how would you react if your 16 yr old came home from a party quite drunk?

[brimfull]

I know it's the done thing ,I probably did the same thing.
But I felt really angry with her.Have explained how I want her to be careful as her safety is compromised when she's drunk etc.

Advised her not to drink cider all night,to dilute with lemonade if possible as she's small and I think is way too strong a drink.I know I sound really old and fuddy duddy but it is very worrying.
How do you react?

nappy-how would you have reacted if your parents had not allowed you to have so much freedom,like going to clubs all nght etc?

my little brother got me to agree to being the adult 'chaperone' for a party he had at my mums for his 16th (i think) that would make me 19.
i agreed, so my mum agreed to go out for the night.
so im there, being the 'adult', and the huse fills up with 16yos. fair enough.
then my brother comes downstairs to the kitchen (where i am) and his eyes are flicking about all over the place. hes rushing his tits off on an E.
bloody nora, it scared the pants off me.
id been doing that for ages, but you dont imagine what it looks like from the outside. i spent the next few hours traipsing around the place coaxing people (children!) to drink orange juice and open windows. what an idiot.

now that was scary.

ggirl -how long is a piece of string? pretty hard to guess what might have happened. wish i knew.

haha

I want a crystal ball.

Right am off to bed,thanks for your advice .

oh sorry, i didnt give any advice.

my advice? relax and trust yourself. you'll do as well as you possibly can (as a parent) because you care and youre not stupid or fooling yourself.

thats about as good as it gets.

i think.

oh, no!

i used to come home from parties at 16 dead drunk.

i'd lost my cherry the, too.

depends a bit on character but if your main concern is safety how about doing what my mum/uncle did? my mum once said to me that if I needed to get home, and if the only way of getting home was a dodgy lift of some sort (eg from someone I didn't know or someone who'd been drinking) I was to phone my uncle. any time of night. no repercussions. no bolllocking. no questions. Uncle Jack would come and get me and bring me home.

the effect of this was

• it made me realise how much my family cared about me - not about rules or what's acceptable but me
• it made me realise how you can be exposed to dangers when you're drunk - ie to the extent that my family would do this for me and suspend judgment
• I knew I would be mortified if I ever actually had to make that call - I'm afraid it didn;t stop me drinking but somehow, even at my drunkest I maintained a good sense of what was safe

obviously try this on the wrong teenager and uncle turns into a taxi service...

i like that hatwoman.

expat- me too (the drunk bit)..but it's very different when you see your dc doing it.

hatwoman-that's sound advice thanks.

A very good sign here is that she felt safe to come home and that she talked to you about it. I agree with the whole tone of keep her informed, but don't become all horrified and ground her. She is growing up and if she feels she can discuss these experiments with you rather than fear your reaction she is more likely to stay sensible. (My experience with my mum and seems to be working with DD1)

And agree with hatwoman about the safetyline without strings.

But my ds1 doesn't talk to me about anything (unless I ask him) so how on earth can I expect him to talk to me about doing stuff that he knows he shouldn't be?

If I ask him outright he's hardly likely to tell me either.

I really worry about how to tread this fine line between being too 'liberal' and too controlling!

hatwoman - that's exactly what my dad said to me when i was 15/16 - that he would rather take a call anytime and pick me up however drunk i was than worry about how i was getting home. it had the effect (intentional or not) of keeping me slightly more sober than my friends (whose parents didn't know where they were or that they were drinking and consequently got themselves into all sorts of dodgy situations!) so that i knew i could judge a situation and be sufficiently coherent if i ever did need to call my dad.

my parents never condemned my drinking, but would never give me any leeway the next day - for example, on sundays we always used to go as a family to watch my bro play rugby, rain or shine, and mum would make me get up at 8am to do that however hungover and tired i was...

I think all this had the effect of making me feel I needed to be a little more responsible with my drinking than my friends - indeed i was much worse at university than i was as a 15/16 year old, even though the novelty had long worn off, mainly because my parents weren't around to see it!

I was a pretty sensible teenager who liked a drink with my friends, rather than someone likely to go off the rails with the freedom, so they probably knew this adult approach would work with me. Might be worth trying if your daughter is like that.

i was a proper rebel!!! my first time i got drunk i was 14 and me n my mate helped ourselves to his drink cabinate! his parents had to go out etc but i got so drunk i was taken to hosp!! (i didnt have my stomach pumped) thing is no one cud smell drink on us cos we d mostly drunk vodka n stuff and tequila shots so they thought id had food poisoning or an allergy to salad creme lmao my mum was walking thru the hosp wiv the salad c in her hand!!!
i was so bad that wen i got up the next morn i couldnt even remember drinking!! it wasnt untill i looked at my mob to see the msgs from my mates in school asking about my hang ova it wasnt untill then did i remember! my parents then stoped me seeing all of my friends etc i was literally stuck in my room all the time and eating my meals seperately from them as an outcast which was pretty harsh cos this went on for months, then wen i finally got to out, i started drinking wiv my mates for a laugh, and to let everything out anger etc and just to really p**s my rents off. if my parents hadnt punished me so much to the extreme they did, i prob wouldnt have gone and done it again cos i would have respected them, which i hadnt done in the first place.
basically if you you really grill em for wat they ve done they ll go out and do it all the more just b'cos they can. if you allow them to go out wiv their mates n you know there is a responsible adult not like my mates rents who left us, then it shud be ok just make sure they know where the line is and not to cross it. i d rather know where and what not getting a phone call from a hosp sum where or worse. just give them space