Seems like just about everyone has a video doorbell and/or other cameras monitoring their property. Took it for granted in my youth without even knowing it.
I would actually be kind of proud of my kids if they threw a successful party with their friends when I was out of town. It seems like kids barely party anymore. As long as they clean up afterwards and don’t break a bunch of stuff, I’d pretend not to notice.
Have you considered letting them party and being a cool responsible adult that sticks around to make sure everyone is safe. I had some friends growing up with parents like this. Their theory was the kids are going to party anyway so if you give them a safe space its less likely to go poorly. Anyone who got a little too sick or emotional ended up with an experienced adult to help them recover.
Stock the fridge with Pedialyte, waffle mix, orange juice, and bacon, and your house will be the favorite of the kids around the neighborhood.
It’s important as the adult to help the totally-legal kids who don’t quite know how to handle alcohol recover from a bad night.
“Yeah dude just encourage kids to drink at your house bro enable underage drinking dude what are you a loser bro just give the kids some alcohol”
It’s better than them going out somewhere to do it. They need to learn to drink responsibly and do it safely.
Yeah I’m gonna catch a felony charge so somebody else’s kids can have fun…
Edit because I want to bring home my point: there is a big difference between teaching your kid how to responsibly handle alcohol and enabling kids who are not your own to drink at your house. It is not paradoxical to say
Mature teens and young adults should know how to responsibly use alcohol:
And
Legal adults should never encourage or enable underage drinking from children who are not their own at their house.
Some parents did this back when I was in high school. The police were called and the parents were arrested.
They also tried claiming the whole “We’re just trying to be safe” thing, but it didn’t work.
This is so true. My dad taught be to be responsible with alcohol, and he did it without throwing a rager and then begging a bunch of teens to be responsible and practice temperence.
We just had a beer and watched some kung fu movies and talked about it. My kids will get the same treatment.
I feel like everyone knows of some dumb parent because they threw a rager, because “If they’re going to drink, they should do it in a safe space,” and then got the book thrown at them over an underage DUI case. I’d argue that a party is an inherently unsafe space for kids to learn about alcohol. There’s too much going on, too much peer pressure, and too much alcohol to be yourself and learn your limit.
Problem is it looks worse to a judge if the adults were present at the party. It’s liability.
We hosted parties for our daughters when they were teens (15-16). They weren’t big - maybe 8 to 10 friends. No alcohol, but lots of food off the grill. On occasion, we let them drink alcohol with us after they turned 18 at home with no friends, which is legal in our state.
Oh yeah totally, I agree
The point isn’t that they don’t have fun. Its that they clean up so good we don’t have to clean shit when we get home.
Friend of mines teen daughter did something similar. She posted on Instagram that she was at home, bored, fml, and all that. Sadly, some of her friends posted from the party. With her tagged.
“OMG SHOTS WITH #STACY!!! BFF AND JDC!!!”
Like, pictures of her and everything. Her dad made her write 100 times, “I need better friends” as part of her punishment, lol.
turn off the wifi. boom no more ring and nest cams. problem solved.
Let the kids have fun, what’s wrong with these parents?
simple solution: obstruct the view of the camera …
Maybe, just maybe, the issue is the parents not letting go and not accessibility to cameras.
Before cameras everyone had a window granny who reported everything happening in the neighborhood. And even then, parents knew what was happening. The goal was that kids would fear that the parents would discover something is amiss and clean after themselves.
Back when I was a teen, my folks would go away for a month and a half every summer and leave us kids behind (we were teenagers and didn’t want to go) and obviously we would throw parties. One year I had cleaned the house really well and thought there was no way they would know. My dad came home and that’s how I learned he keeps two cold beers in the fridge for when he gets home. And they were gone.
He wasn’t mad we threw parties, he wasn’t mad we were underage drinking, but he was mad his two cold getting-home beers had been drank and not replaced. And that’s how I found out my parents are humans who knew we were having parties and they didn’t care as long as we didn’t die or mess with their shit.
