To be livid with DS - or should I be chalking this up to youthful silliness?

[GerbilsForever24]

DS is 13. He has a friend over for a sleepover. I've long given up policing bed time during sleepovers so am used to them all being up until all hours.

I just woke up and clearly my spidey senses were tingling as I went to check on them. Only to discover they were nowhere in the house. Turns out they'd climbed out of the window in the lounge and were sitting on a small footbridge just down from our house.

I am furious on about 50 different levels. I am not really the paranoid type, but let's face it - 2 13 year old boys wondering around on a Saturday night is not a no-risk scenario and even if they didn't get into "trouble" or nothing bad happened to them, if anyone had seen them coming out the window that would have likely generated a call to the police. Not least because we have a known gang of young teenage boys around here who are an absolute menace and the entire neighbourhood are on watch for them - no one would have known these were just two stupid 13 year olds sneaking out rather than this existing group of twits. Plus, because they went out the window and it was therefore left open, I am pretty unhappy about being left alone, asleep upstairs while my house was completely exposed.

I have taken their phones and sent them both to bed. I was livid. And yes, there was some shouting - although I think the super scary type where I'm clearly furious but am not screaming like a banshee.

DS has come in to my room crying and apologising and saying he didn't think about the risk. I've told him I accept that but there will still be consequences.

Full disclosure, he has ADHD as well so that adds an element of thoughtless to things.

It's not unreasonable to be this angry is it? Part of me thinks "isn't this just normal silliness"? And am I over reacting because DS is in a phase of thinking every rule and boundary in place is just to irritate him, vs because there's an actua reason.

Lovely way to spoil the end of their summer holiday.

Yes they were silly
Yes climbing out of a window is dangerous
Yes they needed to be told off

but do you expect two teenagers to sit and read books and then go to sleep? All normal teenage boys are silly (you will have a shock when he gets to around 15/16 and booze/girls are involved). You should not have lost your temper or sent him to bed upset.

So basically you agree with the op?

Although I can't see where op lost her temper.

And tough shit they spoiled the end of their school holidays and her DS was upset, their own fault.

I'm quite interested in this response. It suggests that I am the one who has "spoiled the end of their holiday" and completely removes any responsibility or agency from these two boys.

Nothing is ruined. I made them breakfast, we chatted. they're both a bit shamefaced and, frankly, tired, this morning. DS is subdued as DH sent him a message saying he's disappointed in him leaving me at risk like that (and it was risky - the way those windows work).

I am broadly quite a relaxed parent who encourages independence and freedom. But I also believe very strongly in accountability. Narcissism is, at its heart, an inability to take responsibility and accountability. It is recognised as something that happens becuase a child's brain does not develop properly. Most children are naturally narcissists. As parents, our job is to help guide them to learn to take responsibility and accountability and not to remain narcissists. Just like we teach them to use a toilet or to clean up after themselves or to cook or to respect other people etc etc - these are skills that have to be learned.

My comment was clearly lighthearted and you’re trying to have an argument. Go and have a cup of tea.

DS and this same friend got themselves into trouble at school a few months ago.

So the two of them have form. Definitely no more sleepovers for the forseeable.

I think once a child is secondary school age, if they're capable of the misbehaviour, they can take the consequent bollocking. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Yes it might be fun and a rite of passage and all that to sneak out at night, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be consequences if you're caught.

@GerbilsForever24 You're a great parent.

We aren’t a shouty house. I shouted at my eldest son once and my youngest never, they’re adult now. My eldest spent a lot of my money on virtual coins when those games were all the rage. He spent over £700 (not maliciously, he didn’t understand.) I went ballistic. No apology from me to him but he did apologise to me. In fact he even wrote me a sweet note (which I still have 😊).

Don’t worry op they will love telling this story to their friends at school nothing has been spoilt at all

if they had got away with it would not be half as interesting to relay

the story will be greatly exaggerated, they will have been out for hours, you were probably just about to call the police and that they then got into serious serious trouble for their behaviour as it was so bad adds to their hard boy rebellious image

No. You had to put your card details into the game. He bought all these virtual coins without thinking. I’d told him when I got the game that he wasn’t to buy anything but at some point he did. It was quite a common problem with parents finding their kids had spent hundred of pounds on virtual money. There was a legal clampdown after it I think.

I think he was about 9 or so.

It was not clear. Lax parenting is a real bugbear of mine. The consequences of it can be (and often are) catastrophic. If that makes me unchill so be it.

It sounds very much like the stuff my mates and I might have done on sleepovers at that sort of age as well. We never actually did, but I'm sure if someone suggested it, we'd have done it.

I can get that you were cross, but I think you massively over-reacted.

“Spoiled the end of their summer holiday” bollocks! Because he cried? Poor love, get him a therapist, quick! One of my DCs was hyper sensitive. She would be in tears if you so much as calmly asked “Can you clean this mess up please?” She was also quite manipulative and would turn on the water works at any hint of a reprimand.

When you watch these fly-on-the-wall programmes that are set in schools full of hard-faced teenagers, it’s quite shocking that so many have no boundaries or respect for authority. Reading the ‘gentle’ parents on this thread you can absolutely see why they’re so undisciplined.

@HRTQueen because Dh is away, he sent DS a message this morning. I haven't seen it yet but we spoke on the phone and DH said his message basically said how disappinted he was that DS went out and left me exposed like that. Then he said, "he'll probably see it as a good message - show all his friends how much trouble he was in etc"

@Anonym00se while I think it's clear that I'm NOT one of those gentle parents without boundaries, I think actually that the children without boundaries aren't necessarily the ones who are blatantly rude/disrespectful/pushing authority. those ones probably do come from the disorderd homes. The "gentle" parenting ones are the ones who calmly just not do something they're asked and who have a meltdown if a teacher so much as looks at them funny. I managed to get myself into a stand off once with a teenage girl like this. I was walking up some stairs towards the car park from the supermarket. Both hands full with heavy bags. Her and her friends were coming down the stairs on the side I was going up. Obviously, it was a lot more difficult for me to move out the way (and, you know, old fashioned politeness says you move for the older person, particularly the one carrying heavy bags) but she wasn't going to move. She literally stood there waiting for me to move and when I said, "please move out the way" she said, "No, I don't have to, you move for me." It was the most bizarre experience.

I had planned to tell the other parents, yes. But I'm hesitating now only because DS has mentioned a few times that this other boy is having a tough time at home, he thinks his parents might get divorced and I know he has two siblings who are ND with very high needs (DH and I have suspected that this friend might also have ADHD - similar to DS - but that because any additional needs are so minor in comparison to his siblings who are both at special schools, it might be going unnoticed).

The boy seems to spend a lot of time attempting to go to sleepovers at other people's houses to get away from his own home and as he's already had a bollocking from me, I don' tknow if I want to put him through that again. DS has also taken 100% of the responsibility saying it was his idea (which, I totally believe as it's the kind of thing he'd do plus it's our house and he's the one who knows the window etc).

OP hasn’t spoiled anything. And it isn’t ‘silly’. They climbed out of a window in the middle of the night and left the house unsecured, putting the OP at risk. It’s sheer luck that she woke up before anything happened, and more luck that they didn’t come to grief at that time of night, given that OP has already said there are neighbourhood trouble makers hanging around.

If they are old enough to be this irresponsible then they are old enough to take the consequences of that irresponsibility and if OP doesn’t normally shout or display this level of anger, then all the more reason they will remember it and learn the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not.

Reading some of these replies I really do wonder if some posters actually know where their kids are at night, or care.

Would you still think that if OP was posting that she hadn’t woken up in time to stop anyone getting in through the open window they left behind, or that they were still missing this morning ?

@Anonym00se Realised my post was uncearl - the shouty ones don't really have boundaries either, but they think they do (speak from experience as sadly, we have a nephew who is in this group of shouty parents and who doesn't actually have any boundaries even though his parents THINK he has loads - because they shout - and who, although young, is looking like he'll be that kid doing whatever he likes, whenever he likes.)