This happened with my parents at my 13th/14th birthday party. Would you have reacted this way?

[summersadness1]

When I was 13/14 I had a party at a business park, bowling. After we had finished, parents came to collect their kids and my parents obviously waited to say goodbye to everyone.

One girl’s parents were late. I don’t remember exactly how late but I think around 20 mins to half an hour. This girl sat in my parents car with us while we waited and she became a bit upset, saying she was worried that they had been in an accident as they hadn’t called to say why they were late (phones weren’t common then and they maybe didn’t think they were that late anyway).

My parents were nice to her about it but not massively re assuring and didn’t seem to fully engage with her about her worries. Her parents then arrived and she was fine and we waved her off. On the way home my parents talked about how this girl was attention seeking and being very over the top about her parents and were just generally very dismissive about it. At the time I defended my friend and said she was clearly just worried and then the discussion ended and I don’t remember anything else about it.

The reason I am posting about it is because I wonder if my parents reaction was normal? I have my own questions about my upbringing and looking at my parents behaviour towards someone else is helpful in tying to make sense of their approach to me.

I think it’s going to be hard for anyone to post meaningfully as we don’t know the girl, and there may have been other behaviours your parents had noticed that reinforced their opinion of her on that night.

She was a teenager; they can be a bit melodramatic. Personally I don’t think what they said was wildly out of order, ie. to the extent it points to a messed up parenting style.

Personally, I’d say their reaction was perfectly normal. A 14 year old weeping and wailing because they’re put out they had to wait twenty minutes is a bit excessive.

Seems fairly standard imo.

Thank you for replies! Been thinking about all sorts recently so perhaps reading into things!

Yes, it seems perfectly normal to me. Before mobile phones, you couldn't let people know you would be late but delays still happened.

I've just waited 25 minutes for a late-running bus without jumping to any melodramatic conclusigns, and the 13 year olds at the same stop seemed equally unbothered.

13-14yo girls being overly dramatic? Er yes, that'd be my take on it, too.

I think they were a bit unkind. She was worried they'd been in an accident. People do sometimes worry about that when someone's late with no explanation, especially as she was young.

They probably shouldn’t have criticised your friend in front of you but it was overly dramatic on her part to have got teary about parents being 25 mins late. Surely her first assumptions should have been they got the time wrong or stuck in traffic etc?

Well I’m not sure exactly how long it was but everyone else had left and we were sat in the car for a while. It was more my parents comments about her attention seeking that I found unkind at the time and still think was unkind now.

But I can see that perhaps teens can be dramatic!

Or anxious?

I wish I had so little to worry about :(

A parent dying in a crash? My dc lost a parent unexpectedly at that age. It's not a small thing

OP if your parents weren't nice people then you are reflecting on every incident that shows they aren't nice.

However a 13/14 year old freaking out because they have had to wait 20-30 minutes for their parents is over dramatic. 13/14 year olds are expected to have a degree of independence and having to wait because someone is a bit late is part of that. Also it is only recently that having mental health problems have been widely recognised as existing.

I think they were a bit unkind saying she was attention seeking.
Who knows what the friend was managing at the time.
A bit of kindness costs nothing.

I don’t think I’d have engaged seriously with her fears either. Breezy and light is probably the way to go even if you’re inwardly fretting about the tiny possibility of disaster. Nothing whatsoever to be gained by meeting trouble halfway.

What a weirdly random thing you are pondering over. Surely you have come across far worse things before.

Yeah, your parents responded appropriately. Stayed with her until she was handed over to her parents but didn’t feed her anxiety by legitimising it by buying into the idea that it was a huge drama and potential accident and so forth. Calm, confident and breezy is the way forward in this situations especially when it’s not your own child, kids pick up on adults being worried or seeming to think there’s some validity in their catastrophising and it just makes the situation worse.

Makes perfect sense as a fellow teenager you couldn’t see that at the time and felt aggrieved on behalf of your friend. But your parents acted in the right way.

OP, is this the only thing your parents did which concerns you?

Do you have children?

I'd have done exactly the same in their position. Why you feel this should be an issue is the interesting question.

@RubberTreePlant1 is there any particular reason you picked a NN so similar to mine?

How long ago was this op? It seems a very minor thing to be worrying about what seems like many years later.

Lucky you having parents who had a party for you and took the girl into the car and waited. They were likely just tired and wanted to go home.

Your parents didn't say this in front of her though. They, very rightly, acted as if nothing was wrong (as it wasn't), breezily jollied her along and sailed over the top of her drama.

Then, after she'd gone, they discussed how melodramatic she'd been. OK, you were there, but maybe they thought you'd add to the conversation by saying that (for example) she did tend to blow things out of proportion, or she was a bit anxious if she thought things were going wrong...

They only talked about her after she'd gone, so she didn't know what they said, so why are you worrying?

Yes this seems perfectly ok

RubberTreePlant omg! No, I didn’t know you existed (well I tried this username without the 1 and it was taken but so many usernames are, and you kinda think with the age of the site it might be someone who’s long gone anyway) 😂 I’m a regular who name changes regularly for privacy’s sake anyway so I’ll change to something else :)

Now wondering if I saw your username at some point and it subliminally went in as I felt like I plucked it out of nowhere but the coincidence seems too great haha. Sorry.

No problem. Thanks. (Yes, probably subliminal )