My idiot son...........

Well boy am I p!$$ed off.
Last night Dylan had 2 mates stay over. They gathered their stuff & went out the back to the caravan.
So 3 in total, fair enough.
I go about my usual stuff, looking out there every so often. Dylan comes in & grabs a bottle of cola & 3 mugs, yep no worries.
Angel is being a pain & wants to be rocked to sleep, dh needs to go to the shop.......
Dylan comes in & grabs another bottle of cola???? I ask why & he said that it was the same one, he put in back in fridge to cool off. ( hmmm, no you didn't I think) I put Angel to bed, Amy comes tearing out saying there are more boys out there, just as DH comes back from the shop ranting & raving.
Ok so we kick to extra boys out.
But these 2 we kicked out don't travel alone there are usually 3 of them . I call Dylan to the laundry & ask him to tell T to leave too & he says he is not there, Bull poo I think, so I go in there hmm no T oh hang on what's the sticking out from the cupboard? AH it's T.& he his as drunk as a spunk, hmmm I find 3 empty bottles of jim beam.
Drag Dylan & his 2 mates in side, no we're not drunk! Honest.FFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTT
Dylan can't speak properly, D is rocking & M is laughing. What am I dumb?
I don't drink at all & I can smell it.
So D decides that he's gonna spew aaarrrggggggggg M decided to run, & my wonderful lovely son Dylan decides to lie to my face.
So left DH to clean up the vomit, threw ***** faced Dylan in my car to go find M who is down the main street staggering around. :evil:
Come home & call their parents,
"oh never mind" WTF never mind huh? excuse me your 14 yo is drunk & you say never mind???
What now?
Kick all the little so & so's outside to sleep it off. Take them home in the morning, & then Gave Dylan both barrels.
Who the hell does he think he is????????????? FMD I am so angry at him i've never been this mad I could easily kick him out to my mum's. And he can put up with my dad ( he was so strict on me & my sis)
But now I don't wanna look at him & he is stuck in his room, "til further notice"

So that was my lovely weekend.
A few q's though, where can a 14yo buy grog from? Where do they get the money for 3 bottles?
& why the hell at my place?

Thanks for the vent ladies.......

If it were me, I would have just driven them home after calling their parents - if it isn't that big a deal to them, let them deal with it. I can't say that I was a total angel at that age but I never lied about it to my Mum either (she was far too cunning for that).

To answer your questions though
It is never impossible for 14yo to get grog - we paid an older person $10 to buy it for us if we were being sly. One of the other guys may know someone older to ask or possibly even a parent brought it

Thy could have been planning and saving for awhile to buy that much. Also if the timing is right it isn't that dear either - coles and woolies both do specials 'buy 2 for $50' fairly regularly.

Why your place? cause you have a nice cozy caravan out the back where they didn't think they'd get caught and that it would be warmer than sleeping out in the open in someone's backyard.

It sucks that you had to deal with that and have him lie to you about it but you did the right thing (apart from not kicking their backsides ;) ) I would be making him wallow in it for a while too - don't let him think that it will all blow over once the hangover has gone and if you can, try to curb how much money he gets, but in saying that you still have to be able to trust him, so he needs to learn that he has broken that trust and he needs to earn it back from you.

:hug: Jo. Its a bummer that people can be so relaxed about giving alcohol to teenagers - do any of Dylan's friends have older siblings? My friend used to buy alcohol for her younger sister and thought nothing of it. It sucks because if the parents say, 'oh well, never mind' :o then there's not much you can do, hey. (Its easy for them to say that when you're the one who has to deal with it.)
Don't know where they get that much money from - I can't afford to buy grog these days!

You poor thing! Hormones seem to kidnap our children, it's like invasion of the bodysnatchers! You totally did the right thing in calling their parents and i'm pretty shocked at their "never mind" attitude - maybe they act like this a lot and the parents are glad it's at someone elses house for a change? I think i'd have taken them home there and then and pointed out you were going back to clear up their kid's drunken puke! So not nice - i'd be mortified if DD behaved ike that at someone else's house!

Something pretty similar happened with my brother when he was about 15. We didn't have a caravan but him and his mates got drunk in our garden then when they'd gone home he tried to sneak (stagger) in without getting caught. He was sick too and my mother dragged him out of bed at 6am, VERY hungover and stood over him while he cleaned it up. He was sick alot more while doing so, but into a bucket as my mum told him he was cleaning it ALL up and if he added to it, that was his problem. He didn't drink for a long time after that...

B

Oh WOW what a horrible weekend you have had. I cant imagine going through that but I think you have handled it so well. Im so hoping we dont have any dramas like this anytime soon. I cant imagine where they would get the alcohol from unless its from older siblings/friends. My friends son died at 15 after having gotten alcohol from his friends older sibs and then went swimming..its too scarey for words. I hope this is the last of it..hugs to you Jo.

Jo

i was certainly no angel at that age and unfortunately it is not hard at all for teenagers to get their hands on grog * my sister had a party at our house when she was 15 they drank all the spirits mum and dad had then filled the bottles up with water etc until they could afford to replace them all they never got sprung for that * i think you did the right thing calling their parents i would have done the same :hug: hope you now have a model prisoner while he does his time

that just scares me to death that they drink so early i have a 12 in year 7 and boy im keeping an eye on har as much as i can

Gosh, I have spoken to a few people about this & none of them think it's a big deal, I personally am crushed, I think it is a huge thing to have to deal with. I've been told that I am lucky I've got this far before he did it & that it's normal.
If it's normal, why am I still seething?
He has admitted that is came from one of the other boy's big brother, gosh it is really that easy?
Dylan didn't have any money, neither did one of the other kids. Ha Dylan is in debt with me . I am just amazed at how much it all cost & one of them could afford it & be so generous.

well Dylan has dug himself a rather large hole, it's a shame really, school hols are next week.It's gonna take along time before things are better from him. I am just so disgusted in him.

It is a very big deal - especially when two of the drunk boys were not your own kids. It is one thing to deal with Dylan, but another thing completely to deal with the other two - especially if something happened and you had to front up to A&E with a drunk, injured teen who got drunk at your place kwim? These people must be of the concensus 'well, it wasn't my kids and not at my place' so they just don't care.

Stand firm on whatever you choose to do to 'punish' him - he will thank you for it later.

My thought exactly Cherie, re the A & E, I would have also been charged for allowing it.
Still having trouble deciding a punishment, that fits the crime.

I coached an under 16 softball team (girls) a number of years ago and most of these girls were in the state squad and state teams (most went on to make national sides) so were elite athletes. I couldn't believe one afternoon how they were talking about going and getting smashed that weekend (they ranged in age from 13-15). I sat them down and we had a talk about what the attraction was and WHY they did it.

The girls said everyone did it and it was fun and cool. I asked them about the after effects and what was "cool" about throwing up all over the place (while drinking as well) and feeling like utter cr@p the next day. We also discussed the trouble you can get into as a result of drinking and using recreational drugs....they hadn't thought of that side of the equation. I also told them that I had alcohol around when I was growing up, but was too interested in sport, school and life in general to have it interfere with being a kid and enjoying your childhood....I told them, they'll never get it back and growing up too fast AIN'T A GOOD THING SOMETIMES!!

I got them to promise me that they would ease off on drinking and try to stay strong and say no. They ended up as a pretty good support network for each other as a result. I'm so proud now when I see them around and I get a hug from them and a thankyou for having that talk with them. These girls are now in their early 20s and are just wonderful young women now....well, they were already.

PS...I got my first beer mug at the age of 3 with my name engraved on it and my father laid claim to being the proud parent of the world's youngest drunk at 15 months old (me...having sipped numerous gin and tonics at a party my parents had). I never abused alcohol and think that anyone who puts a manufactured, origin of which is unknown, recreational drug into their body is a right royal idiot. Sorry, harsh...but that's my opinion. :)

I have worked in the alcohol sales industry, the amount of kids who want to buy alcohol (and can, just not from me!) is insane. My sister was at the pub getting blind drunk every night at 14. It's do-able. Especially if the kids nick the alcohol off the parents, as happens a lot of the time. I know I'm in a minority here at not minding at 14-year-old having the odd alcoholic drink but I would never knowingly allow kids in my care to get drunk... that's assuming they're in my care and I know what they're drinking though (I know you'd never knowingly allow kids to get drunk either) - I'd be like you, Jo, and soooo peed off with Liebling if he go drunk at 14; he should know better at that age. Anyway, just to let you know that we alcoholic liberals would be mad too!

Punishment ideas... is there an alcoholic rehab centre near you? Or just a local alcoholics anonymous meeting you could take him to so he sees what can happen due to alcohol. Many alcoholics start thinking it's cool as a teenager and then are hooked. It's soooo hard to get out of an addiction too, best to go overboard now than end up with an alcoholic child (my sister was an alcoholic for some years, by her own admission, and still drinks too much now, but won't admit to that, just "humourous" tales of getting drunk).

MrsR, I beat you by 5 months; I was drunk age 10 months at a Christmas Party at my parents'. I stole all the drinks people had put down!

oh gosh, This really brings back memories from high school. I did it once or twice (got blind drunk) but then I realised how dumb and pointless it actually was. I think its just a typical 14yr-old-boy thing.
Where can a 14yr old get alcohol from? Its not hard - when I was 15, people had brothers and sisters and older friends, (and even parents!!) who would buy alcohol for them. I even had plenty of people offer to make me "fake id so you can buy alcohol and get into pubs and clubs". I didnt take any of those up on that offer. The kids at my school thought it was cool to drink. They thought it was a joke to tell everyone 'oh I drank a bottle of jim beam on the weekend and got so smashed and threw up and passed out and dont remember anything'.
I hope its just a phase that he is going through.

How about, for a punishment, writing you a 1000-1500 (longer than a school essay to make him feel daunted) word properly researched essay (he could use the internet or you could take him to the library if you're going anyway) on alcohol-related illnesses from foetal alcohol syndrome to liver cirrohsis. He could have, say, 4 days or 5 days to do it...? It's a short punishment, maybe, but he'd be finding out about the dangers of alcohol himself and seeing the evidence, rather than having an adult "nagging on" (i remember being 14 alright :)) about it and it'll hit home, go in and stay with him if he learns it himself. That way you'll know (from reading the essay, which you can make him re-do if it's poorly done) that he knows the dangers and is thinking about the issue (unlike most teenagers) and it doesn't require extra work for you. I'd make him hand-write it so you know he's not just cut-and-pasted from the web...

Bec

Wow Bec, what an absolutely fabulous idea!!
I think that can be a part of is punishment.

LOL, yeah i think i might have just made a teenage australian enemy....

Storm, I am a mother of a 15 year old boy and the trouble we have had over the last 12 months in phenomenal to say the least. I have found Joel and his mates drunk, I have found out that he has been smoking, and now he has pulled himself out of highschool. And yes, he can do that on his own, once he was 15 the school told him he didn't "have" to attend.

Now I know all of this sounds horrible, and it sure as hell is. But I do try to remember back to when I was a teenager, really it wasn't that long ago. I wanted to test boundaries and break rules, although I was no where near as bad as Joel.

I have discovered that the boys will have an older friend, perhaps one of the kids big brothers or cousins, now where they get the money from is still beyond me. But they get the older ones to buy their grog and smokes for them.The payment is a can out of their pack. I wish I was talking about a 6 pack here too, but no it was a case, of Jim Beam no less. Wish I could afford that. Not that I drink it. LOL.

Please don't think that in any way I am under selling any of this. It is serious and you have done the right thing by calling their parents and by blowing your stack at Dylan. How very sad though that these parents didn't feel as strongly as you. Your punishment is great also. Just please don't be suprised if this isn't the first time, or kid yourself that it won't happen again. I am finding out all the joys of teenage boys, they sure are alot different to teenage girls, and times are different now too, sadly.

We are finally starting to turn a corner with Joel and here's hoping we are on the right path. Just this week he has landed himself a job, ok it's onlly his second day, but he is keen enough and the fact that he will be makinghis own money sure appeals to him. Also, I just found out yesterday that one of his good/bad friends just got expelled from school and is going to live with his mum. He's not a bad kid really, just has a lot of crap on his plate and is acting out. Anyway, so that's another kid that he can get into trouble with gone. I figure the further away I can keep him from his "mates" the better he will be. Unfortunately, it has to be their doing or they will find a way no matter how, to hang out together.

Keep your chin up huni. It does get better..... Eventually :hug:

Jo,

I am totally amazed that some parents can sit back and make you look after their "Stupid" children! I too would have taken them home, but when you have a house full of your own kids it makes that hard. This could have been on of the reasons that the your house was the one to drink at. The thought that "Dylan's Mum will be busy with the baby" ect... My brother was a mightmare as a teen and i remember my Dad coming to me (being 14mths younger then my brother) and asking what they should do... Sadly all i could say was the more you push him the more likely he is to run away and end up in a gutter somewhere.

I own a hairdressing salon and once (and never again) had a christmas party. Just a dinner and nothing big. But my 1st year apprentice took it appon herself to have a few drinks, and god knows what else, before dinner. We then found her to have sculled 4 or 5 glasses of bubbley in about 15 mins. She did this by coming to each of the staff and asking for a drink. She ended up so drunk and it happend SO quickly. We didn't know she had drunk before and the others didn't know each of them had given her a drink. We had talked to her parents before and they said she could have one or two over the whole night. We ended up carried her to the loo where she vomited for over an hour and passed out a few times. We had to get her out of there in a wheelchair with a plastic bag tied to her ears to catch the vomit. I was so so so very upset and still am. I blammed myself although i wasn't the one who gave her the drinks and didn't know the others had. I should have been watching!!! She sent me a text the next day saying she was very sorry and hoped she hadn't lost her job. I called her and said she still had her job but we would be talking when she was next in at work. we talked and i found out she had been doing this for a long time and still does!

There would be smoke coming out of my ears if Poppy ever does this and i don't know how i would deal with it. Oh who am i kidding its not if its when hey?!?

Good luck!!! I wouldn't want o be him right now

Lele

oH tRISH, THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP!!( sorry, Zac did that)
As horrible as it sounds it's great for me to hear from you, who has btdt, & I really appreciate it.
It's just so freaking hard to keep him away from the bad ones.I am so hoping that this isn't the start of things to come & I some what do feel like a failure too.
Glad to hear you guys are turning a corner too, I hope it keeps up.

Storm, no worries hun. I know it's horrible, but it's good to know that your not alone too IYKWIM. There are always going to be bad eggs out there. It's just a matter of getting our kids to a place where they know how to stay away from temptations. All a part of growing up I guess. And you, like me have another 4 kids to go through it still.

What doesn't kill us, has to make us stronger :D

Well I feel lucky not to be dead then Trish! LOL
He has sure put us through the mill this year.