How to Ask Parents to Allow Going to a Nightclub

Getting your parents' permission to go to a nightclub may be an easy task, depending on who your parents are and how they're raising you. You need to discover their feelings about your social life, dancing, late nights and how much they trust your decisions before you decide how to ask your parents to allow you to go to a nightclub with your friends.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Review the rules your parents have laid out for you. If they're strict and rigid, it may take some time to build up enough trust with your parents before you can get their permission to go to a nightclub. If you're already allowed to go out unchaperoned with friends, you might be only a couple of steps away.

2. Prove yourself trustworthy. Clean up after yourself, follow your curfews, avoid the people they want you to avoid. In general, follow their rules and go the extra mile to prove you should be allowed to go out for a night alone.

3. Ask for privileges incrementally. If you're not allowed out alone with friends, ask to go out for an hour or two first to a very safe place. Follow that by asking to go to the movies or other place where you'll be in the dark. Keep doing this, proving yourself along the way, until it's time to ask for the nightclub approval.

4. Keep trustworthy friends around you, introduce them to your parents and give your parents time to get to know them. Your friends should be of good reputation and character. Part of a parent's reluctance to let her child go out are the people he's associating with. In time, your parents will feel at ease letting you be responsible for your own choices. Be patient.

5. Pop the question when your parents are in a good mood, after you have their trust and they're slightly distracted with other things. Try to not make it a serious sit-down conversation. It's best if you nonchalantly say something like, "Hey mom, can I go out tomorrow night with Trisha and Kelly? There's a dance club open for our age group and we want to check it out." Give your parents at least a day's advance notice so that they don't feel like you're intentionally leaving things till the last minute to pressure them.

Tips & Warnings

• You may have better luck getting your parents to let you go out to a nightclub if you offer as much information as possible about your destination, who you're going with, and when you plan to be back. And of course carry your cell phone. They'll feel better about the situation if they know they can get hold of you.