Should I let daughter do this? Help please teen mums.

[ApronStrings101]

DD turns 14 in 2 weeks.

We have recently moved 200 miles to a little village in the East Midlands and she has settled in well to her new school (Yr9). We moved here with DH job in the army and I hate it. DH has hardly been here since we moved. He is away again right now.

We have been here 3 months now and I still do not know a soul. I have been fairly unwell this year which has hindered my ability and confidence to get out and about alone and as a result I am still not very familiar with my local surroundings. I know the way to my nearest town 7 miles away and kind of know where things are there but not by name. Its a tiny town with very little in it.

So DD has made some lovely friends,most of which live in the little town 7 miles away. They seem lovely but being the age she is I have only met one of the girls once and not any of their parents.

DD reguarly stays late after school to hang out with friends in the little local town and on weekends we drop her off there too. She gets a bus to and from school from our village, but when she stays in town late,I pick her up.

DD has come home today and said her friends want to organise a birthday surprise for her to go into Leicester by train at the weekend and go to the cinema to see a film she has been desperate to see and waiting for release. (I suspect its been phrased like this to twist my arm into letting her go). I have never been to Leicester except when DH drove us through there a few weeks ago enroute elsewhere.

I was only just reaching being OK with travelling by train into what was our very large local city with friends - where we used to live. We had lived there for 3 years and I was very familiar with my surroundings and had friends for back up in case anything went wrong. I also knew a couple of her friends parents very well. It has to be said that due to circumstances - the actual going on the train unaccompanied into our local city never did actually happen, although had we not moved house it would have happend by now and I think I would have been ok with that.

DD is not stupid but she was at a very sheltered boarding school for 3 years until last summer (due to the fact we were supposed to be moving house lots) where I feel she did not get the same chance to be as free and develop her streetwiseness as much as the kids starting in Yr7 at a day school iykwim.

DD is also a nightmare for not answering her phone or responding to texts when out. I dont pester her but I do ask her to touch base if she is out for prolonged periods. An example of this was last weekend we dropped her in little town at mid day with a bag to meet her friend where she was having a sleepover. I asked her to txt me in the evening just to let me know she was at friends house and all was OK. (I dont know the parents at all and only met the child once). DD didnt get intouch and didnt respond to my messages or missed calls.

Do I let her go??

Tbh - I am not comfortable with letting her go but worry I am being too overprotective. Part of the reason we removed her from BS was to allow her to become streetwise (and because we supposedly shouldnt have been moving house again - but we did).

I did have plans for the cinema at the weekend and suggested a sleepover here (so I could at least put a few faces to the names of her new friends) as birthday treat but there is 7 or 8 of them going and my car only seats 5 (including me). I have no idea where the cinemas around here are but was hoping to drive to an out of town one - dump the kids and see a film myself or go for coffee and then take them to lunch or give them money for lunch and meet them later. This idea has been poo pooed!

Advice and opinions. Please be kind. This dilemma has actually quite upset me as I am so low about living here at the moment, being lonely and very homesick.

I would let my teenage DDs do this (at the same age - they are now a little older).

They, for example, travel up to London with groups of friends, and may have to change trains, or catch a bus or tube to where they are going. Our own train station is further away from our house than the distance your lot would have to walk to the further cinema in Leicester.

Re the staying at a friend's father's house, rather than the mother, yes, she might have told you, but maybe she didn't realise it was an issue for you. Just make it clear that if she does similar in the future, you would like to be told. And you were able to easily find her, if needed, because the friend's mother knew where she was.

This will sound harsh, but I hope you will consider it. Who are you trying to protect? Is it your DD from getting into trouble, or yourself, from worrying about her?

I disagree about the phone/text issue. I don't think it should be a prop in allowing your child some independence. Either you trust them or you don't. We've all become too dependent on mobile phones and in some ways, they get in the way of allowing a teen to develop the skill in making sensible choices. Think back to when we were young and went out with our friends. What did our parents do? Not allow us out without a promise of a call from a call box?

I would find out more about it. Where exactly are they going, what time etc? Maybe check the train times and give her a curfew for getting home. She's not going to develop streetwise-ness if you don't allow her to do things like this. I would expect a 13/14 year old to manage a train journey tbh but it takes practice.

Hmmm. The previous sleepover is not very reassuring. I'm confused - is the friends' plan to have a sleepover after the cinema?

Am in the same area with same aged DD. TBH I think your DD's attitude rather than safety, not knowing parents etc. is the real problem. DD travels to secondary school and if I (and the parents of her classmates) had refused to let her stay at the houses of people we'd never met the girls' social lives would be non-existent. Could you use this as an opportunity for her to show that she can be sensible? Set out some ground rules and if she fails to keep to them then rein her in?

By attitude, I mean not texting when you had asked her to. Doesn't matter if asking for texts is right/necessary. If you had asked her to do so then she should.

I'd let her go, but on the proviso that she absolutely must let you know she has arrived safely by text and respond when you contact her. If she doesn't she loses the chance to go again, if she does you can let her know she'll be rewarded with your trust in future

ApronStrings - I really feel for your dilemma. I wouldn't have liked to let my 14 year old go, but I find it really stressful to deny him. It is as if he has grown out of his childhood skin and is rebelling forcefully to gain more freedom - saying no to your teen going with their friends to do something they are all excited about is really hard.

Like SanityClause mentioned about whether we are protecting our children or ourselves from worry. I think its a bit of both. Since Christmas I have felt like a nervous wreck dealing with my DS (from just before he turned 14). The battles are intense, and seem to dread the weekends now instead of looking forward to them, as he no doubt will be asking if he can stay out later or stay over at such and such's house. Like you, I'm on my own with it most of the time, and it is hard. I can say no, and all hell breaks loose. If I say yes, i can't sleep.

I feel the difficulty in this situation lies in them getting too much freedom too soon, and it's hard to tighten it up once they've got it.

I think it's probably a good idea to insist on the staying in touch by phone as a must. And once your DH is back, get him to tighten up your rules to a level you both feel comfortable with?

One thing I think you can (and would be helpful if you did) do is get some control over her poor contactability. Our deal with dd14 (who is not a compliant kid at all) is that we pay for her phone on the basis that she is contactable, and non-contactability (in which I would include not being in touch 2 hours after you text) means removal of phone for an appropriate period of time - overnight to start with. We were having real problems with her disappearing from telephone contact last year, but when we brought this rule in, we only had to remove it a couple of times (there was some pretty horrible shouting but we stood our ground) for her to get the message and now we have excellent contactability all the time. She usually answers instantly. Less stress all round and allows us to trust her more on other things.