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.

She just saw someone doing a thing she didn’t like, nobody died.

If she was that freaked out she should’ve gone straight back to the group rather than wandering off.

Plenty of 18 year olds have pretty much just landed in London and other cities all over the country for uni, they’re not being babysat by their older brothers.

Thats not what has been said and not what i see.
its a username set up for a different issue years ago 🙄 honestly…

The way I read it, the son wasn't even there.

DD went out with his girlfriend's friends.

Oh just stop.

You're clearly lacking in empathy.

Not all 19 year olds from the provinces are so streetwise as you think.

I am shocked that people are saying this is ok. Things have really gone downhill in the past 20 years if this is considered acceptable behaviour in clubs now. When I was a student no way were random men grabbing waists and trying to dance/grind on strangers, how disgusting.

It is if that is what you are used to.

I agree with @LateAF's comment below. I seems that all the born streetwise posters simply don't get that the jump from never going clubbing to going to a club full of gropers and drug takers in London is going to be a huge culture shock.

I used to go clubbing in South London over 40 years ago, and the club's I went to were not full of sleazy men trying to touch you all the time, not did I ever see anyone doing coke.

I think it can be hard to appreciate the depths of naivety of adults from working class small towns in other parts of the UK when they first come to London. Especially since having no access to money meant a lot of us weren’t getting exposed to more worldly things or people by virtue of travelling abroad or clubbing outside of our local areas.

He should have looked out for her. I used to look out for my younger cousins and one night I went out with them but wanted to leave early. One of them (13 years younger than me) held my hand to take me to a taxi! I was a parent.

It might have impacted on his night out but it's one night. I'd be furious with him.

First post slightly confused me too, with it being invited out with girlfriend and her friends. But further posts from OP say he was there. All just a bit mental for me.

I take it you've never lived in London if you think there are very few cabs around of a night time

There’s 18 year olds all over the world who started uni in a new place and have been out drinking and clubbing.

Big cities like London aren’t the only place where people do drugs. Eg Plenty of people her age will have been to a music festival over the summer and done drugs.

It sounds like dd will have learned that clubbing isn’t for her and she should go home after the meal next time.

I suspect that the son didn’t realise that supervision was supposed to be close like a parent and that arriving and leaving together like he probably did at her age would be ample.

The paranoia about not being safe in a black cab is ridiculous, how else do people think anyone gets home late after public transport has stopped?

Or even if it hadn’t I bet people would be hysterical at the idea of someone getting the bus/tube/tram home.

Most people also have Uber as an option too, although the basic concept of flagging down a black cab with a light on isn’t rocket science.

I think you need to teach your 19 year old daughter how to call a taxi and get back to the hotel. The only thing that stood out for me is your adult daughter can't cope with a basic life skill...

Nobody has said this is OK though? One poster said that this is what men do.

20 years ago men did this in nightclubs and you had to be pretty fucking firm with them.

It's absolutely disingenuous to pretend men 20 years ago were resentful of women and boundaries

But the OP's post was about her anger that he'd abandoned her. And he didn't.

She abandoned him.

Even if she were to have grounds to be cross with him, she should be at least equally cross with the daughter for the series of decisions that she made that put her in that position.

I would also be disappointed in your son.

All of these comments about flagging down a cab and calling a taxi company! There is something called uber that has been around for over 10 years. I don't know a single person in London who would call a taxi company or use a black cab. Surely her provincial upbringing has not also sheltered her from the existence of uber?

I don't think there is anything to be cross about. Concerned, yes, but certainly not angry. Neither of the op's children did anything wrong and both are OK now! It is a mountain being made out of a molehill.

Hmm, read all the updates. While I think your DS could have kept a better eye on her (couldn’t she have gone with him to get drinks?) Your DD seems very sheltered and a bit of a drama llama. Does she not know how to download an app (Uber?) she could have called you to say, I don’t like the club, I’ve booked a taxi. You could have met her the other side if she was nervous.

Mine neither - in fact he would humiliate me for fun. Tosser. Nevertheless your son told you he would look after her and that is the breach of trust. He let YOU down by not honouring this. What he thinks his responsibility to his sister is, is not the issue. Challenge him on how he broke his word to you. That is where his responsibility lay. If you focus it all on your daughters ‘vulnerability’ he’ll just blame her and blame you. That won’t help you and it’ll end up in stalemate.

You really need to help your daughter with her life skills otherwise she is going to be very lonely when she goes to uni.

The drama of you all being awake and calling your son and his GF at 4am once your daughter was home is absolutely ridiculous and you’re feeding into her notion that this was a big deal (it was but because she made it a drama by running out of the club)

if she acts like that with friends - needing help to go to the loo etc, then she’s going to get left out of a lot of things as her peers will not have the patience for this level of dramatics.

Having ruminated on this some more…

Youve instilled some very black and white thinking in your daughter.

“People who do drugs are bad, run away”. Well, people who sell drugs are often bad and should be avoided, but people who take drugs do so for all sorts of reasons, very few of them are because they’re “bad”. Empower her to say no, don’t make her scared of it.

“Unwanted touching is groping”. Well, unwanted touching is bad. But there are different types of touching, different contexts, and therefore different expectations and reactions. Empower her to tell them to back the fuck off, don’t make her scared of them.

Your dd sounds a bit pathetic. She’s 19 not 9. She shouldn’t need someone to look after her the whole night at a single venue party.

The OP was up to 5am repeatedly ringing her son and his girlfriend even though the adult daughter had been home for over 3 hours by that point! Such a drama over a relatively minor incident.
OPs anxiety has clearly been projected onto the daughter and that’s why the daughter struggles with normal situations.

In the one hand I’d say yes, he was out of order but on the other he shouldn’t have the expectation of babysitting thrust upon him. In hindsight he should’ve said ‘I’m not babysitting sister, but if she wants to come that’s fine but with that knowledge.’
She’s fine, so she’s learnt a life lesson and I’d leave it there.
My dd (the older) said no to her DB (also 19) joining her and a friend (who he knew too) on a big club night out as she said she didn’t want to be responsible for him. And he accepted it and didn’t go. They have clubbed a couple of times but when there have been more people/not such a big night out (but they are much closer in age as well).

Exactly this - if I was the GF id be thinking that this family is utterly mental.