WWYD: DD drunk seperated from friends in city centre

[GLP1U5er]

But back with them now. They have been drinking since 11am. I spoke with one of her friends and they said she went to the toilet but went the wrong way and left the bar. I had called her at that time to check in and she told me she was going back to them. She shared her location with me and I saw she got back to the bar her friends were in. I called a but later when I saw she was walking again and a slightly more sober friend came on to tell me she was fine and they had rang her when she went the wrong way then met her and brought her back.

She is 21 but I'm very nervous now that she is that much of a state she went the wrong way in a city she hasn't been drinking in before and is hotelling in. I live 1hr20 mins away and am on the verge of getting a hotel and staying on the city for the night incase it happens again when her friends are too drunk to react.

WWYD?

But don't you grasp how this is teaching young people to stay infantilised and holding them back from growing into genuinely independent adults? Honestly it's grim.

I can't believe what I'm reading. Never in a million years would I want to be tracked by another adult. Only time I switch on live location is occasionally on the way home from work if I want DH to have a glass of wine ready for me! It's soon switched off again.

Tracking leads to the kind of madness the OP is experiencing. It's not healthy

Christ on a bike! When I was 21, I was a student in a different UK country from my family. No one knew where I was or what I was doing (thank goodness!)

DS is 16, and he has an iPhone DH and I are both android, so we could fire up the MacBook and track him, but never have.
He was out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Texted us to say could he stay out until midnight on Friday (yes) and text last night to say he was walking home at 11pm.

If my mum wanted to track me or me her there would be a heated discussion, lol!

Do you track her on holiday in case you need an emergency flight or the embassy to rescue her?

Infantilised? No. When I was much younger (before tracking was available) I often made sure to let people know where I was going to be on a night out and when. I'm not sure this is that much different. This generation just uses the technology all the time. They are brought up with the idea of your life being transparent and of having nothing to hide. Many of my generation hate people knowing what they're doing because they grew up without mobiles/tracking technology etc. I don't think young people are going to be any more or less infantilised than my generation were. It's just a different culture. Trust me, they will grow up just like we did. It will look different to what "growing up" meant to us, but they will grow up. We don't have to be anxious about that.

When that poor boy died on holiday in Spain, the tracking technology was really useful until his phone lost power.

This thread perfectly showcases the extremes of paranoia that have infiltrated this platform and wider society. Absolute madness. How do people live like this? It’s so unhealthy and inappropriate.

I think your daughter needs to stop allowing you to track her location. We cannot protect them from the world forever, her and her friends need to figure out how to cope in these situations. When are you going to consider her old enough to go out without your monitoring? If she'd rung looking for your help that's different.

You really can't see the difference between shouting "Just popping to the shops" and having someone track your every move? Maybe you can't. But for the majority, it really is very different.

I wasn't "just popping to the shops" in those days. I wouldn't bother about that.

I think it's up to individuals to decide between them if they want to do this or not. One pp said her son is perfectly happy with it. That's between them. Nobody else's business.

Your peace of mind doesn't trump someone else's freedom.

Stop tracking your kids! It's weird and unhealthy. For them and for you. It's. Or more dangerous now than when you were 21.

We were asked for an opinion, so it kinda became our business in a minor sort of way.

This. I can't see any justification (dementia and perhaps SEN aside) for tracking a grown adult, especially an adult child.

People do not go missing or killed on nights out "often". It is incredibly rare and the overwhelming of woman are killed by someone they know I can't see any plausible explanations how tracking someone's every move makes them safer. All a tracker does is tell you where a person's phone is, not the person. People lose phones all the time and if something had happened to the OPs daughter, it is more than likely an attacker or abductor would have got rid of the phone. What use would have the OP have been anyway, she was over an hour away?

Tracking someone's movements isn't going to the stop something happening to someone. And if we're talking about comparisons to the boy in Tenerife then I'm not sure how it's a helpful one to make. He still died and it was still weeks before his body was found. The tracker on his phone was about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

All these trackers do is increase a person's anxiety. It's absolutely no wonder we have a generation of such anxious young adults and teenagers. Grown adults having their every movements monitored on a night out under the guise of it being "caring" and that it allows them more freedom when it does the complete opposite. If these people were truly free, they'd be left alone on a night out without being constantly monitored and threats of parents jumping in their to get their adult children despite this not being requested at all by adult children.

If you've raised a 21 year old who is happy to be tracked by her mum on a night out, you've messed up.

At 21 I had moved out 3 years ago and had a full time job. My parents barely knew where I was week to week, let alone which sodding pub I was in.

I'd put money on it that the son isn't as "perfectly happy" with it as that poster thinks and that it's only a matter of time until he pushes back against it. The lack of agency and the anxiety is obviously generational too seeing as the poster is being tracked by her own mother.

And then what happens when the adult DC says they don't want to be tracked? I doubt a parent who sees tracking as unproblematic is just going to go "okay then" and stop tracking.

I agree with pp, I don't see how tracking will reduce the chance of something bad happening.

Also, what happens if a 21 year old doesn't go home for a legit reason. They meet a group of people and go back for an after party and crash at theirs, they meet someone and go back to their house to have sex, I remember once in the summer after a night in the pub sitting in a park in Birmingham listening to Badly Drawn Boy on little speakers until about 5am. All these things are completely fine things to do and a young adult doesn't want to be calling mum at 2am to tell them they've met someone and is going to be having a one night stand so don't worry if my tracker doesn't say I'm home.

It's mad. Adults are allowed freedom to do as they wish.

How does seeing someone safely home curtail their freedom?

Exactly this! When I was 21 I was living in Paris. There were a few times I went home with a group of people I’d met to a house party. I had a couple of not exactly one night stands, but nights where I went back to an acquaintances house for sex. Imagine if my mum had been tracking me? Ridiculous.

What if they aren’t going home? What if they decide to go to someone’s house for a shag?

@ZebedeeDougalFlorence because they may not want to go home.

If they decide after midnight that they will be staying elsewhere for the night for whatever reason do they have to let you know first so you don't worry or can they just decide to do whatever they want?

Exactly!!!

I have a 19.5 year old, I dropped her and two of her friends in town last night for a night out. In the car on the way I said - as I always do - to remember to look out for each other and if there was any hassle getting a taxi home (given that we were in a red warning for the storm the previous day) to call me and I'd come and get them. I don't even have her two friends' phone numbers if I wanted to call them!!

DD went away last summer to Crete with the same two friends and again they all got the talk about never splitting up and leaving people behind and the other two sets of parents said similar. And they had a great time!

Could you imagine getting a text from your mum mid-shag asking what you're doing at 42 That Street instead of at your house? It's incredibly intrusive and it limits their growth as adults because there'll come a point where they self-restrict their activities because they can't be bothered with 20 questions from Tracker-Mum. It's detrimental to well-being.

Of course not! This thread started because DM was worried that her DD had too much to drink which made her vulnerable if separated from her friends. It wasn't about every single social outing/encounter of young people.

My first post on this thread was about a friend who was r**ed a few months ago while very drunk and trying to get home on her own. I have had a couple of times when immediately after she asked me to "track" her (which simply meant keeping her company on the phone while she travelled home). In the weeks since she has deteriorated mentally and very rarely goes out.

It's awful that this happened to my friend and was so random. Whenever I have seen people very drunk out on their own I often wondered if it was OK to leave them like that, but always dismissed my thoughts because no-one else seemed to be bothered. Never in a million years would I have thought that someone close to me would have this awful experience.

As I see it this thread started as being about being aware of how vulnerable people can be when very drunk and ways to help them stay safe. It has derailed into something else (and I admit I played my part in that because I was interested in some of the issues raised).

A lot of conjecture and lack of comprehension/maybe I wasn't clear in my OP and didn't include the below context:

• this is a new city to all of them.
• she didn't get lost inside the pub, she had headed outside of it and wandered away from the pub down a street.
• she could string a sentence together but was clearly intoxicated and I worried if she kept drinking and got lost again would become extremely vulnerable.

Honestly? Absolutely none of that changes anything. You still massively over reacted to a non event.

I can't get over the fact you actually phoned your 21 year old daughter on a night out to 'check in' What happens next time you do that and she doesn't answer because either she doesn't hear her phone or she realises her Mum checking in is weird and intrusive. Are you going to rush to her last location

Tracking apps can be useful but not if youre sitting glued to it tracking another adult. That's not normally or healthy

After my last post I realise that I am not on the same wavelength as many of you because I have probably been more affected by what happened to my friend than I realised, hence my ensuring that I saw my young relative to her door even though it put me out of my way (because there are kind of isolated spots near her uni accommodation).

I would have a conversation with her and ask

• what would she have wanted you to do if her location caused you concern, if you couldn't reach her, or if her friends were concerned. Then follow her wishes next time. Make it about her wants not yours. Explain you know she is a capable adult.
• ask her does she consent to you still checking her location and does she know you are happy for her to turn it off when she wants.

Wanting to be there just in case is lovely, and I understand it, and feel it too for my two. But on the other hand my 82 year old DM still worries when I am travelling and to a certain extent, although her messages are light and breezy, I feel her carrying the burden of that anxiety is pointless and I do find it a bit of a burden and it stops me messaging her until I am back safe.