It seems I’ve opened up a Pandora’s box with my last column — the one about the empty beer bottles I found in the basement after my 14-year-old daughter had some friends over one night.##M:[more]## One friend used my column as the starting point for a discussion with his own teenager about drinking. Another friend told me that reading my column came in handy for him to anticipate what his own teenager, a little bit younger than my own, might eventually have up his sleeve.
I’ve always believed that if I can raise issues for discussion and spread awareness, it’s a good thing. It’s why I became a reporter in the first place. But I still found myself second-guessing myself on whether I had done the right thing by calling the parents of the kids who had been over that night and telling them about my discovery. I had made a pact with my daughter not to assign any blame as to 1.) who sneaked in the liquor, and 2.) who had partaken.
All the parents were very grateful that I had called — united we stand, that kind of thing. Two were very much in line with my way of thinking, which was wow, freshman year, way earlier than the scenario we anticipated happening by junior or senior year. We saw a learning opportunity, a chance to initiate discussion and lay down some ground rules.
One parent struck me as a little naive. Not my son, she said. There’s no way he could have smuggled anything in and I’m sure he wouldn’t drink. One parent was surprisingly not surprised. “Kids will be kids, won’t they?” There was only one parent who was angry and punitive. “They’re all guilty, guilty by association,” she declared. No shock when my daughter told me that friend had been grounded and banned from coming over again.
Had I done the right thing, I agonized. Should I have talked to the kids myself and given them a warning this first time? Was I a tattler by going to their parents? A friend, the mother of two daughters older than mine, told me “don’t be surprised to find that you’re second-guessing yourself all the time over the next four years.” She feels that controlling the way other kids behave isn’t her responsibility so she probably wouldn’t have called the parents, especially since there wasn’t a direct threat to their safety. But she would have grounded her daughter and held her responsible for the behavior of her friends under their roof.
She told me to remember that teenagers have to make mistakes in order to become adults and their parents have to give them the guidance to help them make the right decisions. “Let your kids know you know they’re going to make mistakes and that’s okay. Admit that you made mistakes. If you hold out that you were perfect as a teenager and you never made mistakes, you’re telling them to go underground.” She also thinks it’s a mistake not to let anyone know your kid did anything wrong because you’re afraid it would reflect badly on your parenting. “I’ve had friends tell me I was so glad to hear you say that your daughter did that because my daughter did the same thing.”
She says drinking in high school is more widespread than you would think. While freshman drinking is rare, by sophomore year it’s happening at parties with some regularity. It gets worse junior year because once kids are driving, they have more access to liquor. They also know older kids who have fake IDs. By senior year many kids are 18 and feel like they should be able to drink, so they do. Drinking games are popular and vodka is the preferred choice of high school kids today. They do shots mixed with something else like Gatorade. They try to find a house where the parents aren’t home.
Think about it, she says. “When we were 18 it was legal to drink. We were going to bars our senior year. When you’re 18 you’re old enough to go to Iraq and shoot weapons, you’re old enough to vote, you can get a credit card, get married, and sign a lease for an apartment, but you have to be 21 to go out and drink a beer. Kids feel like it’s a rip-off.”
She says that’s why she and her husband have made a conscious decision to be realistic at a time when many parents bury their heads in the sand. “It’s important to teach kids how to drink responsibly so they’re not the ones in college getting trashed at their first frat party. I think it’s okay to give them a little champagne in the privacy of your own home on New Year’s Eve or a birthday. In Europe, it’s not a big deal. It’s about giving kids the responsibility to make good decisions, not bad ones.”
It’s a fine line, she agrees. Parents are perplexed these days because the rules have changed so much since they were young. By being too strict, you increase the chances that they’ll find opportunities to sneak around, lie, and do things behind your back.
“With our kids we’ve tried to keep communication open, to let them know that we understand how hard it is to be a teenager. We want them to know that we don’t condone or approve of certain behaviors, especially ones that go against the law or put them in danger. And we’ve let them know we’re going to impose limits and hold them accountable for their actions.”
After I finish talking to her my head is spinning. I’ve got a great kid and she’s got great friends, but I feel like we’ve entered a minefield, which is pretty much what parenting teenagers in today’s complicated world is all about. I was a teenager once and I remember what it felt like to want to spread my wings and push the limits. The trick is to help your teenager do that without letting her fall off the edge. And if she does stumble, to make sure you’re standing by to catch her.
Does anybody have a drink? I think I’m going to need one.
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