Stephen is now in high school.
He often stays up until 1 or 2 A.M. watching T.V. or a movie, texting his friends or talking to them on the phone etc.
I usually get up around 1 or 2 to see if he is still awake and make sure the house is in order, turn off the T.V. blah blah blah.
But I digress...
Last night after youth group, Stephen and his friend Jacob were making dinner at about 9:30.
I went to bed around 10.
I wake up at around 1 A.M. as usual and see the T.V. is on, every light is on in the front part of the house and no boys are nowhere to be found.
I go turn off the T.V., go in the kitchen to find he had left one of the burners on after he cooked dinner for he and his friend (it had been on for about 4 hours).
I check the front door and the door is UNLOCKED, peak in Stephen's room to see if they had crashed in there, and still...NO BOYS TO BE FOUND!!!
Now when I was his age my mom would have called my friend's mom's to find me but things are different now.
I don't have phone numbers to the moms but I have numbers for all the friends because they all have cell phones. I call the cell phones of Stephen and his friend...no answer.
I check for status updates on facebook and myspace (again, not something my mom ever did to find out where I was or what I was doing) No status updates either.
I text Brittany (who always seems to know where Stephen is and had been with Stephen earlier at youth group) and she says he went to Jacob's house around 10:30 or 11.
By the way, texting "You wouldn't happen to know where Stephen is would you?" will not get you the mom of the year award I'm pretty sure.
By this time I'm pretty sure he is safe but still not totally sure because I haven't spoken to him myself. Well, I'm sure enough he's O.K that I start plotting his punishment.
I finally spoke to Stephen this morning and he spent the night at his friends as I thought, so now it's GAME ON!
Does anyone know when punishment becomes abuse?
I'd like to get as close to that fine line as I possibly can!