Thank you Rubystreak. Hearing all these “kids will be kids” responses was driving me crazy.
I started partying a bit when I was 15, but did the bulk of my large house party type partying in my 16th year.
I won’t argue teenagers have less impulse control, but teenagers deserve a bit more credit than that. The difference is often this much, between them and some 30, 40, and 50 year olds I’ve known.
I went to a lot of parties. There was loud music, booze, sex - cops sometimes got called. But the kids throwing the parties either had parents who knew and gave them permission with the expectation the teen party-thrower is now in charge, and responsible, or the parents maybe didn’t give explicit permission but there was still the same understanding. Screw up too much, there will be hell to pay.
Teens are capable of throwing a party and controlling who shows up and keeping an eye on how things are going and keeping things from being broken or stolen.
What teenagers lack is the life experience to foresee all the ways a party could go wrong sometimes, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of being mature and having impulse control.
If you’re dealing with a teen who allows the house to get completely trashed, things stolen, etc, you’re dealing with a stupid teen with probably stupid parents. Let’s be cautious before blaming all teens for the behavior of the stupid people, teens and adults.
No kidding. I’m not even going to mention it . . . Why the hell not??
When my brother was 16 he threw a huge party at our house while no one else was home. My boyfriend came up to the hosue to see if I was around and found 100 high school sophomores and freshmen in the house and on the lawn. He asked if I was there and they told him I didn’t live there any more. :rolleyes: (Lord knows where my brother was.)
When I got home, it was clear to me instantly a LOT of people had been in the house. Plus, of course my BF was giving me a hard time about it (“I didn’t know you moved away. Was it something I said?”) I didn’t say anything to my parents until I found in my room that someone had broken the lock on my desk and scrawled swear words all over my stories and poems, and two pairs of my shoes plus my whole entire jewelry box were gone.
Then I told my brother I was telling Mom and Dad, because God knows what might be missing from their room. My jewelry was of the “turns green after three wearinigs” variety, but my mom had some really nice stuff. My brother’s response: The entire sophomore class will hate you! I laughed myself silly. I was a SENIOR, ya-huh, and too cool to be touched, and the very idea that I would give a shit what the sophomore class thought was hilarious.
So I ratted him out. He got in SOOOOOOOOO much trouble. Some of my mom’s jewelry was missing, and my father was pissed. These days – my brother is 37 – he admits that, yeah, it was a pretty doofus thing to do. The party got out of hand and a bunch of people ended up there that he didn’t even know, but by then he was too drunk to care. And we still give him a hard time about it, 20 years later.
Me, I was one of those apparent do-gooder honor students. That just meant that my friends and I got drunk in the woods or at the lake and our less responsible younger siblings were blamed for the beer we stole.
Were they upset or just sad? 
The other thing I don’t get here is… what sort of hooligans do you guys hang out with that there were people at these parties you don’t know well enough that they feel comfortable stealing your stuff?
Even at my biggest bashes, the people I didn’t directly know I knew were brought by friends, I had met once or twice, or something. The odd person who seemed really random even, some sketchy by any standards, seemed perfectly content to be normal party guests and drink the provided alcohol (which I’m always exceedingly generous with) and just hang out. The worst thing that’s happened is a guy stealing a couple leftover liquor bottles, which really wasn’t that big a deal in the long run, since it needed to disappear anyways.
Perhaps you should be more concerned with the guest list, or that he doesn’t know his friends well enough to prevent people from stealing these things, rather than the fact that, god forbid, he drinks and has a good time. I’m the black sheep in my family, the only one who parties, hell, socializes period, but I’ve NEVER had a problem like that.
I’m sixteen and frankly…
I never got the whole cliche about teen parties getting out of control. You know, kid invites friends over, they invite friends over, those friends invite friends who steal your shit, commit arson, rape your dog, etc.
If anyone I didn’t know, or even knew but didn’t have a lot of trust in, showed up at my door, whether I was having a party or not, I’d tell them to get the fuck off my property. Who lets randoms into their house?
I’m positive that my parents, along with my cousins’ parents, know and expect that we have parties when they’re gone. They don’t mind because when they get back, the house is cleaner usually than it was when they left it, and none of us are in trouble with the authorities, since we only invite trusted friends. (to quote West Side Story, “I don’t shake hands with people I don’t like and I don’t drink with people I don’t like.”)
Exactly. I’m not concerned that he had a party at the house. He’s alone in the house for the weekend, of course he’ll want to invite friends over. What concerns me is that there are parties, and then there are parties. What apparently went on there was a party. The type of party where you can’t keep track of everyone that’s there, that get so wild that people can walk out the door with gaming systems with no one else noticing. I don’t know how the thieves got into the house, hopefully they aren’t anyone that my brother directly knows, but I do hope he’ll be more careful now about who he trusts. A harsh way to learn that lesson but a necessary lesson to learn nonetheless.
Suppose your kid invites his friends into your home, and they decide to raid your liquor cabinet-several kids get drunk, and on the way home, they marry their car to a tree. Now you have one dead, 3 in hospital-are you responsible for this?
That’s why this kid ought to be severely reprimanded. These "parties’ can get out of hand, and you might well lose your home!