Do you allow your 17-year-old to…

[Topray]

Have completely unrestricted and unsupervised phone access (so not even having to leave phone downstairs at nighttime)

Work part-time if still at school or college.

Learn to drive (either self-funded from wages or with parental help)

Travel in a car driven by a 17-year-old

Stay overnight at the home of a friend you do not know

Use public transport alone at night

Regulate their own sleep, even if this means getting out of bed at 3pm on a weekend

Stay home alone overnight or for multiple days

Be out and about without you know really knowing exactly where they are at any given moment

Mine aren’t that age yet but it was yes to all when I was 17.

I can top that @clary. The older sister of one of DD’s friends was having some “alone time” with a guy at uni and her Mum started calling her asking why she wasn’t in her own room. The poor girl was 19!! 🤣🤣
I completely understand that trackers are useful and her Mum is nice but abit OTT!

Omg. I imagine she removed the app after that. How rude of her mother.

Everything except public transport at night, which she wouldn’t do anyway.

Only 15 and still yes to most. Obvs not the driving!
Phone is fairly unrestricted bar some minor parental controls installed.
Has a little Sunday job (only an hour) and volunteers one sat a month elsewhere.
Stays at a friends from time to time, only met him and his mum briefly once after the first sleepover.
Spent most of covid home alone from around age 11/12 as I had to work. Has recently done his first night alone whilst I did a night shift because he didn’t want to go to family.
Apart from waking him up for school sleep is self regulated. He often sleeps in past lunch on a weekend.
Never have a clue where he is most the time when he goes out not that he goes out often, especially this time of year.

He doesn’t really go out at night and cycles everywhere so he’d cycle not use public transport.
Too young to drive.

Do you get to choose whether to “allow” a 17 year old to work part time? 🤔

I wrote the application for mine. 😁

Why didn’t they apply themselves?

He was busy with exams, and I had time. He might have got to it before the deadline, and then I would have read it over if asked, or he might not have done. I could have left it to chance, with or without reminders, but it was too good an opportunity to miss. It's the best job in town for a busy teenager (casual, and relatively well paid) and they only advertise it once a year. (His older brother had the same job).

He did review the application before we submitted it, so it was still a learning experience for him.

From experience with my older son, some scaffolding for the first few job applications can help them to raise their game. I'm not in the push-them-in-without-a-lifebelt to see if they sink or swim camp.

Technically new qualifiers i believe shouldn't be driving their mates about , due to insurance issues. I would worry about that too. Yes to, all other questions just need to encourage them to let u know they safe odd text put your mind at ease

Surely it depends on the 17yo? I can well imagine allowing most of these when ds reaches 17, but know that dsis would have a few nos in there for my nephew - with good reason, too. Phone access is a big one for her. If she let him have it, he'd be on it all night - literally - and it would have a huge impact on him and his ability to function. She knows this because she's tried. He just cannot manage his own screen time. Likewise his choice of friendships is questionable.

Are you leaving your 15yr old all night regularly alone?

There's a massive difference between doing everything for them and a push-them-in-and-see-if-they-swim approach though. Surely most people fall somewhere in the middle - sit with their dc for the first few applications and give them a few pointers on how to improve their application? How on earth do they learn to function in the real world if you do all the thinking, all the organising for them? You're doing nothing to support them in gaining crucial life skills by rescuing them all the time. Life is busy, multi-tasking and prioritisation are essential. They won't always have mum (or a willing wife!) to do their life admin for them.

What insurance issues? Can people stop making things up.

@Newchapterbeckons

Whats wrong if she is? My parents went on holiday when I was 15. I stayed home. So what? If you’ve done your job right as a parent then a 15 year old is perfectly fine and capable.

I left a week after my 18th birthday to go on a gap year on my own. Didn't use an agency, booked everything myself. One of the things that had helped me build up to that point was an independent holiday with friends in Europe when we were 17, as well as a city trip with one friend to Berlin. And before that, a weekend-long city trip a few hours away from our home town when we were 16.

I think it's (as other posters say) exactly this kind of scaffolding that helps teenagers. Instead, I see so many 18 year olds (I work at a university) whose first real taste of freedom and the responsibility that goes with, is once they're at university. And in some ways that's also fine, or at least it used to be. They had to adjust, would maybe fail some assignments in the first semester, re-do it, learned their lesson and would do okay in the end. But now (especially with tuition fees and parental contributions) many feel like they can't fail at university, not even a single assignment. So we get students asking us to almost write their assignment for them, because they are too worried about not doing well. And if we don't, and they don't do well, rather than reflecting on it and learning a lesson, we get emails from parents enquiring about their child's grades. And then there are threads like another one asking why young people have no resilience nowadays.

That's reactionary bollocks - all too common on these threads. 🙂

The written application was just the first step - he reviewed/submitted it, did the face-to-face interview, passed the skills competency test, and now has a good job. In the process he has learnt far more than if I'd left him to revise for his exams then said "I told you so" when the deadline passed.

There's nothing reactionary in taking the middle ground approach and allowing your almost-adult-child to take responsibility, with appropriate supportive safety net, for their own destiny. It's a sensible approach that most parents take😊

I would say that's exactly what I did. 🙂

You might delineate the middle ground differently to me in this exact situation, but that doesn't put us miles apart. I expect there are parallel situations where I might find your approach a bit questionable too - each to their own.

True. Parenting effectiveness is subjective. Either way, I suppose the common denominator is an engaged parent who wants the best for their child, which is a good thing.

I am quite sensitive to boys in particular being spoon fed, because I do see that happen with far more frequency than with girls (not saying that's the case with you, purely a general observation). I have one of each, so am even more interested, and I suppose invested! 😉

I would love my 2 boys to be as pro-active as me, but they are laid back, like DH - it's nature, not nurture. I've been known to nudge DH into job applications too - not form filling, but "leading from behind" by rooting out good opportunities online when he is too busy to look himself, or hasn't been looking in all the right places. That's my nature, and we're a good team. When I scaffold my boys, it's always done with the intention of them learning from the process and becoming independent. Some DC's do get there faster than others. I do what I feel I need to do to help mine get there as fast as possible.

Yes to all. They did all of those things, including passing their driving tests and driving their own cars at that age.

Yep, you have to start with the middle ground and then they gain confidence and the skills to do it themselves.

For exmaple, my daughter found her first pt job and I sat with her to explain what they wanted to see in the application/what it meant and she did the second one herself.

I left home at 17 to go to uni in another city. I was left home alone just turned 16 for a few weeks when parents went on holiday.
Guess it depends on maturity of child

There are no such rules at all re insurance but definitely driving mates/being driven around is a big worry.