it was far better for them to learn their limits when close at hand so I could step in and help them out if needs be, rather than wait til they were away at college or somewhere else where getting drunk may put them in a dangerous situation.

It is a worrying trend (to me!) that teenagers to not only seem desperate to get drunk, but to drink what I still consider to be more hardcore alcohol - neat vodka, whisky, rum, gin etc. At their age, I and the majority of my peers (there were always exceptions!) were on lager or cider. Now admittedly this was back in the dark ages (according to my children) of the late 80's but recent stories from my friends teens made me raise more than one eyebrow!

“One mother arrived in a taxi clearly drunker than her infant, and started sobbing about the shame he had brought on the family and then threw up.“

I find this 'you can't really stop them' line really depressing. They're only 16, fgs, and some with late summer birthdays won't even be that. Far too young to be poisoning their livers. It's a parenting cop-out to throw up your hands and opt out, with misty-eyed reminiscences of what you got up to at the same age. (The same with under-age sex, which is all too often alcohol-related.)

I've spent my life teaching 16 yr olds and taking them on residentials abroad etc. The current lot have led far more sheltered lives than their parents, not allowed to play out, never been on a bus till secondary school, but seem to be expected to make adult decisions under the influence of much cheaper alcohol in a culture where getting drunk and incapable is an objective, a badge of honour, not something to be ashamed of.

Of course you can stop them. Whatever happened to parental disapproval? Doesn't it work any more? Expectations of 'normal' teenage behaviour seem to have nose-dived in recent years.

@daisypond my was at DS1 specifying he wanted to get hammered. I mean, there's honesty and then there's that!

DH & I have just had a private conversation where he informed me he used to get regularly plastered at 16, and said surely I did too.

We have agreed not to let DS1 know

We will be buying him a couple (2) of beers for him to have with dinner to celebrate his exams finishing tomorrow though.

YABU to think that what you say or think will make the blindest bit of difference to how much she will drink at the party.