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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To cancel DD’s birthday?

633 replies

NattyGeo · 24/03/2019 16:47

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?

OP posts:
Holidayshopping · 26/03/2019 08:22

TBH I just didn’t see the point in doing it when we leave the EU next week!

Blimey-there are no words.

MoreSlidingDoors · 26/03/2019 08:22

My parents had no say or clue where I was at 17. Because I took control of my own life. I went to school, worked and paid my own way. Got my A levels, got a full time job and a part time job and bought my first house aged 19.

Compare that with the saps starting uni these days. Can’t cook, can’t manage money, giddy at the first freedoms and getting themselves into all sorts of problems. Unable to function in jobs - want everything explained, very little initiative. You really think that’s better for society?

MoreSlidingDoors · 26/03/2019 08:24

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.

Massive difference between giving a shit and needing to control. I hope at that age my daughter and I would be talking about her beliefs. I’d have been helping her to make safe arrangements to the event, so she wouldn’t have needed to sneak around!

LunafortJest · 26/03/2019 08:26

People need to cut back on the hysteria and hyperbole, there is a difference between letting your 17 year old child run riot, hitch hike, get in strangers cars at 4:30am, not tell you where they are going, etc and not being able to cook or count money. It is not one extreme or the other. That type of thinking, that it is one extreme or the other, is very immature in itself and kinda proves my point.

LunafortJest · 26/03/2019 08:28

There is a massive difference between parenting and 'control'. Being a parent is a parent's job. Sometimes though a parent needs to exercise control because the child is not able to understand the risks - such as the child in this story.

pelirocco123 · 26/03/2019 08:30

Are you sure the party isnt for a 38 year old? Most 18 year old want a party with loads of friends and loads of booze

IceRebel · 26/03/2019 08:36

There is a massive difference between parenting and 'control'.

I agree

Parenting - Discussing your concerns, talking to each other about the risks and how to minimise them.

The Uber only happened because the OP banned her from going, had she had a discussion her daughter would have taken the lift from her friends mum.

Control - of course her mother has the right to tell her what to do!

cantbearsed1 · 26/03/2019 08:42

OP I think your DD sounds mature and thoughtful. I can never understand these nearly adults or young adults who allow their parents to dictate to an unreasonable level, what they do. You were unreasonable OP, so she ignored what you said.
Cancel her 18th if you want, but if you do don't expect to maintain a good relationship with her.

cantbearsed1 · 26/03/2019 08:43

IceRebel Her DD was virtually 18. At this age your role as a parent should be an influencer, not a dictator

youknowmedontyou · 26/03/2019 08:47

YABU

@IceRebel her mother doesn't have the "right to tell her what to do", so if she meets and starts a sexually relationship with someone who mother doesn't like she can be told to end it? Her mother can tell her who to vote for? Her mother can tell her what job to take etc... I think not!

IceRebel · 26/03/2019 08:47

Her DD was virtually 18. At this age your role as a parent should be an influencer, not a dictator

I agree with you, I said as much in my post, although apologies if that wasn't clear. The quote about the mother telling her what to do was from Luna. Luna who thinks there is a difference between parenting and control, but whose version of parenting to me seems like the exact definition of control.

youknowmedontyou · 26/03/2019 08:49

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.

Would an Uber in the afternoon be safer then? Driven by an Uber driver to a destination requested!

cantbearsed1 · 26/03/2019 08:49

IceRebel Apologies, I read it too quickly and did not realise.

myrtleWilson · 26/03/2019 08:50

To be honest (and I'll get deleted for this) given that Luna was frequently deleted on a recent thread for victim blaming a pregnant woman whose partner was abusive - I'm not sure I'll put any store by her thoughts or views.

youknowmedontyou · 26/03/2019 08:51

@IceRebel I got it wrong too! Sorry!

cantbearsed1 · 26/03/2019 08:53

And parents who use a dictatorial style of parenting at this age, either have kids who ignore them, lie about what they are doing, or are immature saps who need to run everything by mummy in their twenties.

madcatladyforever · 26/03/2019 08:53

You can't cancel her 18th. It's important. Do you want her to have that lousy memory forever because she will have. I was hanging out with hells angels at that age.
She is an adult and should be encouraged to stand up for what she believes in.

Holidayshopping · 26/03/2019 08:54

I had a friend who had a mum like you-stopped her doing perfectly normal things in her teens and she ended up doing them anyway but putting herself in dangerous situations to do so entirely because of her mother’s ridiculous rules.

She doesn’t see her mum at all now.

I wonder why?

IceRebel · 26/03/2019 08:57

Haha no worries I thought it was clear the bolded parts were quotes, but obviously it wasn't the case.

For anyone who is interested my views are

Parenting - Discussing your concerns, talking to each other about the risks and how to minimise them.

TrickyKid · 26/03/2019 08:57

Yabvu. She's an adult and wanted to do something she's passionate about.
Be proud of her.

youknowmedontyou · 26/03/2019 09:00

Parenting - Discussing your concerns, talking to each other about the risks and how to minimise them.

Spot on...... the hard line clearly doesn't work as this post has shown!

Nanny0gg · 26/03/2019 09:11

Hahahahaha.

Another bucketload of posts by people who haven't read the OP's updates or any other recent posts.

This one will run and run...

k1233 · 26/03/2019 09:15

NattyGeo I had this exact situation with my mother when I was 18. Slightly different - going 10hrs away to a different capital city with then BF for a week or so. I wasn't living at home at the time, was at uni, but she said I couldn't go, just because she said so. I very politely explained to her that I respected her however "I say you can't do it, because I say no" is not a valid comment. If she persisted with such irrational statements I'd lose respect for her. As it was, all uni work was ahead and a week away was perfectly ok.

You have just learned your daughter is a young adult able to plan and make her own decisions. She wanted to go to the march, she arranged time off from work to do so as well as arranging her own transport to get there. I personally think you owe her a BIG apology for thinking you can tell her what she can and can't do. If you want her to lose respect for you, continue to say no because you said so.

I left home at 18 because of parents attempting to control me. That was a long time ago.

Yabbers · 26/03/2019 09:18

equally contemptuous of the democratic process.
The democratic process which allows the electorate to protest, you mean?

Should nobody have marched for votes? Should nobody have marched against wars? Should nobody have marched for or against strike action? Anti trump protests, womens’ marches?

All of these were a result of the democratic process, and protests changed minds of leaders.

Democracy is not saying “well, a bunch of people voted for that, we’ll just sit back and suck it up”

doodleygirl · 26/03/2019 09:18

You should be applauding your daughter. So many of today’s young people are completely lethargic about anything political.

You on the other hand should be ashamed of yourself.