Angry with son for abandoning daughter on night out

[maxtheblackcat]

I need some perspective before I say anything as I’m so angry right now I could be very unfair.
I have lived a very sheltered life, I know this and try to be mindful that it can make me naive. My son who is 25 lives in London, his girlfriend works in the fashion and entertainment industry and has some friends who are actors/musicians/models. Not your household names but none the less famous and have some influence. We are down visiting son in London, my daughter who’s 19 came with us. My daughter is on a gap year, she isn’t the most confident and doesn’t really do the whole drinking/club scene. Even if she did our nearest clubs are small so a very different feel.
Some of sons girlfriends friends were planning a night out, they had a reservation at a lovely expensive restaurant and then were on the guest list for a seemingly high end/exclusive club. My daughter ended up invited, she was hesitant but decided to go as she felt it was an opportunity she didn’t want to miss, and I get it if I was 19 if want to hang out with musicians and actors and models too! She was nervous but my son and his girlfriend promised they’d keep an eye on her.
We don’t hear anything most of the night until about half past midnight when my daughter calls me in tears, she says she stepped out as she felt really uncomfortable, that she’d gone to the bathroom and the girl who had got them on the guest list was sniffing coke, older guys were being provocative, she didn’t know where son or his girlfriend were. I told her to call him and get him to either put her in a cab back to the hotel or take her home, she was panicking and not used to London at all and nervous of being in a cab alone late at night.
Typically he didn’t answer, she tried the girlfriend too no answer, we tried them both. We then told her to go back in and find him but the security guard wouldn’t let her unless the girl who she was a guest off (so girlfriends friend) came out and verified who she was and let her in. I’m not sure if this is standard practice but obviously, my DD doesn’t know this girl at all and had no way of contacting this girl and the security guard wasn’t helpful at all. My daughter was panicking and a group of girls walking by noticed and helped her get a cab back to the hotel. Luckily she’s here with us now and while shaken up she’s okay. We have always taught our kids to never be around people doing drugs and had a “fly with the crows, shot with the crows” mantra. My daughter said this is the first time she’d ever actually seen anyone doing lines of cocaine and the men were being so sleazy.
We still haven’t heard from my son which makes me think he hasn’t even noticed that she isn’t there!!

AIBU to be absolutely disgusted with him and beyond angry? He knew that his sister was new to all of this and promised to look out for her! My husband thinks it’s unfair to ask him to babysit his adult sister and she just shouldn’t have gone if she wasn’t going to be able to handle it. He thinks it was naive of me to think models, actors and musicians wouldn’t be doing drugs.

Username checks out at least.

He didn’t go anywhere. He was with their drinks. She chose to leave the club while on a bathroom trip with a female friend.

Am remembering the first time I ever went to a club, aged 18. I acquitted myself rather memorably. 😂. It was a busy club but everything was going okay until the strobe lights came on. Then ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.

I was convinced I was having an epileptic fit (item: I do not have epilepsy) and that I was DYING and demanded to be taken out RIGHT AWAY. So there were me and my pal, wandering the streets of a busy Scottish city late Friday night without a mobile phone (it was the mid 90s) and not a jacket in sight until we found an all-night cafe and I got over myself.

Reader: I soon wised up.

Agree with this. You don’t need to be a seasoned clubber to have some resilience and common sense. She sounds a bit pathetic tbh.

I’m worried how you and your DD will cope when she starts uni. You both seem overly anxious.

I can’t understand how a 19 year old doesn’t know how to get a taxi.

I would use this incident as a sign that she needs to become a lot more independent over the next few months.

Absolutely this.

Even if her brother had accompanied her to the toilet, waited for her outside, shielded her eyes from the drugs and knocked down any man who glanced in her direction, he isn't going to be by her side forever and by 19 she really should have basic adult life skills in place.

That was her parents' job.

I'd be a bit cross with him that he didn't look after her especially with the drug taking going on among his friends. So have a word about that.
But I don't hear my phone ring when I'm in Tesco, so I'm not surprised they didn't answer.
She really shouldn't have stepped out of the club without making sure they'd let her back in, so that's a good lesson learnt.
Ignore the people telling your DD to grow up etc, if you're from a small town you really don't know how you'll react to being in a London nightclub until you're in one.

Interestingly casually attitudes to coke and drugs on this thread. Coke is phenomenally addictive and incredibly harmful, often mixed up with other chemicals. I'd be horrified to know my dc was involved in this scene.

I used to go to clubs and have never had a sleazy drunks touch me up. For anything to happen, pub or club, there'd be at least some eye contact and interaction, generally referred to as flirting. Who are these people happy to be groped in passing? I am confused to say the least.

Here is a warning when drug use tips people over the edge. The young man is also schizophrenic but his behaviour hasn't been helped by drugs.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13976285/How-mummys-boy-1million-home-fell-wrong-crowd-killed-devoted-mother-kitchen-knife-swallowing-cocktail-hard-drugs-evading-murder-charge.html#comments

That all sounds very much like many nights out I had at that age, apart from freaking out at people doing lines of coke. That was commonplace and you just ignored them. We also didn’t have mobiles then so you had to make a decision about what to do if you couldn’t find your friends. People do get separated at clubs, they are packed and noisy and it can be hard to see people in the crowd and time passes before you know it. Add in alcohol and drugs into the mix. Perhaps suggest to your daughter in future to have an agreed meeting point to check in at a certain time and to put Uber on her phone. Being able to leave and get home safely without your friends is a skill she really should be leaning.

If the son and his girlfriend had ‘promised’ to look after her, like you said in your post, everything else is irrelevant (whether she’s sheltered or not for a 19 year old). A promise is a promise.

No one is advocating for drug use here, and no one needs the daily fail telling us cocaine is bad for you.

But the mere sight of another person doing drugs (DD wasn’t asked to do any) should not send a person into a blind panic that causes them to put themselves in harms’ way.

And what does that looking after involve? The son did. It was the daughter who ran off out the club without telling her brother

But she did leave and he didn’t give a shit. Knowing she left and knows nothing about these situations he should have been calling her until he found her. I can’t believe that that’s too much to expect from a brother. And it’s ok for a brother not to appreciate the risk his sister was in once he realised he hadn’t seen her for 2 hours.

Many people don’t know the difference between black cabs and taxi cabs - I didn’t for months despite living in London. I shudder at how much worse my experiences could have been but at least my housemates always looked out for me on nights out knowing how naive I was. All my worst experiences of London were from taking risks while alone that I didn’t appreciate at the time were risks (I.e. coming home from the office at 2am and walking the shorter route down an alleyway). I think all the more experienced Londoners should assume a babysitting role of new arrivals if they’ve befriended them and invited them on a night out - particularly of young women unused to big cities.

OP’s daughter clearly didn’t know she wouldn’t be let back in if she left the club- you won’t know that if you’re not clubbing regularly in a big city. In my local clubbing experiences I always got let back in.

Maybe helping her to build up her resilience rather than being angry with your DS would be a better use of your time.

These are life experiences she's probably going to experience time and time again. It's not ideal your DS wasn't checking in more but it's also not unusual

I can't get past the fact so many people are ignoring the fact that he was keeping an eye on her. Je knew she'd gone to the loo and he knew she wasn't alone.

But then she left.

That was her choice and absolutely nothing to do it him.

Not only was she the one who fled the club, she's also 19, an adult, and should be capable of looking after herself. It's not a man's responsibility to chaperone and look after a woman whenever they go anywhere, assuming you haven't made this post from Saudi Arabia

OP’s daughter clearly didn’t know she wouldn’t be let back in if she left the club- you won’t know that if you’re not clubbing regularly in a big city.

Her brother told her this, apparently she didn't hear

Hmm. I'm a bit torn.

My own DD went to Uni at 17, hours away in a different city. My son did the same at 18.

At 20, I was married, owned my own flat, and was living in London (not my home town).

You seem to be babying a 19 year old!

She was incapable of getting a cab without help? Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds? You wanted her to go back in the club, and find her brother, so that he could "put her in a cab", like she's some kind of incapable idiot?

Short of her brother holding her hand all night, of course there would be times he didn't have eyes on her. She went to the loo and then left the club, which was stupid!

You need to cut the apron strings. You are not doing her any favours by mollycoddling her.

She will cope because uni builds those things up slowly (unless she’s planning to study in London). That was exactly my experience of uni.

Small town to fancy night out in London is a huge jump.

There were some misunderstandings with the folk she was with, including not being aware that this friend would be using drugs, and the poor girl panicked. An upsetting experience for her but she’ll have learned a lot about clubs and about looking after herself in future. Now is the time for you to help her learn from it, not blame your son.

Ah well, it was an experience!
She's safe and sound, which is the main thing. Ideally she'd have put the Uber app in her phone before going.

Keeping her by her side? Watching her 24/7? Especially if her character is as the OP has described! If he didn’t want to do this he should have just said no to her coming? What’s the point of an empty promise?

It's not a man's responsibility to chaperone and look after a woman whenever they go anywhere

And if people believe the world is a dangerous place for a young woman then that is more of a reason to make sure she can take basoc steps to protect herself, not less.

If you’re in London too, why didn’t you or your DH go to meet her/ pick her up? I am with your DH on this and at 19 she really should know how to get a taxi.

I would also add, me and my mates started clubbing at 15. With no brothers looking out for us. 🙄

I can't believe so many people are still saying it wasn't the son's responsibility to look after his sister - it's something that he said that he would do, he willingly took on responsibility for it, while sober! He is a 25 year old man, he's well old enough to have a child and be responsible for them, a nervous and naive 19 year old sister should have been easier and less onerous than that.

What happened inside the club sounds normal for clubbing, but normal for clubbing isn't normal for somebody who isn't used to clubbing, and clubbing in London at that.

And what's with blaming the 19 year old/parent for being naive/overwhelmed?
I think it's normal and reasonable for a 19 year old to have found the whole thing overwhelming. I'm in my 40s and my generation had a very different experience of introduction to nightclubs and bars and drinking culture in general than this lot tend to - they're not as interested in drinking and nightlife as we used to be, and the world of teenagers and their nightlife was different even before the pandemic hit, and it certainly didn't bounce back to what it was before. If she's just not done much nightlife, the groping, how easily you are separated from your friends, how you can't get hold of anybody because they can't hear their phones etc WILL be all new experiences for her, and it's a lot all at once on top of loud music and darkness with flashing lights and having no choice but to be squeezed packed in a busy venue like sardined amongst sweaty bodies and drunkeness, both her own and everybody else's. Add in people on drugs, particularly coke, who can be real selfish arseholes. Put it all at the end of a day of tourism in a city you don't know, and put her with only one person who she really knows out of a large group and it's easy to understand how she got to the point of overwhelm. What a shame the bouncer was such a dickhead and didn't put her in a cab - but thank goodness for the kindness of the group of young women she encountered.

And nobody is comfortable and used to navigating London, particularly not in the small hours, until they have experienced it. I was well used to travelling alone when I first visited London in my late 20s, and I was as well prepared as I could be - I still was a bit nervous and found it stressful!

I'm glad everybody ended up okay. I understand the son's point of view too, I just think he was naive not to have been on the lookout for her coming back within a reasonable time frame and that he should have been checking his phone within 30 minutes or so. But I do think that was naievity not worse.