Parents: What Can Your Teens Access at Someone Else’s House?

Are there drugs, guns, alcohol, or other temptations there?

Clear liquor was always preferred as you could replace what you drank with water before the parents got home. Photo by Andreas M on Unsplash

I sometimes wish kids came with a parenting manual. New challenges arise at each stage of parenting. I’m now at the stage where I have a teen and a tween. Instead of helping them learn to read or tie their shoelaces, we’re focused on social and emotional development. We’ve had multiple conversations about sex, puberty, menstruation, and drugs. But have I prepared my kids sufficiently to resist peer pressure? I hope so, but they haven’t been really tested yet.

I recently wrote an essay about gun ownership and got an interesting question in the comment section. Roz Warren pointed out, “I hope you’ve told the parents of the teenagers who hang out at your house with your kids. They deserve to know that their kids are hanging out in a house with guns in it, biometric safe or not.”

It surprised me to see the comment. My immediate reaction was, “Oh no! Have I violated some unwritten rule of parenting?”

But then I thought about it. As I said to Roz in my reply:

Actually I have not. I would answer honestly if asked but it's not something I would volunteer. I genuinely wonder if parents with guns, marijuana, sex toys, hard liquor, or any other…