Aibu to not insist DS and his friend come home?

[MintoTime]

Ainu to not insist my 15 yr old and his friend come home?

First day of the holidays, he and a friend V have gone to another friend As house. It’s about 10-15 minutes walk away. He was very vague about their plans but asked if V could sleep over at our place. We usually allow DS a fair amount of freedom as long as he stays local, keeps Find My switched on and keeps in touch. He kind of agreed to a 1am return. It’s now 2;42 and we’ve had a discussion on and off since 1;00 about when he should come home, and he says that they will probably just sleep at As house. Ordinarily I’d be fine with that. But Vs mum texted me earlier to check that V was ok to sleep at our place… and now he isn’t. Vs mum doesn’t expect me to police what V does, she just doesn’t like having to stay up late to check he is home. I didn’t read her message as being suspicious of what V might do - but maybe she was 🤷‍♀️ I don’t know her very well.

I’ve decided to leave them to sleep at As, but to text when they leave if they decide to come back. This is what I would do for DS. But is it still ok when Vs mum thinks he’s sleeping at our place?

She kind of has lied to the other parent. Shes told that kids mum her child is staying at hers when clearly he isnt, just like her own kid isn't staying at home. Whether they had a 10pm home time or this ridiculous 1am home time they've taken the piss and are texting her hours past their agreed time saying they still don't know what time they're coming back. That alone would have me marching round there and having them back home immediately purely for them taking the absolute piss and overstepping their boundaries. I'd also be telling the friends mum that her kid isn't where he says he is

I'd be fuming if I was V's mum that you 1. Let my child stay out so late (I think 9/9.30pm is reasonable for a 15 year old to stay out) 2. Let them stay out at someone else's house without asking me if that'd be alright beforehand. Yabu.

Reminds me of the days me and my mate told our parents we were sleeping at each other’s houses and really were getting drunk in a field 😂

This is ludicrous. As a parent of a 15 year old, you should not be allowing your child to be out until 1am (even 10pm would be a big push for me, and that would only be if I knew exactly where she was and assured she was doing something productive). What is he doing at that time? As for allowing another Mother to think her child is at your house when they are not.. that is incredibly irresponsible.

Culture is irrelevant in my mind when they are kids and not 25. A 15 year old and a 1am curfew is mental. Letting them message at 240am with in-flight plans is utter madness. I wouldn’t expect that of my DH tbh because it’s really bloody inconsiderate. Does your son have zero respect for you? You wouldn’t text the other mum at this time so it clearly isn’t the norm.

Boundaries are needed.

I think some people hear the term 'it takes a village' and assume that includes the streets. Honestly 1am for a 15 year old is a hard no. Worse is his friend lying and you covering it up. Your child has far far too much freedom.

I think if you had explained in your original post that you were in France and that teen expectations are a bit different to British based teens, it would have been easier all round.

My Dutch nieces behave like this. I find it very hard to wrap my head around. There’s no way I’d let my own 15 year old out till the early hours, but the culture is different on the continent. Kids there do have much more freedom from a very early age.

I am British and was a teen in mid to late 90s and nobody had a curfew. We went on night buses in London at 16, definitely t each others homes impromptu sleepovers at 15 after parties or just hanging out. We were in pubs at 16/17. Equally, none of us were ever 'grounded' or anything like that, I think that was American culture imports and nobody spoke or acted like that in the past.

Sorry OP, I’d have driven to get them. Was this an option for you?

I agree. I think at 15 even a 1am curfew was totally ridiculous tbh. And then he didn’t even respect that. I just can’t even imagine a world where I would be okay with my 15 year old just deciding to stay out overnight anywhere without getting explicit permission. Is this the norm now? We’re all different but I really think that the OP should have just text her son and asked him to come home as she felt uncomfortable with the situation knowing V’s Mum was under the impression her son was sleeping at their house. If the son is so well behaved and this is all so chill and everyone is so respectful of one another then a quick text asking him to come back wouldn’t be an issue would it?

I think if impromptu sleepovers aren’t unusual for them anyway I would remind him to make sure V had let his mum know about the change of plans and leave it at that

It depends entirely on the situation. My child (year 8) has 2 good friends
A - he's been friends with since the first day in reception
B - lives across the street and joined my son's primary in year 2

If in year 10 him and B had gone to As and were going to sleep over, then they'd decided to come up to Bs for something (maybe the playstation with widescreen TV) or the hot tub! and they decided to stay at B's instead - I'd be fine with it.

If I thought he was staying with A and then they ended up at Cs who I don't know much and barely know the parents, and wanted to stay I'd be annoyed.

@MintoTime
If you are still there op I just wanted to say that I too have parented teens, and obviously young children too while living in a Mediterranean country.
It isn’t easy parenting in a different culture to the one you grew up in, and reading regularly on mumsnet gives you a British centric view.

Where I live teens stay out late at night. When kids come to sleep over, you aren’t really “responsible for them” at 15 in the way that if they choose to sleep somewhere else, or change arrangements at the last minute, that’s their business.
Where we live you are the “responsible adult” should they need anything while in the house with you, but before they arrive home, I am responsible only for my own children.
We too have a location app and check in with our children, but I don’t feel responsible for their friends because they all live locally.
My children would always contact me if plans changed and they were sleeping somewhere else, but it’s on them to do so, not the host parent.

Yea, I have read threads before where people describe their youth in the 80s-90s in UK and it sounds nothing like what it’s like for teens now with 10pm curfews and practically babysitting teenagers. I moved away from home at 16 to live in a flat share, imagine if up until that point I had had almost zero freedom. I would have either been petrified or gone completely off the rails.

See I don't recognise that at all. I was a teen in the 90ies and very much had a curfew, did not get night buses, had plenty of rules etc. 'Naice' area as well, so it wasn't due to the location. My friends were the same.

This is exactly how it works here @corkscissorschalk .The rules we have are more about staying in touch, keeping tracker turned on, letting me know if plans change, not walking home alone etc. But they do kind of decide what they are doing as they go along, and they are trusted to be responsible.

The 1am wasn’t a curfew, it was more a let me know by then for sure what you and V are doing. You are all correct that the back and forward by text wasn’t great, but if V hadn’t been involved I would just have said to DS to sleepover at his friends, and remember all the other rules if you do decide to come home. He was 10 minutes away.

i have an 18yr old as well, after the age of about 14 there were no more texts from parents about sleepovers, ‘home times’, who’s sleeping where. By age 15 all the rules of behaviour are hammered into them (French parenting is strict) and they are generally trusted to abide by the rules after that. I went through agonies with my oldest trying to navigate that as I was still very ‘British’ in my approach, worrying about where he was but not wanting to make him have different rules to his friends. But in all the years he’s been hanging out with friends I’ve never had a single call from another parent about anything! They really are left to it.

Mixed sex sleepovers, supervised and unsupervised, are also very normal here: that took a lot of getting used to…

Sorry OP but you did say he "kind of agreed to a 1am return". So that is why people took it as a curfew and not a let me know by 1am what you're doing. Either way, he did neither. He wasn't home and you didn't know by then what was happening. I don't think that's great behaviour from him, and you shouldn't be blaming yourself for it because you're british.

I would have been at the very least telling him "let me know now what you're doing so I can go to sleep". Not checking in regularly til 2:45. That's not healthy independence, it's him being a PITA.

I think 15 year olds are attributed more maturity in France than in the UK. For example, 15 is the age of consent in France. Also, the school system means that 15-18 year olds are in the same school (lycée) which makes another sort of "grouping" of those ages (as opposed to 11-14 year olds who are in "collège").

Yeah me too. I can vividly remember the seven shades of hell I got for waltzing home at midnight once, when my parents expected me home by 11 - I was 17.

My dad was/is a very light sleeper due to work, he'd have known if I was even a minute late. As a result, I very rarely was!

They are 15, this is absolutely crazy!!!!
they shouldn’t be out at all in the evening!!

You know that in 3 years, or less, they’ll be 18? How do you think 15 year olds become responsible adults if they aren’t allowed any freedom at all?

Yeah lock them in until they are 18 in three years time.

Same in Scandinavia. It’s about building up trust and making them independent so they become good trustworthy people. I expected my 15-year olds to behave. They didn’t need a specific time or bollocking out of principle if they were 10 minutes late. Same with all their friends. It does not mean they don’t have rules, on the contrary. The goal must be to raise independent children with a good and strong mental health who believe they can sort things out themselves and who you can trust.. (AND dare to open the door if someone knocks 🤣)
It’s absolutely shocking when you go to the UK and see some parents yelling in their kids faces. In the end it’s those children who seem to test boundaries how much they can get away with.
My children are young adults now, they have their own homes and we still talk about everything. If I were to remind my son about something he’d say ’You don’t have to tell me, I was raised, wasn’t I!’
I think it is probably difficult to understand different cultures, that societies can work very well even if it’s a different society than your own.