teenager breaking curfew

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:39:31 -0400, Rosalie B.
wrote:

toto wrote:

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:25:22 -0400, Rosalie B.
wrote:

Although he did take his friends' sister to
her senior prom. They both wore tuxedos.

LOL Was he dating my daughter?

Did she do that too - when was that - he graduated HS in 1989, so this
would have been 1990 or so.

The timeframe is pretty close. Yep, she and her bf did that.

They both wore the black suit white shirt, black tie and red
cummerbunds. Both of them were blond.

Well, that rules that out. She has dk brown hair and it was purple
for the prom.

His friend (the one with the sister) was ds's best man at the wedding,
and later was the godfather for ds's little boy that died.

Dd invited this young man who was several states away actually and by
the time prom came around they were no longer really dating, but she
could not uninvite him. They had fun anyway from what she said.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Chris wrote:

On Mar 10, 7:25?pm, Rosalie B. wrote:

When my son was 18 and in HS he was the 'closer' for a local pizza
restaurant. ?He was there by himself to shut up shop, and clean up for
the next day. ?He was basically an assistant manager. ?But he was
still in school. ?He got the job for himself and worked his way up to
almost the top. ?He was making pretty good money. ?I didn't have a
curfew for him IIRC. ?What would I have done if he didn't come home at
the time I set? I'd rather have him at home even if he did come in
late where I could still exert some influence on him so that he WOULD
graduate.. ?

Later on, he went up to live with his friends family and was working
two jobs - one at a car wash during the day and stocking shelves at
night. ?His friends mother fed him (I think he paid her some money for
that) and woke him up so he got to his jobs on time. ?About all he did
was work, eat and sleep. ?Although he did take his friends' sister to
her senior prom. ?They both wore tuxedos.

Still later he and the friend moved to where the friend could go to
school to be an aircraft mechanic. ?He got various jobs and they had
an apartment together. ?Then he met his present wife, and moved in
with her. ?Eventually they got married. ?He was not yet 21. ?

Now I would really rather he not have gotten married so young, and
would have liked him to go to college. ?But what would having a curfew
when he was in HS done to help achieve those goals?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I don't understand the job scenario mentioned a couple of times in
this thread. I had a curfew and I had a job in high school. If my job
schedule put me on closing shift, then I closed and came straight home
- and my parents new on which nights I was scheduled to close, and not
by me even telling them each time. They knew that if I reported to
work at 6 p.m., I was on the closing shift. And the issue was that if
none of us liked the curfew at 18, then we could move out to live by
our own rules. lol.

I think my son WOULD have come home right afterwards. It wasn't
necessary to have a curfew for him to do that.

Basically I think that by the time they are 18, all these issues
should have been worked out, or else the parents and young adult
should be talking about it. It is no longer the kind of thing where
you say 'no, you can't go out and play with your friends until you've
done your homework', or 'you have to be in bed by 10 because you have
school tomorrow'. That kind of thing should be ingrained already. A
parent should be working toward this from the day the kid was born.
And if there is still a problem, then it's probably too late. The kid
will have to find out for himself. Or not.

On Mar 11, 11:50*am, Banty wrote:
In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...



enigma wrote:

*are most teenagers really stupid or something? i was 17 when
i went away to college. i did not stay up all night, well,
except for one time a couple friends & i decided that walking
to Newmarket was an interesting idea... that did take all
night to get there & back.
*most nights i was in my room before 11pm, & in bed before
midnight (& i'm a night person). a few nights i stayed at the
library until it closed at 1am.
*is that *really* so unusual, or is it just that the party
types get more press?

* *I think both sorts occur in abundance.

The quieter sorts do try to be party types ;-) *After awhile, the party types
find they have to cool it, or they're failing/broke.

That's part of the *point* of getting out and growing up.

Yes, but if a young woman grows up only after getting pregnant, it may
be too late. In general her marriage prospects are diminished, and in
some cultures, including some sub-cultures in the U.S., her marriage
prospects are dead. Thus, some parents try to set rules for their
children, even their adult children, to reduce the chance of what they
would view as a calamity. Of course, if you don't share the values of
those parents, you won't approve of their practices. I'm not saying I
do, entirely. I dated one Indian-American girl who attended a local
college solely because her parents wanted her to live at home, not in
the dorms. Another Indian girl I knew attended a woman's college in
the U.S. because her parents would not approve of her attending a co-
ed university. I certainly won't bar my children from attending co-ed
universities.

My overall point is that many parents, especially in more socially
conservative countries, try to structure the lives of their children,
even their adult children, to reduce the chance of bad things
happening. American parents tned to place a higher value on
independence at an earlier age and learning from experience. Both
attitudes have some merit, and the challenge is to find the right mix.

Banty wrote:
In article , Ericka Kammerer
says...
enigma wrote:

are most teenagers really stupid or something? i was 17 when
i went away to college. i did not stay up all night, well,
except for one time a couple friends & i decided that walking
to Newmarket was an interesting idea... that did take all
night to get there & back.
most nights i was in my room before 11pm, & in bed before
midnight (& i'm a night person). a few nights i stayed at the
library until it closed at 1am.
is that *really* so unusual, or is it just that the party
types get more press?
I think both sorts occur in abundance.

The quieter sorts do try to be party types ;-)

They do? I'm sure some do, but certainly not all. Not
by a long shot.

That's part of the *point* of getting out and growing up.

Actually, I'd disagree with that. There are plenty of
folks who never feel the urge to sow their wild oats, and it's
not like those who don't are incomplete and doomed to, I dunno,
a particularly wild mid-life crisis or something ;-) There are
also plenty who do. Takes all sorts, and all that.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Rosalie B. wrote:

Basically I think that by the time they are 18, all these issues
should have been worked out, or else the parents and young adult
should be talking about it. It is no longer the kind of thing where
you say 'no, you can't go out and play with your friends until you've
done your homework', or 'you have to be in bed by 10 because you have
school tomorrow'. That kind of thing should be ingrained already. A
parent should be working toward this from the day the kid was born.
And if there is still a problem, then it's probably too late. The kid
will have to find out for himself. Or not.

We all hope that our children will be the sort who,
having been brought up with proper values and parenting, will
be making good decisions by the time they're 18 years old.
On the other hand, there are obviously plenty of cases where
it doesn't work out that way, through failures of parenting
or any number of other issues. When that happens, I'm not
sure it is always the case that the only solution is to declare
it "too late" and let the kid learn from the school of hard
knocks, whatever the cost. Sometimes you don't have much choice,
but sometimes it's worth it to go all in and try to get the kid
through school or whatever other short term goal that may at
least make things more salvageable in the long run. There's
no perfect answer at that point, but I don't think the best
option is necessarily to wash one's hands of the whole affair.
Eighteen is still a very young adult, and there's often still
a whole lot of room for parents to make an impact if needed.
I know too many kids whose parents washed their hands of them
in early adulthood who never got it all together, and too many
who made it through by virtue of parents who wouldn't give up
even after they had duly discharged their responsibilities to
get the kid to the age of majority for me to discount the potential
value of a firm hand when a young adult needs it. (Which is not
to say it's always the right strategy, of course.)

Best wishes,
Ericka

Beliavsky wrote in

oups.com:

My overall point is that many parents, especially in more
socially conservative countries, try to structure the lives
of their children, even their adult children, to reduce the
chance of bad things happening. American parents tned to
place a higher value on independence at an earlier age and
learning from experience. Both attitudes have some merit,
and the challenge is to find the right mix.

i think if one is careful to instill their values into their
children from birth onwards to puberty (when parents become
rather stupid all of the sudden g), without being overly
controlling or micromanaging their children's lives, then one
is likely to have teens that are sensible about their own
limits.
now, my parents didn't like the people i was associating with
as a 15/16 year old (i was doing peer councelling with
substance abusers), so they set a 'curfew' that stated i had
to be in the yard by 9pm. since that meant that my friends
were also welcome as long as no excessive noise was happening,
it was not a rule that chafed. it also proved to my parents
that my friends, despite some poor choices, were not bad kids.

lee having an FBI tapped phone does nothing for a teen's
social life, BTW
--
Last night while sitting in my chair
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.

On Mar 11, 1:05*pm, enigma wrote:

lee having an FBI tapped phone does nothing for a teen's
social life, BTW

Did that really happen to you?

Beliavsky wrote:
On Mar 11, 11:50 am, Banty wrote:
In article , Ericka
Kammerer says...



enigma wrote:

are most teenagers really stupid or something? i was 17 when
i went away to college. i did not stay up all night, well,
except for one time a couple friends & i decided that walking
to Newmarket was an interesting idea... that did take all
night to get there & back.
most nights i was in my room before 11pm, & in bed before
midnight (& i'm a night person). a few nights i stayed at the
library until it closed at 1am.
is that *really* so unusual, or is it just that the party
types get more press?

I think both sorts occur in abundance.

The quieter sorts do try to be party types ;-) After awhile, the
party types find they have to cool it, or they're failing/broke.

That's part of the *point* of getting out and growing up.

Yes, but if a young woman grows up only after getting pregnant, it may
be too late. In general her marriage prospects are diminished, and in
some cultures, including some sub-cultures in the U.S., her marriage
prospects are dead. Thus, some parents try to set rules for their
children, even their adult children, to reduce the chance of what they
would view as a calamity. Of course, if you don't share the values of
those parents, you won't approve of their practices. I'm not saying I
do, entirely. I dated one Indian-American girl who attended a local
college solely because her parents wanted her to live at home, not in
the dorms. Another Indian girl I knew attended a woman's college in
the U.S. because her parents would not approve of her attending a co-
ed university. I certainly won't bar my children from attending co-ed
universities.

My overall point is that many parents, especially in more socially
conservative countries, try to structure the lives of their children,
even their adult children, to reduce the chance of bad things
happening.



We all have values. We all attempt to instill them in our children. By the
time the children reach adulthood, it makes more sense to allow those values
to take shape of their own. Controlling the lives of adult children so that
they don't disappoint the *parent* is counter-productive to the job of
growing up. which is the child's concern.


American parents tned to place a higher value on
independence at an earlier age and learning from experience. Both
attitudes have some merit, and the challenge is to find the right mix.

Ericka Kammerer wrote:
Banty wrote:
In article , Ericka
Kammerer says...
enigma wrote:

are most teenagers really stupid or something? i was 17 when
i went away to college. i did not stay up all night, well,
except for one time a couple friends & i decided that walking
to Newmarket was an interesting idea... that did take all
night to get there & back.
most nights i was in my room before 11pm, & in bed before
midnight (& i'm a night person). a few nights i stayed at the
library until it closed at 1am.
is that *really* so unusual, or is it just that the party
types get more press?
I think both sorts occur in abundance.

The quieter sorts do try to be party types ;-)

They do? I'm sure some do, but certainly not all. Not
by a long shot.

That's part of the *point* of getting out and growing up.

Actually, I'd disagree with that. There are plenty of
folks who never feel the urge to sow their wild oats, and it's
not like those who don't are incomplete and doomed to, I dunno,
a particularly wild mid-life crisis or something ;-) There are
also plenty who do. Takes all sorts, and all that.

Best wishes,
Ericka


It seems to me that folks who DONT go sow their wild oats learned their
lessons the easy way. And they should be thankful for that.

In article , Stephanie says...

Ericka Kammerer wrote:
Banty wrote:
In article , Ericka
Kammerer says...
enigma wrote:

are most teenagers really stupid or something? i was 17 when
i went away to college. i did not stay up all night, well,
except for one time a couple friends & i decided that walking
to Newmarket was an interesting idea... that did take all
night to get there & back.
most nights i was in my room before 11pm, & in bed before
midnight (& i'm a night person). a few nights i stayed at the
library until it closed at 1am.
is that *really* so unusual, or is it just that the party
types get more press?
I think both sorts occur in abundance.

The quieter sorts do try to be party types ;-)

They do? I'm sure some do, but certainly not all. Not
by a long shot.

That's part of the *point* of getting out and growing up.

Actually, I'd disagree with that. There are plenty of
folks who never feel the urge to sow their wild oats, and it's
not like those who don't are incomplete and doomed to, I dunno,
a particularly wild mid-life crisis or something ;-) There are
also plenty who do. Takes all sorts, and all that.

Best wishes,
Ericka


It seems to me that folks who DONT go sow their wild oats learned their
lessons the easy way. And they should be thankful for that.



Often the easy way being, that they had some latitude while they still could
fall back on their parents if need be.

I'd rather see some of the early-adulthood exploration happen when I'm still
around (meaning my kid is still around home). It makes zero sense to me to have
it happen after I've kicked him out over questions of control in the household.

There may be some kids who both need and would brook to curfew rules at that age
(being careful not to be so blackandwhite ;-).

But I think for the most part, they either don't *need* the curfew (I had one
and totally didn't need it; should have defied it *more*), or are wild enough to
need it but won't be cooperating.

At what point do some folks here think it's time not to have a curfew?
Marriage? (Beliavsky - that's your cultural answer, and only for daughters.)
College when there's just nothing you can do about it? Where's that transition
time?

Banty