How to know if your kid is ok when they are out

I have created a way to communicate with my daughter when she is out with her friends which has received enough 'that's a great idea' comments for me to think its a good idea to share.

My daughter is fourteen and has so far (touch wood) sailed through her early teens. Due to the boundaries I put in place with her when she was younger, she has earned quite a bit of freedom to determine exactly how she spends her time (my secrets to setting workable boundaries will be in my next blog). However, with this new found freedom, comes a lot of uncertainty.

She is, after all, still settling into friendship groups, coming up against other friendship groups and finding her academic groove. She is also at an age where peers around her are dabbling in everything and anything.

Vaping has become THE next big thing. Cigarettes are old school because they give you cancer and you die, but vaping...vaping is waaaaaay cleaner for your body and therefore cool (how did the misinformation that vaping is safe happen?).

Kids are starting to bribe other kids to do their homework. Kids are shoplifting...prolifically. I can't imagine there is much stock left at Lovisa these days. Alcohol has appeared in a big way and seems to have skipped the soft alcohol I drank as a teen and gone straight to hard Vodka. Vodka Cruises don't even get a look in anymore. Kids are starting their alcoholic journey downing straight shots. Dope is everywhere, and dope meet-ups at local parks are going out on social media for all to attend. Harder drugs are being tried. The occasional 'compromising' photo has been texted out. Kids are literally scaling building walls at night to sneak out to the skate park to meet up with out 'snuck-out' kids...blissfully assuming that nothing bad has ever happened in a skate park after dark.

In a world where everything experimental is seeming to hit all at once, how do you make sure your child is ok when they are out with their friends? Given that an innocent sleepover can suddenly become a zone they are not comfortable being in anymore, how do you communicate with them without their friends knowing or being subjected to social ridicule in the process?

I have developed a way of communicating with my daughter through a series of emoji text codes using something girls use all the time...love hearts. We talk to each other via a series of different colored love hearts. That way, if one of her friends grabs her phone while she is texting me, all they will see is a bunch of random emoji's.

A red love heart means 'I'm having an awesome time with my friends '. More than one red love heart in a row means 'I'm having an even better than awesome time with my friends' and means I have nothing to worry about. Sometimes, when she is out and I haven't heard from her for a while, I will text a red love heart to her, which is me asking 'is everything all right?' She will reply with either one or more back. Red love hearts mean she is great. Red love hearts means I have nothing to worry about.

If ever I receive a blue love heart, that means 'Mum, I am starting to feel a little uncomfortable.' This indicates to me that that dynamics of the group has changed, most likely that someone new has joined and is taking the group in a different direction than what my daughter had expected. This is a message for me to stay on alert. I keep my phone close and wait to see what comes next. It's either going to be a red love heart, which means everything has settled back down or its going to be a...

Black love heart. A black love heart means I need to get her out of wherever she is immediately, no questions asked. The 'no questions asked' part of this signal is super important as it means 'mum is going to get me, and I don't have to tell her why I want out, I just need to tell her that I do.' It is a safe signal for her. She knows I will drop whatever I am doing and pick her up immediately AND I will get her out of it as delicately as I can.

Not that long ago, my daughter had a sleep over at a friends place with her school friends. She adored all the girls what were going and was really looking forward to it. The family had just moved into a new house, so parents were invited to stay for wine and cheese. The girls went out for a night walk and upon their return, I noticed that a new girl had joined the group. They all went into the bedroom to set up for the sleepover and I was happily chatting to the other parents when I received a text from my daughter. A blue love heart. I kept my phone close. A few seconds later I received a black love heart... immediately followed by a string of black love hearts. Something was going down in that room that was making my daughter very uncomfortable. I immediately excused myself from the other parents and said that I needed to head home urgently as something had happened and needed to take my daughter with me as I would need her help with my youngest. I opened the bedroom door and said the same to my daughter, apologising profusely for ending her sleepover but stating firmly that we had to leave. The moment we got into the car, my daughter started ripping into what happened, all the while I'm trying to smile sweetly and wave goodbye to the parents.

Apparently, the girls had picked up an old friend of the birthday girl on their night walk and she wanted to come back with them. As soon as they got into the bedroom, she pulled out a bag of dope and started to figure out a way they could smoke it without being caught. Burning sage, she assumed, would cover the smell. Yes the clever girl had assumed that all parents were born at the age we are now, had never been teenagers before and would definitely not be able to tell the difference between burning sage and burning marijiana. The important thing was that I removed my daughter from a situation she was not comfortable in, and did it in a delicate way as to not embarrass her.

Parents often say they don't care where their kids are just as long as they are safe. I say that it is not enough to know the location your child is at, you also need to know that they are ok at that location. A location has never hurt a child. It's the people at the location that can make your child very uncomfortable. It is far more likely for your child to find themselves in an uncomfortable situation at a location you know they are at, than them being picked up by a totally random stranger and taken to a location you don't know about.

Giving your child a way to communicate with you about how they are doing while they are out, and giving them the space to talk to you freely about their experiences without fear of reprisal or judgement will make them far more likely to call you when they need to and will know they can count on their parents to get them any time of the day or night when they feel they uncomfortable.

It starts small, picking them up from a birthday party, but you want them to know you are there for them when they need it which will hopefully give them the confidence to call you from the side of the road at 3am when they don't want to get back into a car because the driver is being a dick and driving dangerously.

I would say to parents, stop thinking your child is ok just because you know the location they are at and instead spend the time building up your relationship to the point where they genuinely feel you have their back and will help them deal with situations without fear of being told off or grounded because they happened to have themselves in a situation they didn't want to be in.

Happy texting!

Lee xxx