18yo son allowed a 15yo friend w/learner’s permit to park his car in a private lot…and the friend hit a parked car. Now what?

What the title says. Clarification: Our son owns the vehicle and has his own insurance policy. This happened in Georgia.

He made a dumb decision, obviously, but nothing out of the ordinary for a teenager (regardless of the fact that he’s a legal adult). The owner of the vehicle that was hit filed a claim against our son’s policy the next morning. She’s been very nice and understanding up to this point, and her damage is pretty minimal (less than our son’s car), mainly just a good dent in the plastic bumper cover but no sheet metal damage. I reached out to her to see if she’d be amenable to dealing with it outside of insurance, which she seems to be. My concern, though, is if her repairs come back more than we can cover. She has a friend that works at a Ford dealership with a body shop who told her the way it was hit, there might be frame damage (she said undercarriage damage, but this is what I’m sure they were trying to say). In that case, they guesstimated it could be $8,000 worth of damage. Again, I really doubt there is any frame damage but they told her they’d have to tear it down to figure that out. On top of that, it could be two months or more to get the parts and once they start the repairs, she’s also going to need a rental, all of which is fine.

I have no idea if we should move forward trying to pay for this (which our son will do as long as it stays manageable), or if we should just leave it to insurance. But I’m very concerned that the rate hike on him will become entirely unaffordable or they could drop him altogether. I also suspect his insurance will deny the claim as the driver was underage and not listed as a driver on the policy. In that case, I assume she could either claim it under the UM portion of her policy or try to sue our son, but he has nothing to his name.

I would appreciate any advice on how best to proceed. I want our son to learn a lesson here, but I don’t want it to be something that’s going to impact him for years to come. Keeping this off of insurance is our best bet unless the damages spiral out of control. In that case, I just don’t know what to do but want to have a plan.

TIA