Teenagers & all night parties

BlueBelle
Yes, you might well say 'blimey' but suppose that the shattered glass had cut someone, a shard in their eye maybe, or worse.
Suppose that one of the group purposely scratched a neighbours car, keyed the side or had a can of spray paint, after all, the daughter said that some were gatecrashers. Did someone mention it on social media?

I make no apologies for filming bad and out of control behaviour as doing so caught a gang from London who broke into a nearby shop and, in another instance, youths who stole property and denied knowing anything about it and another male who stole a £600 bike from a private underground car park. I managed to hold onto the bike while filming him running back to his mates.
On all occasions they were successfully prosecuted and the older ones were given prison sentences.
If you think that it's ok to ignore behaviour that escalates into smashing glasses in the road and ridiculous noise levels at 4am, then I stand apart.

I'm sure we've all partied in our time paddyann - but probably not in our parents' house, urinating in the neighbours' gardens, smashing bottles in the street etc etc, running up and down the road yelling at 4 am. Not to mention drugs.

I pity anyone who lives next to a 'student house' - but they are not usually in quiet residential cul-de-sacs. So when this kind of thing happens with regularity when the parents are away it is a cause of annoyance.

petalmoore
I don't agree.
There has been no mention of father in the OPs posts, no mention that he went away with his wife and son and no mention that he went to the OP to apologise.
I therefore concluded that the 18yr old's mother is the one dealing with this.
Most mothers are the 'go to' person in a household and it is usually they, for the much greater part, who deal with behavioural problems.
As the 18 yr old resides with her parent(s?) it's the parent who makes the rules in the house regardless of the age of the AC who lives there.
Obviously, there is a strong possibility that the fact that she would be alone in the property was posted on social media. By whom...we'll never know.
As the daughter is of age, she could have been and was approached by the OP but in the absence of an apology or response, her mother would be the one I would have words with as it's her daughter and they live in the same property.
You are responsible for activity which takes place in your property, whether it's noisy parties, dogs barking (whether yours or not) underage drinking, drug dealing etc just as the landlord of a pub is partly responsible for the conduct of his patrons or the noise level of music.

Marieliz dont you know you're only young once!!My first date with my OH of 44 years was at a house party when his parents were on holiday ,so its nothing new.Yes some folk got drunk,one girl spent the night sleeping beside the huge dog in its kennel and two 20 year olds decided to have a race across the bungalow roof .Nobody got hurt ,everyone had a good time and we all have memories to laugh about when we meet up now .
Contary to what you believe we have lived very sensible lives since we married ...started a business at 21 and brought our kids up to be good hearted ,hard working people who are fantastic parents of their own kids.Having the odd party doesn't make you a bad person....its all part of growing up.I guess a lot of you were 40 before you were born .A couple of parties in a few months and you're complaining ? No wonder so many young people think us oldie's are a pain in tha backside ,I'm beginning to think the same of some here .

One of my son's did something similar when he was around 16 or so and I was mortified. I completely understand your point of view DollyJo, yes we've all been young once, and a lack of awareness and consideration can go with that territory, in retrospect I'd include myself in that category. As one poster said there is a hell of a
difference between entertaining youngsters in a "controlled environment", with parents or a responsible adult there to oversee the party, however as I can testify when we were out of the country with our youngest and our older child, staying with friends, he came back to our house, with a group of mates,jemmying a window open and effectively breaking in and then had all night parties for a couple of days. We had varying reports from neighbours who said there were between 20 and 80 people present and they kept our neighbours awake for most of the two evenings till dawn. My husband and I were livid with him. We live in a development that has communal gardens that go down to the Thames, allegedly these kids were all over the gardens making a hell of a racket and mucking about on the moorings and generally making a nuisance of themselves, not to mention the mess. I don't think there is any point in getting hoity toity about "what people do in their own property is their business" unsupervised youngsters with loud music and alcohol is not a good combination and likely to upset the neighbours. You have to approach the parents dollyjo, possibly they are unaware. We had some explaining to do on our son's behalf and I sent him round to apologise to some of those he managed to annoy. Having said all that we do have more civilised parties where I live, some have gone on all night, I don't mind too much, I accept we get a lot of noise in the summer, we have a boating club and a pub directly across the river from us and it's so hot at the moment a lot of the neighbours are in the grounds talking and drinking till quite late. I sympathise with you though, hope you sort it out.

Well I might have guessed that Paddyann would think it ok. It is the disrepect. None of us could have afforded to wizz our cars around and get drunk. Our parents would not have allowed it anyway.

Let them do what they like, they grow up thinking they can do anything.

She 18! I moved into my own place at 17 and had the common sense and respect to keep the noise down especially late at night and in the early hours. Sounds like this girl should grow up, if she wants to party with her friends then they can go to pubs and nightclubs instead of disrupting the neighbourhood. Do you know if any other neighbours have been annoyed by her parties? And It is an environmental matter ‘ noise pollution ‘ apart from the crossbow of course.

From your post you said the mother apologised and said it would not happen again. Going by that I am assuming that her daughter had been spoken to by her parents about it. I don,t see the point of asking them to give you advance warning if they are away again ....the mother's own words were " it won't happen again." To me this advice others have offered, is implying that you should make alternative arrangements when they are away in case the daughter has a party again! Why should you. I sympathize with you. Either the parents are turning a blind eye to this and trying to placate you or they are very naive.
Twenty young people enjoying alcohol and loud music will just get louder and louder as the night progresses, it's the very nature of it to say the least.
At the moment it's just the daughter, at some point the son may decide to do the same....speak to the mother again.

If the Mum knows, that's one thing, If the Mum doesn't, well that is really quite another. It has to be mentioned to her.

When I was clearing out my recently deceased Mum's home and getting it ready for sale I left my teenage boy home. He went to the neighbours and said he'd be having a party. Didn't bloody tell his parents though and when I came home to find cigarette ends in my garden I went ape!

This thread has brought back memories of the student parties we gave and went to when we showed very little consideration for the neighbours. We usually invited them and warned them we were having a party but we were loud, our voices were loud, our music was loud. I suppose the only major differences was we didn't have cars and it wasn't our parents' house. The police were called a couple of times but they were always friendly and asked that the music be turned down then watched the girls dancing for a bit and left

I am very surprised the mother allowed her daughter to have another party after wrecking the house after the last one.

Or maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe time for a little chat with the parents again re the noise situation.

It is actually very difficult to have a teenage party without security present because word get circulated online and gate crashers see it as Carte Blanche to create mayhem. Not just noise but serious damage, my eldest had a party for " just a few friends" we never did find out how many turned up but she spent 2 days cleaning up ( mostly) afterwards. None of them ever even mentioned a party at home again, lesson learned.

GabriellaG You mention speaking to the girl's mother, and you say it's HER problem. The OP mentions 'parents', and they're probably both equally affected by any damage to their house or to their relationship with neighbours. If the daughter is over 18, of course, she's technically an adult, and responsible for her own actions. Not a easy one, but it would be kinder to assume that the parents are acting as one here, nd to seek to them both, water than placing all the onus on the mother.

...and my 'kids' wiped their sticky fingers before leaving the table. It's not 'inevitable that they wipe them on other surfaces.

Gosh! Mine really missed out on all that behaviour. Was it a good thing or a bad thing?
They all working aged 16 and 4 of the 5 moved away from home for their jobs so hard partying wasn't an option due to their employment. By the time they were old enough to be served alcohol, 3 had mortgages and weren't into pub nights.
I went out for my mad nights, mum would never have allowed me to have parties without her being present upstairs.
I didn't feel I missed out as, at 17, I was living in hospital quarters as a student nurse and we had to be in by 10pm, 11 on a late pass.

In a quiet, affluent, middle-class residential area, it has long been 'normal' for teenagers to have cars, to talk as loudly as they used to when they were little kids in the playground, and to schedule parties during their parents' absence and without the parents' knowledge - it's as inevitable as small children leaving sticky fingerprints wherever they go. In my experience, parents know all too well that despite there best efforts, teenagers are slow to learn that the privileges of autonomous adulthood have to be balanced with responsibilities, and a lot of this learning only comes with maturity.

Our 17-year-old son had a party while we were away, and of course we'd set some ground rules, and of course more people turned up than he'd been expecting, and of course things got out of hand. Even before any neighbours might have complained, our son himself phoned us to say he feared we were going to be sent a massive bill from the local fire service after he'd called them to report two girls being locked in the toilet after losing the key ... By the time the fire engine arrived, the girls had unlocked the door, so he'd succeeded only in wasting the fire service's time. Luckily we were able to explain that he'd been genuinely concerned - he was inclined to be gullible - and the call-out charge was waived. But our son had learned that lesson, and didn't even try to have another party - he was too embarrassed. Similarly my brother-in-law likes to recount that on more than one occasion he had to pick up our 14-year-old niece from A+E after an evening of immoderate clubbing. Luckily, like most people, they have grown into responsible adults who know their own limits and are valuable members of society. The teenage years can be a minefield for parents and neighbours, and all too often for the young people themselves, but I'd rather have a few sleepless nights than read about teenagers taking four friends out in their new car t celebrate the end of A-levels, and wrapping it round a tree, as we read about so often in the papers, even if it hasn't happened to any of us.

All this, of course. doesn't make it any easier to bear a sleepless night in a heatwave, to the accompaniment of a pulsing beat that you haven't chosen to hear - you have my sympathy!

Oh blimey taking pictures, private eye overload. How to fall out with neighbours in a few easy lessons Wait and see it might never happen again

I haven't read all the responses but here's my two penn'orth.
I'd tell the mother that you spoke to her daughter after the last shenanigans but received only a silent look. Tell her about the latest episode and stress that if there IS a next time, that police will be on your speed dial and the local authority informed which will generate a visit from their environmental health dept.
It's a toss up between your neighbour not leaving her daughter 'in charge' of the house (and more of the same when her brother copies her behaviour) or you buying some heavy duty earplugs.
I guess that you don't want to look forward to years of this and similar behaviour so nip it in the bud.
You can be perfectly pleasant in your approach but steely in your resolve.
I'd have short chat in private. It's HER problem and you cannot be blamed for objecting to those sort of antics.
I hope you took photos, in any case, write down events and timings thus far in the event that EH want the background.
Good luck.

I am only 39 but never had house parties because I respected my parents too much and wouldn’t have been able to relax in case anything got broken. My 2 older sisters did (I stayed at my Nans’) it was a mess and someone had urinated in a bottle plus there was a used condom in my bed they were never left home alone again! Don’t understand why your neighbour keeps leaving her in the house alone when she knows it’s going to happen now. I don’t think you should talk to the daughter because that will get you nowhere but speak to her mother again and see what she is willing to do about it. In the meantime I would keep a log of who is turning up how many there is plus how many cars, log the time the noise starts and finishes and any other anti social behaviour and what you can hear e.g bad language. I would do this in case you ever need to make a complaint but hopefully it won’t come to that. I wish you luck but I don’t think twice a month going on all through the night is reasonable if it finished at 1am maybe.

The party went on all night. Loud music, shouting running up and down and empty bottles on garden walls and smashed in the road.
Can't they have fun without running around, yelling in the road, smashing bottles? And in one I mentioned, rampaging through other front gardens and urinating?

or unless damage is done to your garden or your house
I think the OP mentioned smashing bottles on the wall

But grannytante it’s only been twice since they ve lived there obviously if it was happening every week but it not give them some slack unless it becomes a weekly iccurance or unless damage is done to your garden or your house
It’s summer let the kids enjoy themselves before the long old dark winter

Some people live near constantly noisy neighbours, twice this year doesn't seem too bad does it? Also you seem to have found your own solution by sleeping in a different room. The hot weather is making a lot of us intolerant.

I dont know where you all live but my goodness it must be a veritable haven.Its NORMAL for young folk to have friends round

Yes, it is a haven where we live at the moment as all our DC have grown up and left and any new families who have moved in have much younger children!

paddyannthe scenario you describe is quite different to teenagers have parties when their parents are away. The ones you talk about are supervised, you were there and you allowed some beer to be drunk as long as their parents agreed. Very civilised and yes, I am sure many of us can relate to that.

However, some of us can also relate to the scenario of neighbours going away and teenagers taking advantage of the situation. It's not necessarily the fault of the teenage neighbour either. One young girl near us was allowed to have girlfriends to stay for a sleepover when her parents were away for a weekend - word got out and the 'sleepover' was gatecrashed. It was horrendous and the girl herself was powerless to do anything about it and was very distressed.
Other neighbours used to go away and leave their teenage son on his own - and there were always parties, noise, mayhem, loud music, shouting and bawling until all hours. A couple of the neighbours called the police on occasion.

Quite different to what you describe.
the only time anyone can ever tell me or my family what to do in their own home will be if they are paying all my bills
It depends on whether or not what you do is anti-social and occurs on a regular basis. Or, of course, illegal.

Get parents' mobile numbers, and next time it happens, ring them.