To cancel DD’s birthday?

[NattyGeo]

NC’d to avoid being identified. My DD is set to have her 18th on a Thursday. We have booked a spa place with a restaurant, her and 5 friends have use of the swimming pool and sauna and will be having an 8 course tasting menu after. Costing us £350. Thinking of cancelling because she went to the People’s March when I told her she wasn’t allowed. She mentioned it on Thursday, a group of friends were going. she is very anti-Brexit and into politics (a real budding leftie), but I said no because it meant taking a National express at 4.30am to get to London by mid-morning and TBH I just didn’t see the point in doing it when we leave the EU next week! It would also mean taking a day off from her Saturday job. She sulked and stropped but I stood firm.

Yesterday morning I went to wake her as couldn’t hear her get up for work. She’d put pillows in her bed where her body should be to make it look like she was there and was gone! I rang her 10 times, no answer and on the 11th time I left a voicemail to say if she didn’t call back in 10 minutes I’d be reporting her to the police as a missing person. She called back, was in the bus and said sorry for sneaking out but she really wanted to go. She’d caught an Uber at 4am!

She arrived back at 2am this morning on the bus. I went to pick her up from the bus station (on my , she wanted to be dropped off no doubt to avoid me), and when she got in the car she told me to “wipe that look off my face”. She says she’s sorry for being dishonest but not sorry for going. I’m furious. She’s usually good as gold and has never done anything like this. WIBU to cancel Thursdays party as a punishment?

The only reason she sneaked out is because you put her in a position that she had to sneak out to follow her beliefs. You caused the sneaking out.

She is almost 18 a full adult and as such should have the right to follow her ideals, her beliefs.

I'm glad she did. But with that is also the realisation that there maybe consequences such as not having her birthday treat.

But don't think you were not the cause of her being sneaky. She had two choices not follow and defend her beliefs or sneak out. As you had made it abundantly clear you were not going to allow her to go.

YABVVVU.
She's nearly 18 and that's actually good abd applaudable that she did stand up for her beliefs and go.
Are you more offended at her disobedience or is there more to it than that..do her political views clash with yours?
No point? Tell that to all the people who did go then.
As a previous poster said we're not leaving this week anyway.
To say that there's no point,you should be teaching your daughter that it's right to make a stand rather than just give in and shrug your shoulders.
If you cancel her birthday you will regret it in years to come.

Maybe if more people were as politically engaged as your daughter is we wouldn't be in this mess. Good on her for taking an interest in her future. I don't understand people. People say teenagers are useless, incapable, not as independent or mature as "we" were, unable to thrive in the real world etc. and then they do something like this and they get told off and punished. Doesn't make sense to me.

Well done OP for managing to resolve this with your dd. A word of warning, I grew up in a household where I was told ‘you live under my roof and you’ll do what I say etc’ and I was out of there the same month I turned 18 and never went back. My mother cannot see how her behaviour when I was 15, 16, 17 is still affecting our relationship nearly 30 years later.

Carveitup
Same here. My mother still brings up events 30 years later. For her I was horrid and massively unreasonable. Yet she’s the one, who controlled me. Her behaviour was crazy making and in my teens I reacted strongly.

Natty

I'm glad you didn't cancel.

In some ways you sound like my mother and our relationship never recovered from my teenage years.

I going to pick up on the Uber comments you have made. From your dd's point of view you made her take a riskier option, had you given permission for her to go she would have been picked up by her friend's mum.

It must be hard to let go but it is sometimes worth looking at what, 'everyone else' is doing. No there will not be a case when everyone is doing something / going somewhere but if most of her friends are, and the mum is giving a lift then maybe you are the one out of step.

I was put in risky situations by my mother's control or what she saw as completely normal things.

So at 18 and in VI form I had to be in at 11 on a Saturday night. I would neet a group of people and we would go to a couple of pubs. At 10.30 I had to leave my friends and walk across town on my own to catch the bus that would get me close to home but I still had to walk a couple of stops on my own.

Had I been allowed to stay out until 11.15 I would have caught the same bus as my friends which went a different quicker route and got off at the stop outside my front door.

Another time I had been out with a friend in a car to the next town, on the way back it started snowing, by the time I got to my friend's house it was obvious it had been snowing much longer.

I phoned from my friends to let my parents know I was safe. My mother insisted I come home. I phoned several cabs (friend was not going out again in the snow) who either said 'no' or asked if it was actually possible to get to my friend's street.

Fortunately for me my friend's mother wouldn't let me walk home and sent me to the spare room. I would have walked, because I was scared of my mother and if she said jump you had to jump. I was not dressed for walking in snow and it was about 4 miles.

I think she (friend's mother) must have spoken to my mother because I didn't get the bollocking I was expecting.

The only reason I continued living at home was because she was also financially abusive so I couldn't afford to move out.

sounds like you got things sorted op.i see your point and hers.what I see doesn't make you a bad mum.it makes you a protective and scared and angry mum=perfect and normal!your going to get many opinions when people are reading and aren't there in ur mental and psychical footsteps and aren't and haven't lived with you and ur dd.so its easy to read and assume or not think of these things you do.
keep talking to her.keep apoligising and setting boundaries and caring.its all you can do.

It’s scary reading the stories of how over controlling mothers in this case led to teens being put at risk. I always preferred a house full of teens to come back to ours so that they were safe after a night out and travelled here together- boys and girls. They were always so quiet when they came in too.

You forced her to sneak out by banning from doing something important for no good reason.

I would be rewarding her for going on the March. You’ve basically tried to teach her that her voice is not important.

Wow why would you even consider cancelling? You should be very proud. How can you say there's no point to expressing your democratic opinion? I wouldn't use the phrase "budding leftie" either, I think it's patronising.

Cancel. Your DD needs to know that actions have consequences. It was incredibly rude and dangerous for her to have acted in the way she did. Her lying and failing to tell you where she was put her in danger and caused you angst and worry.

I suspect that those who have advised you to regard her as a passionate believer with conviction are those who supported her cause and are equally contemptuous of the democratic process. They, too, are acting like impulsive, thoughtless teenagers.

You do not need to ignore her birthday, but spending £350 on a special treat to reward such poor behaviour would not be appropriate.

Jolly glad you have absolutely nothing to do with teaching my children Teacher22!

What democratic process, Teacher22? Do you mean the one that has been proven to be riddled with fraud? The one that the government has admitted would be set aside for serious breaches of electoral law but for the fact that it was a purely advisory vote?

Teacher22. Wow. Just wow. Are you for real or are you trolling?

Teacher22 ‘actions have consequences’ - yup, they do. Treat a nearly-18 year old like a child who can’t be trusted to have her own thoughts, ideas and actions, and she’ll treat that person like a control freak she has no wish to be around and escape as soon as possible. Or was that not the kind of consequence you were thinking of?

WOW, you sound horrible! Good for your daughter, I say! I only wish I'd been so socially aware at her age!

You should be celebrating the thoughtful, independent young woman you seem to have accidentally raised!

I say cancel the birthday at your own risk. YOU are the one who has behaved badly, and considering doing worse!

zingally, I'm guessing you didn't read the OP's posts before posting yourself. She changed her mind rather a long time ago.

@ScarletBitch

"You cannot tell a 17 year old where they are and not allowed to go"
Um, yes you can, it's called being a parent. A 17 year old is not an adult. If you don't care to know where your children are at all times, that's you. I'd say the vast overwhelming majority of parents are not that lax.

@yyz112 She is 17 years old and living with her parents. She is still legally a child, of course her mother has the right to tell her what to do!

it's called being a parent. A 17 year old is not an adult.

If you’ve done your job properly as a parent they should be pretty bloody close.

I had a mother that tried to control me. I moved out at 17. It was the making of me. Parenting is about support, not control.

She is still legally a child, of course her mother has the right to tell her what to do!

Only if you think home should be like an army camp.

I am shocked at the amount of people who would think nothing of their child, a 17 year old teenage girl, sneaking out at 4:30am and getting an uber driven by God knows who, to God knows where. And then the girl being rude to her mother. If this is the lax standard of parenting these days, no wonder we are in such a mess. I'm shocked at a lot of these comments! She is a 17 year old teenage girl!!! Not a 30 year old woman.

If this is the lax standard of parenting these days, no wonder we are in such a mess.

The 1800s called. They want you back.

"Only if you think home should be like an army camp."

So by that, I gather you also allowed your 5 year olds to come and go as they wish?

There is a big difference to an 'army camp' and showing common sense and basic respectful manners. I don't consider sneaking out at 4:30am, catching a lift with a stranger (uber is basically hitch-hiking in my view), and lying to her friends as mature, either. Imo, the child has shown she is not as mature as others here say they are.

"The 1800s called. They want you back."
I'd rather be concerned about a 17 year old teenage girl getting into a car with a stranger at 4:30am, than not give a shit like you.