To not want my child to go to a friend's house when I haven't met the parents.

[orangesandlemonssaythebellsofstclements]

My son is 11 and is about to finish Y6 and start Y7 in September. The past month or so he seems to have grown up in lots of ways in a short space of time. He's come home saying he has a gf, a new girl at school, and spends a lot of time on the phone with her (he's only had a phone since he started cycling to school independently a year ago and never bothered with it. We had to remind him to charge it). Today he said he was going to cycle down to the nearby park to meet said gf and some other friends we know. He's never gone out independently to meet friends before, he's quite shy and timid but I was really happy he wanted to do this and let him go. About 20 minutes later he comes back home with this new gf in tow.
I said it was lovely to meet her but did her mum definitely know she was here and was it OK with her? I said I can't have children in my house with the parents not knowing, she said her mum does know as she texted her. I said sorry but I will need to check can I have your mums number, she willingly gave it to me and they went upstairs and I texted the mum. I don't know her name, whereabouts she lives or anything about her. I said "Hiya, it's XX, DS's mum. Just checking you are aware YY is at our house and that is OK with you? It's fine with us if it is with you, lovely to meet her" 20 mins later she texted back "yeh that's fine but back by 6 plz".
Is it just me that thinks it's a bit odd to let your kid go to other peoples houses without checking with the parents first and not knowing a damn thing about said parents? I could be a raging drug addict, passed out on my sofa with a needle in my arm with a couple of rabid dogs running around for all this woman knows.
I don't know if DS is expecting to go round to GF's house on the whim of an invite but I am not at all comfortable with it until I've met her parents.
Am I too uptight and is this just a normal part of growing up? It gives me the heebie jeebies.

Even my oldest who is 17 I tell her I need to at least have a chat with the kids parents before I let her go there.

how can she be independent if she can't do something as commonplace as going to a friend's house without permission. And how insulting to the 'kid' who has invited her, who might be 18, to treat her like a small child who has to ask mummy before she can have a friend to tea.

Yes that is bad, I agree, the 17 year old is an adult, and this is very controlling, behaviour. If a parent behaved like this with me, called for a chat I’d be very concerned about the young person.

How do you know James's parents are ok with this? They might not want his friends traipsing in and out of their home without warning.

And what if James happens not to be in and he goes to another friends house forgetting to text you. How would you know where to find him if he failed to return home?
He could be meeting older teens and getting in with a bad crowd. Kids that age are very suseptible to peer pressure.
Or he and James might go somewhere and forget to take/charge their phones, what if James' parents have no idea where they went because James is allowed even more freedom?

If Jamie’s parents are not ok they can tell Jamie.

the rest is just anxiety laden controlling angst.

If your child wants to get into a bad crowd no amount of helicoptering is going to stop them and in fact the more controlling you are the more they'll push back against it.

I'm sure Jamie's parents are perfectly capable of saying, "Sorry boys but we don't want anyone in the house today," but having said that, if you have children and you don't have plans, you should expect that they might have friends round so long as the friends are appraised of the house rules.

If your rules are that your child only goes out with a charged phone, then that should be your expectation. They might break that rule, but they also might break any other rules you have in place, that's an issue that you deal with when they get home. I don't see how knowing Jamie's parents stops your child from going off somewhere else with Jamie without a phone.

I think what's puzzling me is that many, many woman do not feel comfortable leaving the house alone, even answering the door, doing lone exercise outside, using public transport etc.
Yet there are many parents in this thread who are quite happy for the young teenagers (and not even teenagers) to be dropping into the homes of people for whom they don't even have a contact number for, or just letting their kids roam about and 'coming home when they're hungry'.
Yes, I understand that just having a mobile number doesn't remove risk, but that isn't an argument for not getting those details in the first place.

Ha! I remember when DS had been at secondary school for a matter of weeks and a new friend asked him for a sleepover for his birthday..I was ringing round everyone I knew who I thought might have come across this family , to check if they were ok ! I got a great reference via a friend of a cousin whose dc had been the same primary school as new friend. DS went, had a great time and they are still mates now in their 20s.
I understand how worrying it is, especially at 11, they still seem so young.

What if your child tells you they are staying late at school to do homework and instead goes off to James' house that is actually a crack den to meet his parents who want to enlist him as a drug mule/child prostitute, but do a good job of appearing as respectable parents, without bringing his phone which is uncharged at home?

Which is as likely to happen as some of the things on this thread.

I don’t feel scared to leave the house alone or use public transport etc as you list. And I suspect it’s a very small proportion of women who live like this, most of us get up, go to work, see family friends and don’t live in fear. Nor do we wish to teach our children to.

when mine was younger I checked if the parents were ok with it, with her, and I’d met most of the parents at school anyway, none of us phoned and asked the other if it was ok.

We sound similar. I am certainly not one of the afraid women (I'm fortunate to live where I do) and yes, I think MN is not representative.

I have the mobile numbers of a few of DS2's (15) parents - enough that if any of the lads got into trouble, someone would be able to track them down and help or whatever. So he might say "we've gone to Ben's". I might 'know' Ben only by DS mentioning him, but I know that Ben lives in e.g. the same village as DS's best mate (whose Mum I am friends with).

Honestly if, as an adult woman, you are afraid of answering your front door, leaving the house alone or taking public transportation then that's not in any way a normal life and you should be looking for mental health support. I really don't think that's "many, many" women, because the vast majority of us have to get up, get our kids to school, go to work, be an ordinary member of society and hiding in our homes only leaving with a chaperone would be impossible.

I wasn't talking about myself, but going on what I read on here, though I have since said that MN is not representative of the population.

So there's a lot of posters on here who are way more helicopter-y than I would want to be with my kids and a lot of other people that agree that OP is OTT.

Then we have a tiny segment of the population, who are over-represented on Mumsnet and on any other online forum aimed at women, who are living in such a state of anxiety that they've shut themselves off from the outside world and are dependent on others to survive. I don't really see how they relate to each other.

Oh OP this used to drive me crazy. I couldn’t believe the amount of parents who let their kids stay at our house without checking with me/us. This mainly applied to our youngest DD (now 18) when she started year 7. There was one girl in particular who pretty much stayed every weekend for about 3 months and each time her parent’s would just pull up outside. I used to ask her if they wanted to meet us but they didn’t. It was bonkers….
I had a rule that if my child was staying somewhere I would message the parents to check/thank, but if someone was staying with us, it was up to the other parents to check we weren’t serial killers, no parents checked!

In the end I messaged a mother and said I wasn’t prepared to look after her 12 year old DD while they went away nearly every weekend (which was happening). The mum replied that I’d made her feel like a bad mother.
People wouldn’t give a stranger their bank card but would happily hand over their child!

I'm taking my DS GF away in August they are 17 and I'm yet to meet her mum, my DS has also been away on holidays and I've spoke too but not met the parents.

You do get used to it..

I think you’re absolutely right! There will be children whose parents sadly have drugs in the house or are under the influence, or parent’s could be out, or there could be other people in the house who are inappropriate. It might seem over the top but I would absolutely want to know where my children were, especially at only 10 or 11!
I’ve never wanted to make it uncomfortable for the child so the first time they go to a new friends house, I take them there so I can meet the parents and check it’s ok for my child to be at their house. It doesn’t need to be meeting for coffee and getting to know them all, but meeting briefly on drop off seemed to be a good way of doing it. Then in the future I just drop the parent a text to check it’s ok for my child to go there :-)
You absolutely have to protect yourself if other children are coming in your home too as imagine if they had an accident or made an accusation.
99% of the time there’s not going to be any issue with other children’s houses but it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry xx

17?? Are they planning on going to uni and if so, will it be a local uni and they have to be home by 8pm? Once I started secondary school, the first time they'd meet my friends' parents would be when they'd pick me up from a sleepover (I didn't live near my friends).

Edited to add that OP's biggest fear should be whether her son has sex with this little girl.

I have a child the same age and I would be freaking out if he had a GF 🙈 I would be wary letting him go to her house without me dropping him off. I wouldn’t want him just going anywhere on a whim, I would want to know where he is going but I have only recently let my son start going out on his bike with friends alone. I know they are growing up and we need to start letting go a little but I don’t think you are being unreasonable at all.

The fact that you contacted the mum shows the mum that you are responsible. That is probably why she agreed .

Similar experience a few months back. 9 yr old DD wanted to invite a mate from dance class over. I did. The mum practically threw her out of the car and into our house, didn't say hi or anything, child just exited the car and into our house. Would you let your 9 year old into a random parents house? She's was a lovely girl. They had a great time. The dad came to pick her up and we had a nice chat on the doorstep, I invited him in for a brew while we waited for our daughters to appear (there was much giggling coming from DD's room...overload of cheeky sass, the dad and i weren't feeling brave enough to interrupt. He accepted then beckoned the wife to join him from the car. Never once did she make eye contact while in our house. Still doesn't at dance class. Still doesn't talk to me either. The daughter always gives me a grin though. My daughter wants to hang out again with her again, but i'm a bit reluctant. I thought the etiquette was to alternate play date locations? The girl does have two older sisters, so i do wonder if the mum was in secondary school mode...just used to being a taxi service.

She agreed before she spoke to the OP (her daughter had texted her).

There is no etiquette for play dates. If you/your daughter want the girl round then invite her.

If you've never spoken to the mother wouldn't sending DD on a playdate fall into the "letting your 9 year old into a random parents house" category, anyway?

Yes! that's why i'm a bit reluctant. I want to get to know those parents a bit better before the next playdate.

I struggled with the switch too OP but I'm a year in to secondary school (it's absolutely flown!) and I'm used to it now. TBF, I have met most of the parents of his friends now from pick ups/drop offs and various school events like football matches etc.

It's such a change from primary school where you see the parents all the time! You will adjust though, and faster then you think. They grow up so fast from end of year 6 to end of year 7. There is a massive shift in their behaviour and how independent they are. I've got 2 more to go up to high school and I think I'll cope much better next time!

I think people are being harsh. I found into about halfway through year 7 I was still meeting mums for the first time the boys went round to each others houses etc (be it at our house or theirs). So the children would arrange the meet up (with the ok from both sets of parents) and then we’d tend to have a coffee or a quick chat at drop off. It’s maybe a bit different here through as we are very rural and so are the boys friends, so parents have to drive children to meet up with their friends, so it’s more natural to pop in and have a coffee etc when dropping off. I am the opposite of a helicopter mum but I wouldn’t allow my children in a complete strangers house alone, and nor would any of the other parents I know. We’re country folk, children all pretty independent and used to roaming freely on our land and the lanes around. I know most of the other mums of my eldest’s friends now and we go to the beach together etc, but maybe it’s different where we live than in a big town or city. My youngest is only in year 5 but often goes to play down in the village (3 miles away). He knows that he can go to the playground, the cricket field, the woods and into a few friends houses as I know their parents, but that he isn’t to go anywhere else. I drop him down to the village and pick him up at a set time, but if he went somewhere else that we had’t agreed upon I would be cross - in fact a mum messaged me the other day to say her son was asking if mine could come back to their house with them. I know her so that’s fine (she asked because they also live outside of the village), but she wouldn’t have allowed it without my permission. So I think you are being perfectly reasonable to want to meet parents before your child goes to their house, even if it’s a quick chat on the doorstep as you are dropping off.