Page 2 | At what age do you allow them to...

HuwEdwards · 03/01/2008 09:16

Go to a party - with booze
13/14

get home alone after 9
16

drink booze
14

stay out all night without checking up on them
15

have a bring a bottle party for them
Never did this

(These are the answers for when I did these things - and am in 40s now, so we're talking the dark ages here)

fortyplus · 03/01/2008 10:07

I'm 46, ds1 is 14 and ds2 12, so I'll give answers for all of us...

Go to a party - with booze
Me... 15 DS1 & 2 - not yet

get home alone after 9
Me - about 13 DS1 & 2 - not yet

drink booze
Me - 14 DS1 about 8 DS2 11

stay out all night without checking up on them
Me - 16 DS1 & 2 - not yet

have a bring a bottle party for them
Me - 17 DS1 & 2 - not yet!!

brimfull · 03/01/2008 10:14

I have recent exp of this.

dd had 16th b'day party on nye

we supplied some wkd bottles and a bit of cider and beer

we were in the house to supervise

loads were pissed including dd

very well behaved considering

she had a party last yr as well but a lot less drinking went on.I supplied enough bacardi breezers for one each last yr.How naive was I?

She goes to sleepovers but I do know where she is and have checked up on her.

She is not allowed to make her way home after dark unless it is just around the corner.

mumeeee · 03/01/2008 12:25

17
16 if they were coming home together with there friends otherwise DH will pick them up.

have tastes of wine;beer when at home with parents 10+

Have a glass of wine etc when with parents 15. altough D3 is not interested in doing this.

never if I don't know where they are,

DD2 just 18 has slept over at a friends flat ( her own flat so no parents) a coupple of times and I'm happy for her to do that and don;t check up on her.

5.Haven't done this.

tigermoth · 03/01/2008 14:49

What an interesting thread. These sorts of age limits have been on my mind, and not only becuase I have a nearly 14 teenage son.

Sadly in my area of London the newspapers have been full of news about teenagers.

One boy, aged 17, has gone missing after visiting an ice skating rink at the old Royal Naval College in Greenwich on christmas eve. Last seen at 5.45 pm. Never made it home to his parents' house nearby. He had apparently been drinking to some extent, but as he was ice skating, presumably not that much. He lived locally and went to my sons cricket club.

On new years eve, another local boy aged 18, crashed the car he was driving, killing himself and two of his female passengers aged 15 and 16, by colliding with a bendy bus near an accident black spot here. He hadn't been drinking, was just unlucky.

So, four teenagers missing or dead over the christmas holidays

I was going to start a thread on teenagers going out and safety precautions.

My son seems young for his years - has no huge desire to party all night or get drunk but I know how quickly this could change, when I hear stories of his friends, the same age as him, friends he has known for years, now going to parties, staying out late regularly and drinking.

ineedsunshine · 03/01/2008 14:54

lol at fortyplus - makes me think of that old addage "do as I say, not as I do. I used to love to say that to mine when they were younger

fortyplus · 03/01/2008 15:03

Well they are only 12 and 14, but I do find myself sounding increasingly like my mother as I get older

noddyholder · 03/01/2008 17:16

My ds is 13 will be 14 in May and I feel Itorn between letting him go a bit and hanging ona bit longer.Luckily he doesn't ever ask to go anywhere unreasonable YET so I haven't had to face that one.He does spend all day out though and has to be back at 6.30.Some of his friends stay out til 8.AIBU?

LoveAngel · 03/01/2008 17:20

Go to a party - with booze - I'd say 16, but with rules applied (ie. details of where they'll be and how to contact them, time they'll be home or you can pick them up etc)

get home alone after 9 - 14 or 15?

drink booze - 16 +, although I might let them have a small glass of wine or beer at dinner with me at home

stay out all night without checking up on them - getting more towards 17-18

have a bring a bottle party for them - 16 + and I'd check with all their friend's parents first that it was ok with them for their kids to drink

All thsi is completely NOT what my mum did. We stayed out all night from about age 14 / 15 and drank/took drugs etc. i am a reformed character now, of course , but I know the kinds of mischief unsupervised teenagers get up to, so will probably be a lot stricter with mine than my (lovely but naive) mum was with us!

tigermoth · 03/01/2008 18:29

Getting back to the questions, here's my estimate - my son will be 14 in April:

Go to a party - with booze
Depends:
I have let my ds go to the after show party with the rest of the teenage cast from his drama group. This has happened twice so far in the last year. Booze is available and some of the older teenagers( age 16/17) may get a bit drunk. I have allowed my son to take a two bottles of bacardi breezer for himself. This is a one off. I know the other teenagers and trust them to look out for ds1 - he is one of the youngest in his group and they are a very close knit bunch. The party is held in a parent's home. I would not let my son go to a party with booze if the teenagers and the hosts were strangers.

get home alone after 9
Would consider this if ds was getting back via a reputable local taxi firm, but would not let ds make his own way home alone on public transport in London till he looks and is much more grown up. Probably around age 16/17

drink booze
Will allow my son the odd small glass of bucks fizz or similar at home on occasion, but not as a routine thing. Would not want offer him alcohol as a matter of course till he is 17/18.

stay out all night without checking up on them
Shudder at the thought! Depends on how ds matures in the next few years, who is friends are and where they all go. Cannot imagine being happy with this till ds is at least 16.

have a bring a bottle party for them
Not till ds is at least 16.

Like beetrootoyourself, I have been to a friend's party for their children who range in age from 16 to 10. Cans of lager seemed to be available to all ages. Although the adults tried to restrict what the younger children drink, there was lots of secret drinking going on and the under 12s were getting tipsy.

Beetrootoyourself · 03/01/2008 20:57

tigermoth - we have ds's of similar ages - I worry about the alchopop thing...ds shows no sign of wanted alcohol - apart from the odd glass of watered down wine with us. I woujld not let him take anything to an after show party - he can have coke. Not even sure he woud expect it though

But then he has not asked

tigermoth · 04/01/2008 08:31

Beetrootoyourself, for the aftershow party, dh was of your mind, too. He didn't want ds to bring along any booze. I thought that if he had some of his own, he would not need accept anything he was offered, so could keep tabs on what he was drinking and wouldn't be mixing his drinks. I am sure his friends wouldn't have spiked his drinks, but he might have drunk something alcoholic mixed with a soft drink by mistake.

It did worry me, but I made it clear to ds that this was a one off thing - and I knew he had eaten well so was not having it on an empty stomach.

Ds would be happy to drink alcohopops at home, from time to time. He knows that one of his best friends is given bacardi breezers by his mother quite regularly as a treat. He doesn't ask for them but if I offered them to him he would say yes, so I just don't buy them

fortyplus · 04/01/2008 10:33

tigermoth - funnily enough my ds2 is in a drama group, too! My next door neighbour, whom I regard as a family friend, helps run it. They don't allow booze at the after show party, but if they did I would send one drink only I think at that age. Bacardi Breezers are quite strong, aren't they?

It's very difficult - I'd rather allow a sensible limit that the child would comply with, rather than be draconian about it, in which case they'd probably ignore me and do their own thing anyway, which might be far worse!

DS1 drinks small amounts of alcohol at home - but we stick to 'proper' drinks like beer and wine, champagne at Christmas, a little dessert wine after Christmas dinner - that sort of thing. I'm really trying to steer them away from alcopops as they're so dangerous - you don't know how much you're drinking. I have personal experience of this!!! We had some left over from the school summer fete and they were going to go out of date, so we drank them at a PTA meeting. I think I had one glass of wine and 4 Bacardi Breezers... WORST hangover I've ever had!

mumeeee · 04/01/2008 11:39

You are righ fortyplus Bacardi Breezers are strong. We had Bacardi Breezers to drink here over Christmas. We offered one to D3 15 on New years Eve but she wasn.t interested. This is the first year she has been offered one although she did have a taste of mine last year
I would not let a 13 year old take them to a party.
DD2 njust 18 belongs to a Drama group for 15 to 21 year olds.
She went to an after show party in October ( when she was still 17)which was held at the directors house. There was some alcohol there which he provided but they were not allow bring thier own.

Beetrootoyourself · 04/01/2008 12:53

those little beers with lemonade should be fine.

fortyplus · 04/01/2008 14:26

You know - I still think it's better to steer them away from anything that makes drink sweeter and therefore more 'drinkable' iykwim.

Just had a thought...

...do you think Bacardi Breezers are more acceptable that Fruit Shoots on mn?!

Perhaps I should start a thread! can just imagine the shock of those who won't allow an occasional FS or sausage roll etc...

YummersBrandyAndMincePies · 04/01/2008 14:46

i agree with the posters who say they give their teenagers small amounts of alcohol at home so that they learn to drink responsibly. my dd is not yet 2 so it's too early for me to say when i'll let her do all these things. i know i'll communicate with her a lot better about these things than my parents did, tho'. i hope! for me, alcohol was something pretty much forbidden as back then my parents were tee-total as alcohol and my dad didn't mix, certainly when my parents were first married. If i'd seen my parents drinking moderately as an occasional thing perhaps i wouldn't have overdone the booze at 17/18.

roisin · 04/01/2008 14:57

Oh what a scary thread.
DS1 has been quite stroppy and sulky and bolshy at home this holidays; (though always excruciatingly polite and charming and well-behaved in public - grr...)

I am dreading the teenage years

Saggarmakersbottomknocker · 04/01/2008 14:57

Alcopops are the work of the devil.

SpottyHamster · 04/01/2008 16:07

16/17
Never alone, 15 with friends
11 :small sip of wine with meal. 14: small glass wine with meal or low alcohol beer. Progress from there!
Never! ( until adult/left home)
I never plan to do this.

Ds1 (14) shows no sign of wanting to go to parties etc, in fact rarely goes out (wish he did sometimes- a parent is never satisfied!). Drinks small amount of alchol with us.
BTW does anyone know what age it is allowed to have a drink with a meal in a restaurant. DH thinks 14, I think 16.
I am a bit shocked that bring a bottle parties are commonly held for 16s. Is this legal, surely one would have to OK it with all the parents first? I seem to remember a mum in USA being imprisoned for allowing such a party for (I think) 18 y/o, legal limit being 21 there. Thought that was a bit of an extreme over reaction by the authorities though.

rantinghousewife · 04/01/2008 18:32

Yes but most states in the US forbid alcohol consumption by under 21s, over here the law states that they cannot purchase alcohol under the age of 18, I'm pretty sure that it doesn't extend to drinking in the home.
Fwiw I'm quite happy for ds to have a shandy with us at Sunday lunch but he's never gone out with his mates and drunk in parks or anything like that. He's still much more interested in kicking a ball about and practising his cover drive. (He's 14)

fortyplus · 04/01/2008 20:11

You are quite right. English law states that it is illegal to administer alcohol to a child under the age of 5. After that parents may allow a child to drink at home!

tigermoth · 04/01/2008 20:11

hmm, perhaps I was rash to give ds two bottles of bacardi breezer... it didn't appear to be have much effect on him or give him any sort of hangover (thank goodness!) but hard to tell as it was mixed with the general post play exhuberance. He weighs about 11 stone so I took that into the equation, too.

I think the whole alcopop thing is dangerous, though, when ds does start going out to parties proper, we'll have to look closely at what he does and doesn't drink.

fortyplus · 04/01/2008 20:13

I would think that if he's that big he'd probably be ok in a supervised environment. Mine is only about 7.5 stone so I only allow him about half a glass of wine or about 1/3 of a pint of lager. Sometimes he has non alcoholic lager and he seems just as happy with that, especially as he can then have 2 or 3 bottles.

tigermoth · 04/01/2008 20:21

mine still doesn't like the taste of beer or lager - but I bet that will change all too soon!