Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
The whole situation was a little more complicated than that. The kid needed space. I was affording him that. We insisted when he arrived that his parents needed to know he was at our house, and he told them. This was @ about 4 in the afternoon. I believe that had they responded by giving him time to cool down, he probably would have gone home on his own. But they responded by giving him a one-choice ultimatum: You have 30 mins to get home. Within a few mins of that, they were at our house and freaking out.
And I was not in a position to know one way or the other whether the kid was in danger. With his parents screaming at him on our driveway for 30 mins, it seemed like the most responsible thing to do was not to push him out the door and wish him the best of luck. Having never been in that situation before, and with the uncertainty about what they might do, it seemed prudent to call the police after it didn't look like a path to resolution was there in the current circumstances.
Maybe it's just me and my own relationship with my kids, but when they need space, they get it. Sometimes they get pissed, and need to go for a run or a bike ride, and we let them go. We do so because we are confident that they are old enough and smart enough to know when it's time to come home, and they always do. That strikes me as a much more sensible approach than to attempt to restrain them.
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I think your intentions were good, so in no way were you an intentional a-hole here. If I tell my kids to be home in half an hour, though, I expect them to be home in half an hour. If they stayed out and were enabled by another adult, I'd be super fataing mad.
In your shoes, I would have told the kid to get home as his parents were expecting him. I don't think it's appropriate to impose your parenting style on their family. Having expectations for your minor child to come home when you tell them to come home is fairly standard practice. You were a party to a major disrespect to them IMO.