There was nothing for my parents to know about.
Couldn’t vote. My parents had very limited parenting skills, but that wasn’t why they didn’t know.
I was not a drinker or sexually active, so there was nothing for them to know. But that didn’t stop my irrationally crazy mother from treating me like an untrustworthy leper. I should have gone crazy, since she thought I was anyway. Ah well. Wasted youth!
I wasn’t a drinker or sexually active as a teen. When my dad visited me when I was 19 and living in the dorms, he brought me a six pack of a good microbrew for my minifridge. My dad had awesome parenting skills. 
I already answered, but I’m assuming this question refers to when you’re living at home during high school, versus away from home after that point (college student or otherwise out of the house)?
My mother was still reminding me to take a sleeping bag on going to stay with my boyfriend when I was 22, so I assume she missed the fact that I was having sex considerably before that. I don’t know if that’s a lack of parenting skills - my mother was certainly of a generation and class that would have found it shocking so I certainly would never have voluntarily told them and it’s pretty easy to hide.
Drinking I generally tried to conceal and I’m sure they didn’t know the full extent of it, but I also suspect I wasn’t as clever at hiding it as I thought at the time.
In terms of whether this constitutes a lack of parenting skills I don’t know. They mostly knew where I was and when I was coming home. I rarely outright defied them, but rarely confided in them either. Whether that’s because I was just secretive or because they somehow failed to gain my trust I don’t think I could judge.
My mother, having had me at the tender age of sixteen, had a long-running deal with me that if I wanted to have sex, all I’d have to do was tell her and she would put me on birth control. I did, and she did.
I didn’t drink until college. Took various pills, though, and I don’t think they ever knew.
No-if you have a problem with the OP, you can either take it to the mods or take it to The BBQ Pit, because it has nothing to do with this thread.
Also, if you wish to respond to this post, you can take it to ATMB.
Having watched the trainwrecks other members of the family had made involving teenage sex and drinking, I was uninterested in that. I smoked pot a few times with my maternal grandfather and his buddies. Incontinence and maryjane, what a smell. I recommend that experience for any guardians or active parents wanting to innoculate their teens from fascination with marijuana.
Didn’t go beyond kissing while fully clothed until I turned 20. My parents were aware that I was drinking when I was 18 and 19, but it was legal back then. And I wasn’t exactly a big drinker, then or now, so it wasn’t something I felt the need to hide from them.
They found out I drank when a friend left a bottle of Captain Morgan in the freezer. They found I smoked pot when I left plans on how to build a vaporizer on the piano bench. :smack:
If evidence hadn’t been left behind, I don’t think I’d ever have been caught.
My mom STILL believes I was a virgin before I got married, even though I had been living with my girlfriend-fiancee for two years prior.
While I never got past third base in high school, they didn’t figure that out either.
Granted, the trick with them was that I needed to stay in known locations. My parents didn’t know everything I did, but being the proprietors of a grocery store in a small rural town, they sure as heck knew WHERE I did it. I may still be the only kid to ever get grounded because I got a ride with a classmate from band camp to a McDonalds in a town farther from my parents’, only to be seen by a guy who happened to mention to my dad he saw me at McDonalds before I was even out of band camp that day. The other factor is that I didn’t get up to anything all that often–I maybe had six occasions where I hit third base in total before I went to college, and that was the furthest extent of it.
That said, I went to GREAT lengths to hide my sexual activity from my parents–I can honestly say that as a teen I never engaged in sexual activity within five miles of my parent’s house or in the same town that my parents live.
My parents either figured it out just because they were good parents and knew their kids, or they started to just assume figuring that they would rather err on the side of caution. For example, when going off to a high school dance or party, starting around 16 or so, my dad would give me a $20 bill and say: “Here take this for cab fare… just in case.” with an accompanying look that added “you even think of getting into a car with a driver who’s been drinking and I’ll have your balls.”
Around that age a box of condoms magically appeared in the linen closet too (that’s here we also kept medicine cabinet kind of stuff like band-aids, Pepto-Bismal, and cotton balls.) I never used those because I figured someone would notice one missing, but I think it was just supposed to be a big hint.
It came up in a Pit thread about Palin knowing/not knowing about her daughter’s activities.
I wasn’t a drinker back in the day, but I was sexually active.
Mammhomie found out by walking in on me and Crystal with our shirts off and my hand down her pants. :eek:
She lectured me about condom use, and about being a little more discreet.
:eek:
I take it the OP did not intend to mean “sexually active” to include, you know, failing to be master of one’s domain…otherwise, there’d be no reason to include the last option in the poll.
No.
Yes.
My mother discovered I was sexually active because I stupidly left a used condom in my trash can after my girlfriend and I had sex the morning of my high school graduation, then I left to go to DisneyWorld the next day. When my mom cleaned my room while I was gone, I got busted.
Thank heavens my kids don’t do this kind of stuff.
Do they?
I had a wonderful mother with great parenting skills. She knew very little about my sexual and recreational activities in my teen years.