I can't trust this Mother...

[MistressoftheYoniverse]

My daughter went to a party at a friends house on Friday ..we sent her in a taxi to her friends and booked a taxi back @ 1pm for her to return home she's 16yrs yrs old.

So I get a call @ after 11pm just before 12am on my daughters phone from the mother of the girl who's party it is saying, 'Oh hi Yoniverse, I don't feel comfortable to send your DD1 home in a cab it's too late imo for someone her age, all the other kids are leaving...so can she stay the night and come home in the morning?...Now I was confused, she was using my DD1's phone and making me feel like my parenting choices were suspect because 'she felt' that it was too late...I agreed...mainly because I thought she had possibly been manipulated or cajoled by her own DD to get my DD1 to stay the night and I know what that's like, I'm pretty relaxed, but I was still perplexed and tbh a little annoyed but I said 'OK but make sure DD1 calls the Taxi station and cancels ..she said Ok ...a bit later I tried to call my DD numerous times but no answer....

I thought I might call the mum the next day and explain that the Taxi service we use we have been using for over 20 yrs they took our children to school in the morning when they were young, we know the owners/drivers by name so not just any random cab station so nothing to worry about.

FF>> 6am my DD1 calls me and asks did her friend's mum call me last night?... I say yes but why are you unsure?...'Oh she told me she called ..I was just checking' I asked if she told her that she should have cancelled the taxi..she said no ...so I confronted her and said 'you were wasted/mashed last night weren't you?' ...silence...then DD1 reluctantly admits she was so drunk she blacked out, was passed out for over an hour in the bathroom...didn't know how she got to bed, had 17 missed calls from her boyfriend and numerous other things she was unclear about.

I was upset...not completely about my DD1 being drunk....yeah it's not ideal but it happens and it's really hard for a parent to control other peoples children and what they sneakily do...

It was the bloomin lies and the making me feel like a bad parent for allowing my child to travel home in a taxi...it was the fact that she didn't tell me the truth that she didn't want to sent DD1 home because my child, under her care had become so drunk that she was too scared send her home in a taxi!

I would have really respected her if she had told me my DD was unfit to travel in a taxi because she had been drinking, she was worried and wanted to keep an eye on her...Things happen, I know it's not what you want to say to another parent but don't friggin lie and make the parent out to be a bad decision maker and that you know better!
I am angry right now...
DD still wants to be friends with this girl but I can't trust this mother

She shouldve been honest. Tell her this.

People who reported starting to drink before the age of 15 were four times more likely to also report meeting the criteria for alcohol dependence at some point in their lives (9)

Excerpts from research.

Studies have shown that the most influential role models for children are their parents. Children learn by imitation, so it is important that parents demonstrate sensible drinking
Suggestions include:
Drink moderately or not at all.
Don’t drink every time you socialise.
Never drink and drive.

Also these Irish guidelines for parents

Know the facts about alcohol and young people – Understand why teens drink and know the risks. There are very good reasons why young people shouldn’t drink. Your child will respond better to facts than vague warnings.

Read more about the risks of teenage drinking and why teens drink.

1. Let them know your values and what you expect – Give a clear message that you don’t approve of underage drinking: “I don’t want you to drink until you are older” and explain why. Using some facts about underage drinking can help you to explain why you feel this way.

What you should know about alcohol can help you to explain some of the risks.

1. Make sure they hear that you care about them – While your teen may not like your rules, deep down, no teen is unhappy to know that their parents care enough to keep them safe.

1. Challenge ‘normal’ drinking – “Everyone drinks” “We all went through this phase” “It’s part of having fun”.

It can be hard to argue against the strong messages children get from the media, marketing messages, their friends and from what they see around them. You can feel like a lone voice in the crowd. But drinking alcohol puts young people at risk in lots of different ways.

Don’t miss the opportunity to teach your kids about the downsides of drinking.

1. Keep a close relationship with your child – It can be hard to find ways to stay close to your child as they grow older, but it’s important to try and keep a close relationship. Spend time with them – even being in the same room can help.

Look out for moments when your child is willing to talk - during a car journey, over dinner, while watching TV – and give them your full attention. In a study of 400 adolescents, parent involvement and adolescents’ positive regard for their parents were related to less smoking and drinking.¹

1. Be the uncool parent – You might understand why your child is drinking - you probably drank or got drunk yourself when you were their age. But the evidence shows that the best way to keep your child safe is to check what your child is doing and to give a clear message of disapproval about underage drinking.

It may make you unpopular, but while they are still developing, it’s best to help them avoid drinking situations.

1. Don’t give your child alcohol – Some parents believe that giving their child some wine during dinner or a limited amount of alcohol to drink at a party will help them to become responsible drinkers. In fact, research suggests that children who are supplied alcohol by their parents may drink more, as they feel they have ‘permission’ to drink and are more likely to drink in a harmful way.²

1. Have rules and boundaries – Make sure your child knows what you expect and what will happen if they break the rules. Rules will probably work better if you explain to your child why they are needed and ideally get their agreement. Our Guide to setting rules around alcohol can help.

Willow your ds sounds sensible, my dd would have done the same, she doesn’t like the taste of alcohol and doesn’t like what it does to people, her friends are the same. I haven’t kept alcohol from her, she is offered it at a family meal or special occasion but doesn’t like it. Her friends never expected alcohol at my dd’s Party last night, they all had a great time eating pizza, laughing and watching stuff on tv.
When I was my dd’s Age I was drinking with friends but never got wasted, I thought these days it wasn’t as trendy to drink? Most of my dd’s Friends don’t have any interest in it.

I do get why parents give their kids drink, they honestly do think it’s better. But the research does not back this up.

I do think that there’s a very fuzzy time around 16 upwards when there is the legitimate concern that kids will drink, will binge, and be in unsafe situations. The Drinkaware website does say it’s better to be under parental guidance. However there’s no study to show that teenagers will drink only under parental guidance and will lessen their chance of drinking elsewhere. The studies that show that if we give them permission we may be just enabling more drinking are worrying.

The Mother should have been honest, but your 16 year old Daughter drank enough to black out, and is the one that, for now, you can’t trust.

Let her earn your trust back by all means, but in the meantime direct your anger at the right target. Your Daughter.

And unfortunately it just shows that drinking in a parents house does not stop binging and dangerous drinking!

corythatwas personally, I would provide a few ciders if the host family was allowing alcohol and lecture on the dangers of accepting drinks from other people.

However, what I would also drill into their heads, is no matter what happens, if they or one of their mates drinks themselves into oblivion, then you call for help. They won't be in trouble, they just need to act. Teach them about the recovery position and some basic first aid.

When I was growing up, if I had gotten really drunk, I knew I could call my parents for help, I knew if one of my friends was passed out drunk, that I could call for help, some of my friends would not have done as they would be scared that they would get caught drinking.

Agree with everything else in your post, DayMan, not least the bit about letting them know they can always contact their parents: that is absolutely essential. Just don't particularly think those ciders will necessarily stop them from also having their friends' vodka: ime it doesn't. But otherwise, everything you said, definitely.

Just a heads up - when I was 16, I used to ring my friends' mothes to pretend to be MY mother and explain why X can't be home tonight, but I'll run her home in the morning. I susppect you've been had, OP, and that you never spoke to anyone's mother

corythatwas oh no it probably won't, but it gives them the option.

If you get a chance to speak to the mum I would pleasantly say "I wish you had told me the truth and I would have picked up DD". That way she will know that you know what's been going on and you can see what she says. I would be wary of her from now on and set some guidelines for your DD if she carries on with the friendship. Possibly the mum found herself out of her depth at the party and called you without thinking what she was doing, or she wants to be cool and keep your DD's "secret" for her. Either way she didn't provide the level-headed support that most parents would hope for in this sort of situation.
Also, I don't think I would trust someone that had lied on a phone call like that. I am sure that most of us tell the odd little white lie, especially by text, but I find the lying in conversation with you rather telling of her character!

It's very very unlikely someone becomes an alcoholic in later life because they had a glass of wine occasionally with their parents at dinner, in fact blaming this is the worst way of abdicating personal responsibility and enabling someone.

There are many complex reasons someone becomes an alcoholic but it's pretty much never because their parents taught them to drink responsibily and didn't make it the forbidden fruit.

In fact believing someone when they tell you they are an alcoholic becayse their parents let them taste alcohol or have a glass of wine occasionally with dinner, is quite surprising really.

If you look at the continent, for example Italy, I come from an Italian family, from a young age, we were allowed a trickle of wine with lemonade in it, with Sunday lunch, this is very common, booze was something that was enjoyed responsibly, not to get drunk. There should be no mystery, no forbidden fruit, no banning of it, because this is what makes kids want to experiment.

And whatever way you cut it, a kid who doesn't know their limits, doesn't know how to drink responsibly, when thrown into an environment where are others are drinking, is very much at risk.

Possibly the mum found herself out of her depth at the party and called you without thinking what she was doing, or she wants to be cool and keep your DD's "secret" for her

Or perhaps she was like me, and found herself with a drunk girl explaining how her parents hated her and she'd be better of dead, that no one wanted her, that she wished she could die.

I'm sure the parents had no clue what her daughter was saying, but just as much I had no clue if what the daughter was telling me was true or not, but I was aware there was more of a risk if it was true, so I didn't tell.

blintness a horrible situation and a different scenario, we hope.
I have skimmed the thread again, and find myself wishing we did have >18 drinking laws here.
Our parties round here finish at 11 for that age group. I have heard horror stories/intervened in similar, someone's drunk/potentially spiked/drug dd screaming in a front garden, amongst other thing.
So horrified and sad at your loss end
A DS just died in Newcastle for stupid drinking. Many hospitalised all over the country with alchohol poisoning spiked over the last few weeks of stupid uni achoholism.
I stupidly trusted two girls, one of my dd and her friend on a s/over when I was away for one night (17 at the time) kept noticing smell of sick after my return. Kept telling dd this, nothing, clearly was very lied to, every time I turned hoove on smelt sick, eventually found, stripped and boil washed a cushion and cover with no sign of any stain/sick, just clear liquid, my guess vodka. Bloody horrified and not to be trusted.

Her abusive f will think this kind of thing is hilarious and would absolutely encourage it,nothing I can do, except be the pain in the arse that bags on about alcoholism, huge risks, life threatening, not to mention anti-social in the extreme.

Where is OP? Has there been further clarification.

I am glad for threads like this that thrash out the horror stories and devastating impact.
Awful to hear about the drunken lurching/vommitting/pic taking and sharing.
It's wrong on so many levels.
I have always taken the view of social drinking, slowly! Enjoy a social drink, nothing else ever. I am reappraising, and now with all the other likelihoods once alchohol is involved, zero tolerance might be the only way to halt this horrendous problem, but for govt resistence at all the tax loss!
It would save a helluva lot of police and NHS resources which can beput to far better use for something so easily halted. Change the law, and now I understand those in the states find our laws weird, they give control to parents, but look what happens!!

bluntness I mean (I literally changed that 3 times and it still slipped through - can we start a war at phone manufacturers!)

That's the problem with kids getting wasted though, it's not like adults, and it's not over a long period. It's not you see them getting tipsy and then drunker and drunker. And let it go on. That's not what happens. Literally they tend to drink it fast, and then be fine one minute and out of it the next, becayse they don't know how to handle it. They don't know their limits, they don't understand the impact. And they misjudge it and they misjudge it fast.

Unless you're watching them completely all the time, it can literally happen in twenty mins you turn your back. Where they down it. And then youre the one who has to deal with someone else's kid who can't control themselves like the others and thinks they are cool.

It's really easy to say oh I woild do this, or I would do that. But the reality is it's very difficult when you're on the spot. The op has no clue what her daughter was telling that mother, how quickly she drunk and how quickly it happened, even if it was the end of the evening, when she had had one or two and her inhibitions were down.

The op doesn't even know what that woman did to help her child. It could have been like me, holding her hair whilst she puked, getting water in her, washing her clothes, putting her in the recovery position, checking on her all night long, and listening to a stream of hysteria about her parents in between vomiting everywhere.

Honestly, you can't judge it till you're faced with it.

Bluntness Yes I can imagine that scenario being tough to deal with. Deciding whether to tell the parents what is going on is difficult, and could stir up problems for the teenager. I just think that the party mum made things worse by suggesting the taxi home was a bad idea. It seems to be a way for her to cover her tracks when she has apparently allowed excessive drinking to go on at her house. Maybe the op will come back with a clearer idea of what went on.

Bluntness yes it's true about teenage drinking and I think a reason why drinking vodka and other spirits in particular should be banned from parties. Obviously easier said than done as the teens can be incredibly sneaky and inventive! They are downing horrendous amounts mixed with a bit of Coke in a very short time

I'd be straight round there asking why she thought it was appropriate to lie to me about my own child's health.

If that was my DD, I'd be getting her home at that hour no matter what state she's in. That stupid woman can't be trusted.

Obviously easier said than done as the teens can be incredibly sneaky and inventive! They are downing horrendous amounts mixed with a bit of Coke in a very short time

And that's the problem, they are sneaky and they do it fast. It doesn't even take that much often, especially if it's a female who may be very slim, who hasn't really drunk before. It doesn't take much for them to be off their faces.

Well, we have no reason think this is the same situation, there was a huge difference in yours, blunt, that DC 'claimed' parents would almost kill her. What teen doesn't do that when in a very drunken mess, I would be horrified if one of mine 'slipped away' in that situation and I was denied access, in fact blatantly lied to to keep me away from doing those things for my own DC and making the life and death decisions for someone else's DC on that basis.
I know you were right in your situation ,based on what you were told, but hasn't a lot of this been about exactly that, 'what we're told' by teens/other parents. I would like to think i wouldnt 'hide' this but give back to parents and follow up over the issues, which is actually the issue if the DC was being totally truthful. You have taken the word of a out of control drunk and inappropriately taken responsibility for their life, and it proved so also, as didn't their dd then continue in this way, issues remaining, no doubt duping many others too?

I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying I made a decision on the spot.and it's very hard. And I'm saying the op doesn't know what this woman did to help her child or what her child told this mum.

It's very very easy to say this is what I woild do when you've never been faced with it. It's a whole different ballgame when you are, I can assure you. Before it happened to me, I'd also have said I'd have told the parents and got them to come pick her up. When put on the spot I didn't.

Do I take responsibility for her continuing to drink no, I'm sorry, you can't lay that on me, whatever caused that girl to behave as she did that's about her and her parents.

Io do get that, and teens do get away with so much based on these heart-felt pleas to compassionate parents who only want to help. Im not intending to say it in a blaming way. It does mean that so much slips through the net. It's extremely hard when faced with that situation. My point was about the main issue being missed, that it meant she went under her parents radar, which made it a non-problem to them, and their dd continued in this bent.
The family have a massive issue to sort, and I'd want to know, as I think you would, sorry it wasn't meant to be blaming, just one to think around for any reading, including me.

If I'm brutally honest, I'd say the girl abused our hospitality and abused my daughters friendship, my daughter was appalled and actually said " who the fuck does that". This girl knowingly came to my home, brought booze with her and downed it.

We stayed up till about 5 in the morning with her, from about 10 pm when it occurred, and it was till both my husband and I were sure she wasn't at further risk, and when we put her to bed. We actually made up beds in the room next to us, as opposed to letting them sleep in thr bedtoom, and we put her in the recovery position and told our daughter she couldn't sleep, she had to watch her in case she puked, and it could be fatal. We then checked on her as said every fifteen to twenty mins and my daughter was awake throughout. We got no sleep that night, And my daughter was embarrassed about it and very angry.

We understand sh went to a festival and within an hour or so of arriving they had to call the paramedics she was that bad, and the school prom she downed a bottle of wine before it even started and was puking up. My daughter actually told thr teachers at the start of the evening and that's when her parents came to get her.

I've met her parents and I'd say they come across as the most up tight, puritanical people you'd ever meet, and they managed to raise a daughter that at seventeen got wankered at every opportunity and didn't know how to behave. Whatever was going on there, was not something I'll ever take responsibility for. I took responsibility in my home, but I feel it was unfair we were put in that position.

And she was never allowed or invited back in our home, and that was our daughters decision. Their friendship ended that night.