Joe wants to go to a party at a friend's house. It's more complicated since he's at boarding school. I used to know lots of his classmates' parents because we waited outside together for our grade-schoolers to head out and walk home with us, and then I knew(-ish) a moderate number of his junior high classmates' parents because we had friends in common, and now I only know a tiny handful of his classmates' parents because he goes to school two hours away.
It's great for him to have far-flung friends who invite him to visit and be part of things with their families. I'm in favor of that idea. It also makes the "trust but verify" approach to parenting teens a little trickier to execute. In June he was invited to an older friend's graduation party, and his plan was to stay overnight with a different kid who was also attending the party. I asked him for a phone number to check in with a parent at the house where he was going to stay. I can't remember now if Joe said "Nobody else's mom is calling the hosts," or if I just felt awkward about it after the last time I tried to check in about a party in advance, but I definitely felt a little weird about it. The other mom was great -- she seemed perfectly happy to talk to me -- but I felt like Joe's Old-Fashioned Mom Being Embarrassing.
Not long after that Joe invited some friends to come and visit. They came from almost three hours away and stayed overnight with us, and I did not hear a single peep from a single one of the parents. This still strikes me as a little unlikely. How do they know I'm not running a cult? I mean, okay, I'm probably not going to lure their impressionable children into the Cult of Soul-Suckedness, or sell their organs on the black market while they sleep, but how do they know I'm even going to be home? Would you put a 17-year-old into the car and send him three hours away without confirming that there would be an adult at his destination?
Joe wants to go to a party at another friend's house this weekend, far enough from school that he'll be staying overnight again. I would like to check in with the parents before I give my teenager permission to leave campus with them, but I'm a little uncomfortable about being Joe's Old-Fashioned And Embarrassing Mom -- especially if I'm the only mom in his friend group cut from that particular cloth.
I'm pretty sure I'll do it anyway, but only pretty sure.
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