Question for Parents of Teens, Preferably in a Large City

16 year old out to 2 or 3 AM. Not in this lifetime. That is the one thing I do not agree with. Nothing good ever happens after midnight.

First of all you have to keep an eye on the end game, she will be going away to college. Not that you are doing this but I can never understand the parents who keep their kids under their thumb until the go away to college and then are shocked they can't make good decisions and drop out.

My point is by allowing her more and more freedom to make her own good, or sometimes bad, decisions you are teaching her something she cannot learn any way else.

Think about how you make your own decisions. Didn't your choices change when you had kids, when someone else was effected by your decisions? You actually answered to that child, that was part of the equation. Right now your daughter's decisions effect you. She will answer to you the next day for a good or bad decisions. She is learning to make good decisions and avoid bad ones and the only way this is learned is under your roof.

I did this with both my older kids and plan on doing it with the two younger ones. When teens get to make their own choices as to what is safe they make good decisions, at least to the best of their ability. There were times where I had to say have you considered this, did you hear about that. 80% of the time they had and responded with their analysis of the situation and why they still considered it safe. When they didn't know they usually said I have to make a few phone calls I will get back to you. Most of the time *they* decided it wasn't safe.

So to answer your question after 16 I let them set their own limits but guided them in that process. About the only drawback in college was a fair few frustrated calls from my daughter trying to understand why her friends seemed hell bent on killing themselves.

Oh we live in St Louis. By the way, when she was 17 I let her go to Chicago with her friends. Heck I let her fly to NYC to look at colleges at 17. She lived.
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Oh to address coed sleep overs. We hosted two after dance parties, one was the prom. I will use the prom as an example, we had about a hundred kids sleeping here. Only 20 parents called me. The why is simple, the kids only had to say Christine (my daughter) was hosting the party and they knew it would be safe. She actually, on her own, hired an off duty police officer to sit on our driveway until four in the morning. His orders, they can come in drunk but they cannot leave in that condition.

That is the end result of raising kids who own their choices, they make good choices.

Midnight movies? Never. My kids have begged to do this a few times (like when the new Twilight movies came out) but there is no way I'm going to be out driving teenagers around in the middle of the night. Nor do I want my kids out driving on their own at that hour, that's the absolute worst time for them to be out on the road.
Also, I'm a fairly liberal, easy going mom but I have NEVER heard of a boy girl sleepover, that would also never happen here. I was a teenager once, a "good" teenager and I promise you that is like giving kids matches and a box of fireworks and then expecting them not to set them of.

IMO way too much freedom here. I instill obeying the law, which means curfew too. Maybe for a special event, with a parent chaperone, would I allow my kids to be out til 3am I also don't agree with coed sleepovers just for the heck of it; I would be open to it if it was after a function like prom.

With all the high crime going on on our streets, I would be extra cautious. There are a lot of flash mobs and it is quite dangerous. My 23 yr old lives on Michigan ave, across from Nordstrom mall, and I still worry about her. The flash mob a few weeks ago was by her place, the stabbing in the hotel was close to her & so much more. Think about the wrong place at the wrong time and nothing good happens after dark.

This is unsolicited but I'm reading Clean by David Sheff and it is a book about addiction in teens and adults. The reason I recommend it is because it talks about the need for parental supervision and guidance and how critical it is to teen growing up. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and I thought I was drug savvy. I've learned alot about the changing face of drug use in teens and how common it is today. The more you can do to prevent your daughter from being in situations ripe for drug use (coed sleepovers) the better. Good-luck.

If it works for you and your daughter, then it makes sense. I think it is a maturity issue, not an age issue. I went to college at 16 in Atlanta and had no curfew. My parents lived about 40 minutes away and I saw them regularly, either at their house or in the city. I had a boyfriend at 17 and got my degree at 20 and moved to Boston for my first job.
My own daughter is now 16 and a sophomore in high school and not nearly ready to move out on her own. I do give her lots of freedom to make her own choices as long as the school work is attended to first.
I feel that we only have a limited time to walk along side our children to guide them. It seems like you indeed guided yours and did not try to control them. Way to go, mama.

I have a boy. He is my second, only one in high school, now. Both very good kids. I trust them. Both very smart AP/hard working kids.

But I am not going to allow sleep overs with boys and girls. Is it something you would host? I understand the normal feeling of being tired! It's normal to be anxious about boys and girls spending the night under the same roof.
So to me, IMO, it's NOT normal to push those boundaries as a parent and allow those things in your home. That makes my mom radar go up. If parents can ignore their human, God given, normal, boundaries for that, then I am not sure they are listening to their gut about anything. That includes the use of alcohol and drugs and the cool parent thing of giving it to the kids. I would say, in our area, about 1/3 of parents of high schoolers provide the substance or the place, or both, for kids to do illegal substances. Not cool. I trust my kid but I am not putting them in that position.

The movie at midnight thing, I have let him do but not without some trepidation. My oldest and youngest went to see the Batman movie at midnight. We all know what happened in CO. that night! I would not be happy if they went out for a while after that. That is a college thing, in my opinion, let them do it when I am not awake worrying about them!

Hope this helps. To me, I have limits that allow for fun but doesn't go all the way to presenting circumstances where they have to make choices the teenage mind is not capable of calculating the repercussions about.

At 16 she needs to be having a lot of freedom because in a few months she'll be an adult and be needing to make these decisions on her own. I think you're doing a good job.

Since you're in a large city like Chicago where there is a high crime rate I do think that I'd make sure I was readily available to actually offer transportation to her and her friends though. I agree about public transportation at night too.

I don't think it's a city thing. I think it's a your daughter is trustworthy thing. We live near some large cities and by 16 both sks were regularly taking mass transit. Here, many HS students take the public bus to get to their chosen school. What we didn't approve was co-ed sleepovers, **especially** if we didn't know the parents. We have allowed the occasional cast party or Prom Lock In. I personally wouldn't allow my 16 yr old to see a midnight movie on a regular basis and I would be picking her up if she went. If a 2AM pickup was too late for me, it was too late for her.

I think it's time to get to know the parents of these sleepover hosts and to know more about where she is and who she is with, in general.

It's good you can trust her. Just make sure that you think about it for a bit before you say yes. Don't be afraid to be the uncool parent. My sks were to be home by 9:30 or so on school nights (with approval...they still needed HW done, chores, etc.) and their curfew on weekends was flexible depending on the situation, but more like 11 or 12 and not 3. Not at 16. More like 18.

My SKs were also pretty trustworthy, took AP classes, were involved in their schools, worked, etc. IMO, they have college to be out til 3AM.

ETA: For reference, my SD is 18, working, and attending a large university 5 hours from us. She just signed a lease for an off campus apartment, and navigated 2 trips to the ER her first semester of college. I think she turned out fine with our balance of rules and freedom.

Here in our city there is a city wide curfew.. Unless a person under the age of 18 is with a parent, they can not be out and about after 11:00 on Week days and midnight during the weekends.

The sleepovers with boys and girls.. would totally depend on the friends and situation.. Again here, the sleepovers that are coed.. like at Churches, Band events.. etc.. that our kids would be at.. The boys would sleep in one room the girls in the other..

For example last week was Prom at my Nephews high school .He was the Quarterback for 2 years. , on the Baseball Team, The Drill team Captain..Cheerleaders etc.. are all in this group.. . The prom was held at a Country Club.. His group of friends and dates had dinner, with Limo transportation and then sleepover at a rented Lake house..BUT they were chaperoned at the Lake House the entire time. Girls slept on one side of the house Boys on the other. They promised no alcohol and no drugs..

This is what I consider a fairly wild group usually, but they learned a lesson from last year, when a group of kids got into trouble for arriving at the Prom Drunk.. and some got caught with pot. Not good..

But ended up setting an expectation for behaviors. Those kids last year.. Had to attend alternative school for almost a month and came Very,very close to not being able to walk with their graduating class!!

These kids really did not want to end up like this,

Consider at some point gathering all of these parents together so you can all meet. That is what we did. Our daughters/ my nephews high school is a Magnet Program so the kids come from all over the city to attend. This was a good way for all of us parents to be on the same page, exchange phone numbers, emails.. etc.. and discuss expectations..

We became a community..

My daughter was like yours as a teen, and while I don't live in a big city, I allowed her a lot of freedom because of the kind of kid she was, and because I knew I could trust her. Driving was my biggest worry, not public transportation.

It sounds like you are doing fine, and are just going through the typical worrisome transitional phase of parenting teens.

With a kid I trust, I too would let them go to sleepovers at homes where I don't know the friend or parents, as long as I had the address and phone number, had an idea about who the people were, and she had a cell phone.

So far I think you are making the correct choices regarding your daughter. Do you have a more specific concern?

Our kids were raised in a small town most of their life. We moved to Houston when our oldest was 17 and junior in High School. (I wouldn't recommend that to anyone!!!)

Our daughter was like yours. She was in band and very active. After football games, they would all go to IHop or Denny's. She would get home around 1ish. Generally, her curfew was midnight.

Our son was the same. He was on drumline here so after football games, they would go to IHop or Denny's. Its tradition. So he would get home around 1ish. Generally, his curfew was midnight.

Special occasions were dealt with individually. Both kids had afterprom on Galveston Island for a couple of days. Boy/girl sleepover. The daddies chaperoned those events!! =)