14yo and alcohol

[Feelingunnecessary]

14yo dd told me today that she’s been really quite drunk (think almost blacking out) at her friend’s recently, with friend’s mother (drunk) there too 🙄.

Dh and I older parents. Dd v popular and in a big group of girls, loads of sleepovers etc. Most of the friends are relatively new since secondary, and I really struggle with her ‘best’ friend. The type who can’t talk to parents, is labelled as a total pain at school etc iykwim? Many of the girls are lively, have young parents who all drink...

Dh and I had kids later in life because we spent a lot of time partying. Now we’re raising kids we reign it in. I try to have the type of relationship with dd which means she talks to me and tells me what she’s up to, what she tries etc. She knows I want her to be sensible, and most of all safe, but I don’t want to alienate her by just grounding etc.

Can anyone experienced in finding the balance here give me any advice? I was quite shocked but I’m aware that compared to many of her friends, she’s actually quite sensible, but I don’t want to appear to condone it obvs.

Quite a few weeks of the summer left...

Hi, my view is this is really rather serious due to her only being 14.

I'd not want her in that house, but I wonder if she told you because she didn't like it? 'nearly blacking out' is quite worrying.

You don't have to ground her to stop her going there specifically.

Has she said if she felt pressured at all?

I totally see where you’re coming from OP and I take a very similar approach with my DD, also 14. We talk about lots of things together. I am not naive enough to think she isn’t going to try things but I try to make sure that she is well informed and therefore equipped to (hopefully) make sensible decisions.

That said I know that a lot of kids this age are dabbling with alcohol so please don’t think that it’s just your DD’s group of friends that are troublesome. DD tells me that a lot of the boys in her year group are also experimenting with weed, which I would be more concerned about.

We actually had an eventful sleepover here at our house with DD and her group of 5 friends. They had all been to a party and were staying at our house after (they had got ready here, ordered pizza etc). Unbeknown to me they had arranged to get drunk after they returned from the party, with a few of them providing vodka. One of the girls got really really drunk and DD had to wake me up to deal with her as she was sick absolutely everywhere in our living room and was totally out of it. DD was totally petrified and admitted everything to me immediately. In some ways I’m glad that this happened as they have learned from it and at least they were in a safe place with a responsible adult at hand rather than a party with a load of other pissed-up teenagers. I didn’t get really angry with DD as she was suitably remorseful and I was glad that she came to me and was honest. It hasn’t been repeated since. These are good girls and I don’t worry about DD and her friendship group. I think they just wanted to try as they were seeing so many others in their year doing.

I think the key is to keep the lines of communication open with your DD. It’s good that she’s offered this information to you unprompted and shows that she trusts you. I worry that if you stop her from seeing that group of friends then she won’t open up to you again in the future. Has she told you much more about the experience? Did she feel pressured to drink? Who looked after her? Did the parent know?

Thanks both. Rollergirl11 I agree with pretty much everything you’ve written. I try to keep communication open and if I come down like a ton of bricks she’ll stop talking. I don’t want her in bf’s house but bf is very popular and if I ban, she’d be so excluded and I’m not going to upset her like that, it would be worse in the long run. She’s happy atm and it’s nice to see.

I’ve got such a downer on her at the moment though, poor kid, and it’s mainly due to her horrible bf (whose house she drank at). They came back today for 10 minutes (after another sleepover) to get changed and go to beach. Friend can barely bring herself to look at me, and believe me she’s not shy. My dd is home alone tonight because we agreed it in advance but she’ll spend that time glued to phone 🙄

I miss my girl, and I know that that is absolutely my problem but it’s not something I expected to feel. She doesn’t want to be with me, she wants to be with her friends of course. Sorry, I’m mixing up several issues here but I suspect other mums have felt this as their girls grow up and away. The alcohol thing is not helping - and if I liked her friends (most are ok or lovely) I wouldn’t be so concerned.

Aaaaaaahhhhh!!! It’s horrible to feel like this.

And yes the parent knew, was also drunk, and ‘is a laugh when she’s drunk’. FFS.