Argh. Half term, 14 yo boy, wants to 'hang out'...

[isitabiofilm]

I am inclined to say no to my 14 yo who has asked if he can 'hang out' in a local village with some mates, while we are at work. He has no particular plans, just to meet up with a mate and go to an unspecified girl's house. I have said I have no problem with him going to someone's house if I know where he is going to be, and for how long and somewhere where I can find him if need be. Or for him to have his friends over here. Or to meet them in town and do something specific like go to the cinema. Or book a badminton court, go swimming etc..

But general hanging out, with people unknown, in a village with lots of 'teenage boy hanging out type problems cos there's feck all to do there' that is a bus ride away, for an unspecified amount of time, or in some girls house with no discussion about whether her parents are expecting a bunch of teenage Boys to be there. I don't think so, but since he's my first ever teenager, except for the irresponsible one I was many years ago, perhaps you can advise me if this is ok and I'm just being an arse.

An acquaintance of mine said to me the other day "X (her son) came home from (the party they were at) and one of the boys must have been drinking, because he told me that they had spilled beer on his jumper. It really stank".

I repeated the conversation to ds2, who roared with laughter and told me that X had nicked beer from his parents' fridge and brought it to the party himself.

The trouble is, this particular woman won't believe her pfb would do anything wrong, so I can't tell her.

And the really funny thing is that she thinks ds is badly behaved. But he chose to go to the party late and come home early as he knew they would all be drinking and he didn't want to. He had told me all about it.

Having said all that, ds1 was completely different. So I'm not naive enough to believe it's anything to do with parenting - it's purely due to the peer group, and to a less extent the personality of the child.

The peer group definitely has more influence on the child than we do, all we can do is warn them that they may be manipulated and pre-empt it. Forewarned is forearmed sort of thing. DS is now at uni and one evening told me that he was tired and staying in - I then got a text to say that he had been 'kidnapped' into going out clubbing! DD hears all about it in more detail and she says he is being very good, better than she was, so that eases my mind a lot.

I would definitely let him go at 14, you have to let them grow up. I don't expect to know exactly where my 14 year old DD is at all times, plans change throughout the day and she will often phone and say she is at so and so's house when she'd set off to go into town etc. It's a shame to stop them doing stuff just because you expect something will go wrong or something awful might happen, more than likely it won't and if something does you deal with whatever it is then.