“My name is Joel Goodson. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over 8000 dollars in one night…” 
You had a menses party? And I thought parties with those damned expensive baskets were bad.
There is usually a reason why a cliche is a cliche.
To answer the thread title: Teenagers are stupid because they are (1) new to having brains just barely capable of adult-level thinking and (2) new to having raging hormones coursing through their bodies. A dangerous combination.
Nope - red stains from gals having sex while on their periods. It was back during hippie days, so that may have been a factor. Just a few years earlier having your period involved wearing an elaborate harness with a menstural clout the size of a small diaper strapped between your legs, and the mindset that you were crippled and filthy for a few days every month. Saying “fuck that” to that situation probably including some erring on the other extreme.
And here I expected intelligent conversation with people who’d scored in the upper 98th percentile on IQ tests, but because of a printer’s typo I had to buy new sheets!
Your brother sounds way cooler than you.
It wasn’t a dumb idea. It was a fun idea.
He did have the ability to assess rick and reward, and eyars from now will probably look back positively on the rocker he threw, and have no recollection of the negative consequences at all.
This whole crazy idea might even get him laid, and probably earn him a free pass to some good parties in the future.
:dubious: If there’s a better place, I’d like to hear about it.
As the parent of two teens, teens are stupid because of their parents. Any parent who would think leaving a 15 y.o. alone for a weekend is a good idea is profoundly foolish, no matter how perfect you think your little angel is. Too much temptation - as others have stated, hormones, desire to be popular (or, at a minimum, the desire not to be unpopular), and poor risk/reward assessment (which may have been inherited, as the parents seem to have not weighed this carefully enough).
I think you are sort of overreacting. I was the sort of kid who couldn’t even make a phone call or take a bath without my parents’ permission – you wouldn’t have caught me dead doing something against the rules, even when left home alone for days at a time. But generally, I say ‘‘What the hell?’’ I think the loss of property/theft would trouble me, as a parent–and there wold be punishment for property damage!–but just sort of knowing my kid had parties while we were gone, hell, I’d probably expect it.
I have a friend, who, while he was in college, caught his younger brother having a party, with alcohol, in this parents’ house. He completely lost it he was so angry. But I think the reason for this is that, at the time, their grandfather was in the hospital dying, and their parents had left to be there for him on his deathbed. My friend was absolutely outraged that his brother would take advantage of the unfortunate circumstances and his parents’ trust in this way at a time where it really wasn’t appropriate to be throwing a party.
But I STILL thought my friend was sorta overreacting.
Well I was not referring to the systems as much as the OP sounded as though he was blaming the party idea on “the wrong crowd”
Peer pressure may have played a role but in the end it was his brothers decision.
Um, how frikkin’ old ARE you? Are you 80 and was your brother a very-late-life surprise for your parents? I ask because there are several of us in this thread who could be a lot younger than we are and you are sounding older than us.
Would it have sucked more or less if you found out who took it?
There was a guy I knew in HS who threw a party when his parents left for a weekend. He thought this would make him popular, and indiscriminantly invited anyone and everyone.
His house was trashed.
Stolen: TV, stereo, microwave, computer, various pictures & knicknacks
Destroyed: parents dresser, bathroom sink, living room couch, several beds, lamps, front door
The cops were called at one point, and people fled in all directions, underaged drinking, etc.
One of his friends was walking around school the next day with a paper cup saying ‘Save $idiot’. We never heard all the details about what happened when his parents got home, but we never saw him outside of school again.
Let the guy make his mistakes. He has to learn somehow, and fucking up big time and hardcore is one of the best ways known.
Joyrides in my dad’s car? Check
Having people at home? Check
Miscellaneous drunken stupidity? Check
When my parents were away? No way.
I always got in trouble with my parents nearby. When they went on vacations and left me in the house, I was always the straightest arrow there ever was. My nightmare was of my parents having to return from a trip because I had messed something up. They would have killed me (and rightfully so).
Could be worse: A kid I coach (a high school junior) got in a fight with his dad after practice Monday evening and took off at a high rate of speed without a seat belt. He flipped the SUV, was pried out with the jaws of life, and is in the hospital with two broken femurs, a broken wrist , and a foreign object lodged in his left eye (that he can’t see out of). But I am just so freaking grateful he’s alive. And this is a really nice, sweet, good kid. Teenagers just don’t have much impulse control.
Greenhouse, if you’ve got one. It’s quiet, pretty, and warm.
I totally agree with you.
Just because a lot of kids do, does not mean drinking, drugs and unauthorized parties should be condoned. Let alone the posts to give a 15 year old tips on how to go about it! The liability issues alone are staggering.
I’d say there’s something wrong with you if this is bothering you so much. Are you jealous that he’s having more fun as a teenager than you did? Do you wish you had been more rebellious? If the worst crime your little bother can commit is throwing a party and having a couple of Xboxes stolen, then consider yourself lucky. My brother stole the car and got mixed up with drugs. Most families aren’t as vanilla as yours.
Lighten up and stop being such a stick in the mud, dude. Let your parents deal with your brother’s discipline.
I agree with most of the comments re: this not being the “end of the world”. The kid gets punished, works off the damages, etc. However -
Do you guys really condone a 15-yr old and his friends having alcohol? Don’t get me wrong; I’ve had oceans of beer and acres of pot, but I never started any of that until I was 17 and above. I never thought of this as a late start, but it seems maybe I was late.
I think that my late-teens introduction to partying was an advantage, since, by the time I’d progressed to a stage where there were low men in yellow coats passing around coke, I could make the correct decision and stay away. But if someone is starting at 15 with beer, then when they’re 17 and they meet the local meth dealer, are they going to be smart enough to say no? I don’t think so…
Do you guys really think it’s okay for a 15-year old to be drinking?
Would you rather the OP’s brother went to someone else’s house to drink? At least he was doing it at home.
My parents let me try sips of wine and beer as I was growing up. By the time I was in my mid-teens, alcohol was no taboo and I really never had the desire to drink until I was in my early 20’s.
Anything you make a no-no to a teenager will just make him/her want to do it more.
Sometimes these teenage parties can yield some funny results. My wife’s twin sons were 18 when the following events transpired. They lived with us then.
We went on a week-long vacation. During our absence, the twins, their father and my wife and I agreed that they would live with their father, whose house is a mile or so from ours. This agreement was made primarily to prevent unsupervised parties. While we were gone, the twins told their father that they would be spending one night at the house of a friend, twenty miles south of our town, on a lake. Instead, they used our house to have what must have been a pretty wild and massively attended party.
When we returned after a week, we both sensed that a major cleaning project had taken place. The house was clean and neat, but things weren’t exactly where they had been. In the living room, I noticed that one of my guitars was not sitting on its stand properly. I went to fix it, and noticed a photo on the book case behind it. It depicted one of the twins, standing on his head while two cohorts held his feet and another tried to pour beer into his mouth. Clearly visible in the background was the border (hand-painted by my wife just a few weeks before) on our kitchen floor.
I showed the picture to my wife, who summoned the twin in question to come home. While he was en route, as we completed our inspection of the premises, we found the rest of the roll of developed pictures, all taken during the revelry at our house. The summoned twin stood on one side of our kitchen island while my wife stood on the other side, She accused, he denied, then she started dealing the pictures onto the island surface like a poker dealer while the “busted” look overcame the innocent denials.
While we were upset that they had lied to us and their father, we found the means of their exposure to be pretty funny. That same day, we were at a social gathering which included my wife’s oldest son, who lives in another town. We told him the story, and he told us another. The father of my wife’s children works near our house, and he usually drives right by our house on his way to work. On the morning after the party, when the twins were presumed to be at the lake, he noticed the twins’ car in our driveway as he went past. There is a little lane that passes behind our house, so he drove to a vantage point behind the house and called one of the twins on his cell phone while he watched a hungover looking friend of the twins (HLFOTT) walk out of our back door and look around, then walk back in.
Dad: Where are you?
Twin: At the lake.
Dad: What car did you take?
Twin: The Jetta (which dad was gazing at)
HLFOTT in the background: Dude, I think your dad’s out back.
I should note here that we have a garage which had room in it to stash their car.
I suggested to the boys that they were not cut out for a life of crime.
Precisely. Poor risk/reward assesment is certainly valid, but that underdeveloped skill don’t enter into it if they know Mom or Dad is gonna bring the pain for ANY bending of the rules. And they KNOW because Mom or Dad have been consistent with bringin it since birth. There is no doubt or question that behavior A will result in reaction B. Period.
If this is established, like it was in my household, leaving the teens at home alone is perfectly logical. They can go up the street to other kid’s house whose parents are away