Aibu about Teens new year party disaster

[NiftyWasp94]

Recently my son had a new year's party with all his friends (he's 16) they used the house whilst I was away visiting my parents, I trusted him with the house as he is a mature kid. However when I got home the next day I found that the house had been absolutely trashed, cups and dishes everywhere and the dog had been dyed yellow and pink! I've cleaned the house as much as I can but there are things like holes in the walls and the dining tables leg has been broken. I've since grounded my son taking all his devices away, and I won't be letting him have/go to any more parties especially not in my house. The damages to the wall and things are going to cost upwards of £2500 he is going to be getting a job and paying for all of it.
Is this a reasonable response?

Yes

But of course he probably didn’t do any of it and tried to stop it!

You were insane to allow a 16 year old host a party unsupervised.
I agree with making him get a job and pay however as long as he is genuinely contrite and working to fix this I'd give his devices back or at least partially as it won't do him good to be isolated.

Yes more than reasonable, you trusted him and he broke your trust and allowed his friends to destroy your house and probably terrify the dog.

Id put this firmly at your door. You allowed the party to go ahead with no adults to intervene, this is your fault.

Has he ever hosted a party before? Doing so on New Years was daft. It's quite possible that someone shared the invite online and it got out of hand

I can't believe you left a 16 year old to have a party while you were away in the first place.

Was he home alone (without a responsible adult)?

Did you know he was going to throw a party?

YANBU to make him pay a contribution but >£2500 is extreme.

Arguable.

Many people would argue its completely insane to let a 16 year old host a New Years eve party unsupervised in a house.

You should probably be thankful half your stuff wasn't nicked.

Yabu you caused all of this by allowing an unsupervised nye party for teens in your house.
Let this be a lesson to you never trust teenagers especially not at an unsupervised party

Well, 16 is too young to host a party with zero adult supervision, that’s on you. He might be mature but clearly ‘all his friends’ aren’t.

I would ask him to watch all the relevant YouTube tutorials possible and get handy with DIY to help fix things.

How did they dye the dog? That seems a bit random.

Did you know he was having the party? If so then you are as responsible as he is for the damage, which as a pp said none of which was likely caused by him.

If you didn't know then he is fully respondible

I said YABU - I would have never left my 2 at 16 without some form of supervision, checking in and especially over NYE. The temptation is too much for a 16 year old.

I believe I failed to explain further, he's had parties at the house before and has never had anything like this happen, maybe a slight mess that he cleans in the morning but this was very different and he isn't telling me what happened.

YABU because he is a child and you were VERY naive to leave him to it. You made a bad choice as a parent, and it's not fair on a 16 year old to leave them in charge of a party that clearly got dramatically out of hand.

Punishment re grounding is fine, but it's not reasonable to expect him to get a job to raise £2500 - that's nearly 400 hours of work at the NMW for under 18 - to reimburse you for your bad judgement, which is time he needs to be applying to his GCSE revision, or A-levels if he's in year 12.

At most I would say that he has to shadow and assist the handyman who does the repair work, and sit with you while you pay the invoice for it, to impress upon him that that there is no Mummy Magic Wand that just magically fixes things while he's at school - it takes labour and cash to do these things.

Sounds like it got out of hand, friends invite friends, invite friends etc etc. Recipe for disaster especially over NYE.

I don't think that your son would have been able to control his friends. There must've been a big group. The issue is you trusted a 16 year old boy with your house and a house party. This had disaster written all over it. I don't think it's fair to punish him for what others probably did. Word probably got out and friends of friends probably pitched up. He obviously felt uncomfortable to turn anyone away for fear of being rejected or bullied.

I think if he'd had the party after you said no then that would warrant a punishment. But you agreed to let him have it.

Did he do any cleaning? I can’t believe that you were left to do that?

Your son should get a job and pay you back but can you really make him at 16 if he said no? You bear some responsibility because you allowed the unsupervised party and it was unrealistic to think that he could watch lots of teens and prevent it happening. I guess that you’re lucky that they didn’t damage the neighbours’ property.

I assumed you didn’t know about the party. I think leaving him home along and allowing him to have a party at 16 is quite irresponsible. Parties can easily get out of hand especially around New Years.

I would expect him to have helped with the clean up and get a job to contribute to the repairs but I doubt he will be able to the majority.

Absolutely no way would I leave a 16 year old unsupervised overnight to have a party, doesn't matter how mature they are, the mates will be the ones causing the damage. Tbh I would have made him clean up, I wouldn't have done it.

I think getting him to help sort out the consequences is fair enough - however I wouldn't be to hard on him. Once a party gets out of hand, there's very little the "host" teenager can actually do! Getting a bunch of drunken overexcited people your own age to stop doing stupid things in your house is really hard.

I think the main consequence would be: no more massive unsupervised parties on key dates such as NYE (smaller gatherings okay).

My 17 year old (on the verge of being 18 and incredibly responsible) wanted to have a NYE party while we were away. While we initially considered it, we eventually said no because if something (eg an injury) happened (and alcohol was involved) we would likely not be insured. I don't think it's fair to allow kids to have parties with no adults around because it's too much responsibility for them to have to police everyone around then and everything that happens.

He's a child, you are an adult, and you left him alone to hold a party. I think this is largely on you. I'm not saying he shouldn't contribute at all, or face consequences, but I don't think it's especially reasonable to ask for £2,500 from him for something that was partly your fault. I'm sure he is a responsible kid, but surely it occurred to you that his friends might not be equally responsible and that he clearly wouldn't be able to keep things under control if lots of extra people turned up (which I'm pretty sure is what would have happened)? This is largely on you.

Not unreasonable. I don’t agree with those saying 16 is too young. You know your son and as you say all has been ok before. The fact that he will not tell you what has gone on is part of the problem and makes the punishment more deserved.

if things got out of hand or people showed up who shouldn’t have he should have phoned or messaged you so something could have been done to stop the party.

you wot?

@Hungry123666

was in a similar situation before, my 28 year old son had rubbed chewed up Banana all over my cat and it didn’t come out for almost a month!

I can't work out whether this is sarcasm?