My DD Snuck out, I am at a loss how to deal with this.

[JJsqueeze]

^^ what he said....

Easton- If trust is gone with a single incident then was it trust to begin with? Diminished, damaged, yes, but gone? How fair is it for a kid to do a bunch of great things than then they screw up once and their parent says they do not trust them anymore? I know it is comfortable to live in black and whites, but the world is shades of grey.

A 16 year old sneaking out of the house (not even her parents house which is kind of a mitigating factor) is more along the lines of a kid being somewhere different than where they say they are, it is right up there with having a party when your parents are out of town and you were told to not have a party. It is almost a cliche as far as teenage boundary testing goes and to be honest there are only two wrong reactions....

1) Blowing a gasket and making it seem like the crime of the century
2) Ignoring it

Pretty much anything between those two extremes is probably going to be OK.

 

[BobInMadison]

Kids always test their limits. I won't go into some of the things I did in HS, since kids sometimes read this and I don't want to set a bad example.
In my case, I figured out my parents were willing to give me a LOT of leeway as long as I kept up a 4.0 average. Their dream was for me to graduate from an elite college. As long as I did that, they put up with my wanderings from the straight and narrow. I knew the axe would fall if my grades fell.
And yes, they did ground me once when I snuck out and came home incoherent. It was the sneaking out part that bothered them.

 

[onkyo]

After reading all of the responses, which I tremendously appreciate, I have learned there are a lot of different ways this could have been handled.
None of them have been wrong, just different.

 

[tim_s]

What is the end game? Is the punishment for the sake of punishment or will you use this as a teaching moment to modify future behavior? Why are you upset? Is it the dishonesty? Is it the risky behavior? Does she understand what could have happened? I do not know you, her or the situation well enough to offer advice but I would suggest that you figure out what you want to be the end result and work your way back from there.

this

i teach....and have kids

IF nothing beyond the sneaking out really happened (alcohol, drugs, etc obviously compounds things)......then i'd be dealing with it with a discussion, a resetting of boundaries as a result of loss trust, maybe some loss of privileges that go with trust, and some setting of future protocols and consequences.....


that's just me.....i tend to be less reactionary than most