Safety At Music Concerts

You listen to the same song again and again until even you know all the words. If you are lucky, your teenager wears headphones and spares you their obsession with this particular band, but the posters on the wall tell the story. Then comes the day when full of excitement, your teenager announces that their favorite group is playing at a stadium nearby and they have managed to secure tickets! This is the classic, caught between a rock and a hard place situation. If they had asked you before getting the tickets, you would have had time to do some thinking and questioning. Now, you feel like you have been backed into a corner and are going to look like the evil mean parent from hell if you refuse.

There are certain things you need to know before allowing your teenager to go to a concert and the best advice is to have this conversation with your teen before the situation arises. You need to get the rules straight and convince your teenager that you have their best interests at heart and if they follow the rules, they are much more likely to achieve permission to go to the concert.

You need to know exactly where the concert is, what time it starts and finishes and who your teenager is going with. The concert location will determine travelling time and additional expense which they may not have accounted for. The start and finish time may impact on the rest of the family schedule, and you need to be sure that it does not affect their school work the next day. Your safest bet is to become cab driver for the evening and take your teen and their friends there and back, or share the driving with another parent.

This has the added bonus of you knowing they are not going on anywhere else at the end of the concert and you get to know their friends a bit better. If they say that another parent is doing the driving, check this is so. This is not the time to "respect" their privacy. If your teen will not let you talk to the driver, or they insist on taking public transport, the answer is no; you cannot be sure they are safe and you will not sleep until they get home!

As to what age is ok for a teenager to go to a concert, this is your judgment call. There should be no question that no alcohol is to be consumed; some concerts will have an alcohol license and older people going there. It comes down to trust which is why it is such an emotive topic. You will be your teen's best friend if you let them go and they will hate you if you say no. Whatever your decision, live with it, if no, there are always other concerts!