Mary, the “mom”

People are upset and angry; they’re petitioning their representatives; they’re writing letters to the editor.  Why?  The choice for the 2009 high school play!  A few weeks ago, the high school drama department announced that the 2009 play would be Rent: School Edition.  My reaction went along the lines of “Cool, something different; a little edgy”.  Boy, am I naïve!  This week, our small town newspaper features a cover story about how upset people are and how they’re petitioning the school boards to prevent this play and a letter to the editor encouraging citizens to contact the high school and express their dismay.

I am well aware that I am a tad more liberal than the average middle class suburbanite, even in New Jersey, but I just didn’t realize the extent of the divide.  People are signing a petition because they are upset about high school kids being exposed to themes such as homosexuality, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, promiscuity, etc.  I, on the other hand, see only good from exposing them to these themes.  Maybe they’ll be more tolerant of the peer who “comes out of the closet”, or more cognizant of the risk of AIDS/HIV and the dangers of promiscuity and drug abuse.  I want my teenagers exposed to these themes, not sheltered from them.  Am I off base?  What does the rest of the family think?

Rach, the “older teen”

My high school did Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The total body in our rendition of the play was well over ten. Ten high school students pretended to get murdered then eaten on stage. I was the stage manager, and we sold out almost every show. It was a hit, people loved it!

In case you don’t know, Sweeny Todd was a barber who killed people, then his girlfriend made them into meat pies - it’s a true story, he killed hundreds then fed them to fellow Londoners, but is significantly less famous than Jack the Ripper, who only killed five.

If my high school did Rent, there would be a lot of angry parents. I find this incredibly disturbing. Homosexuality, sex, and drugs are all considered less school appropriate than murder and cannibalism? That’s messed up. Being open and honest about sex and all types of sexuality is a good thing, murder is not. I believe that teens (and tweens) should be well educated (really educated, not just told to “say no”) about sexuality, pregnancy, and drugs.

Of course, I take a stand that most don’t seem to agree with. We let our kids watch the nightly news filled with murders, rapes and fires - but we won’t let our kids watch movies that have naked people in them? Gosh, we sure live in a seriously messed up society.

Brad, the “dad”

This part of the family is sick-to-death-tired of people sticking their collective heads in the sand.  “Exposing their children to homosexuality, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, and promiscuity”?  What, like they’ve never heard of these things before?

I admit, we live in a far more urban, and some would say more ’sophisticated’ environment.  To me, there’s nothing sophisticated about it.  It’s just the world, and what with mass media, free and easy travel, and the global economy it seems to be pretty much the same all over.  And I’ve had too many friends die of AIDS, seen too many have unwanted pregnancies and unhappy marriages, suffered with too many friends who’ve had drug problems or died of overdoses to think that avoiding “exposure” to any of the above, pretending to be unaware of them, would do anything but make matters worse.  Ignorance does not breed anything but grief.

And they’re not too young.  We weren’t “too young” thirty years ago when I was in high school; we just pretended we were.  The first suicide I was ‘exposed’ to was back in high school.  So were the first instances of promiscuity.  And drug abuse.  And alcohol abuse.  And one of my best friends in high school “came out” in college, and two others died within the decade from HIV.  Mostly because, you know, we didn’t TALK about “gay cancer” back then.  And in this case, not talking about it killed them.

I know these people think that RENT somehow ‘celebrates’ these lifestyles simply by showing that some people who are gay or sick or making bad decisions still have some element of dignity and potential for happiness in the face of tragedy; that they have some fragment of hope in their lives despite everything.  But RENT doesn’t make any of these challenges look particularly attractive.  I can’t imagine anybody leaving the show and thinking, “Oh, boy, I sure wish that was ME!”  So what’s the problem?  That it’s not Annie?  Or Sound of Music?  No, wait, we can’t go there: Rodgers and Hammerstein might expose them to themes involving fascism, anti-authoritarianism, and people of other, less desirable, religious faiths.

Sheesh. 

If you asked me, RENT shouldn’t just be allowed in your school.  Attendance should be mandatory.  And then they should take it on the road and bring it to OUR schools. 

Sorry. That REALLY annoyed me.  Probably because I’ve fought this same fight in middle schools and high school over and over and over.  And like I said: I’m sick-to-death-tired of it.

Enjoy the show.  It’s great.

Lauren, the “younger teen”

In EVERY high school there are teens who are having sex, there are kids doing drugs, there are homosexual kids, and so on. (Gasp!). So, show teens how dangerous HIV/AIDS are and how important safe sex is. Let teens truly understand that there’s a reason that most drugs are illegal. Drugs are dangerous! Being homosexual is hardest during the teen years. Help those students understand they’re not alone. Doing a play is a much better way to teach these topics to teens rather than sitting in a stuffy health classroom. Also, it makes something very dangerous, such as AIDs, which most teens say “can’t happen to me”, more realistic.

Some parents know kids do these things but think “not my child”. Some parents are completely oblivious and think teens are innocent children. So many parents are unaware in one way or another of what’s going on in their teen’s life. So I think it’s the perfect play to help both the students and parents to understand and make them more aware.

Rach, the “teen”

My hall has had five kids go to the hospital in the first six weeks of college. Everyone who lives on this hall is underage. Still, every weekend a group of us meet in the common room and we all walk together to the frat that’s having the best party. Clearly, underage drinking is a problem on my campus. But we’re not alone, this happens at almost every college.

We have had lots and lots of meetings and assemblies on how to take care of a drunk person, the signs of alcohol poisoning and when it’s time to call 911. But we haven’t had a single meeting on how to drink responsibly. This bothers me, not everyone experiments, but those who do, are not told how to manage them selves. Those who don’t drink are taught how to manage the drunk kids. Besides being unfair, this sucks for those of us who want to be responsible.

I’m angry that I went to a school that has greek life and a partying culture. The thing is, a lot of college presidents want to lower the drinking age. The president of my college isn’t on that list. He might or might not want to lower the age, I don’t know. But what I do know, is that drinking is a huge culture at my college, and yet the frats and sports houses are open every weekend letting freshman in. And that makes me regret my decision to come here. To be honest, the fact that there was Greek life here had no effect on my decision, I didn’t even think about it.

So “mom” and “dad,” what do you think about the drinking age, the college presidents who want to lower it, and schools that have such a huge culture of drinking?

Mary, the “mom”

I have such mixed emotions about this.

I wonder why your college spends time teaching about how to take care of a drunk person instead of how to drink responsibly. I expect that their lawyers tell them that it’s unacceptable to lecturing on how to drink responsibly to an audience of students for whom drinking is illegal. That’s a shame, given the reality.

I wonder if those kids would drink so much if it wasn’t taboo – if there was a pub and having a beer or two was no big deal. Maybe the “greeks” still would, but at least the rest of you would have something else to do on the weekend.

I wonder how “we” can let an 18-year-old risk their life serving in the military, but not allow them a beer.

I wonder how “we” can consider 17-year-olds old enough to marry and have a child, but not old enough to toast with a glass of champagne. (Of course, alcohol may well be how they got in the mess in the first place and, given the pregnancy, they shouldn’t be toasting anyway.)

I wonder how “our” system could actually charge nice kids like you with a crime if the authorities caught you having a beer with your friends.

Then I read what Stephen Wallace, Chairman of SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) has to say on the issue and I think my wonderings are outdated. I was in high school (17 years old) at the time when the states were raising the drinking age. Having grown up with the drinking age being 18, I resented the change. I guess I still harbor that teenage resentment. But, as a parent, I have to take Mr. Wallace seriously. His statistics are eye-opening. The driving fatalities stat is the one that bothers me the most. The thing is, even if you trust your own kid to not drive drunk, what about everyone else on the roads? And, there is no way I think high school kids should be drinking and the lower the drinking age, the easier access to alcohol becomes for the high school set.

So, while I have some reservations about it, I think the legal drinking age needs to stay where it is. And, bottom line, I have trouble believing that this effort is going to get any real traction. As, for the culture of drinking, I have no idea how we fix that – maybe I’ll ponder it over a glass of wine later.

Brad, the “dad”

Really interesting, Rachel – and really disturbing. Because the Valkyrie came home from college just this weekend and told me about the three boys that live right across the hall from her in their co-ed dorm, and how two of them are drunk pretty much all the time, and the third about half the time. And that’s not really very unusual in college c. 2008, she tells me. La, la.

So I’m worried.Plenty worried.

I have to be honest: I was a pretty enthusiastic drinker in my twenties (post-college in my case, but so what?), and boy howdy, I was good at it. Lots of parties, and lots of stupid decisions. Inexplicably, I survived, and for some reason I lost the ability to function with alcohol in my system right around the age of 30 – apparently I’d used of all my Get Out of Hangover Free cards in less than a decade – so alcohol was a relatively rare thing in our house by the time the Valk and the Elf came along (they actually don’t believe my “back when I was drinking like a fish” stories; that’s just not me, they say.). But I know how easy it is to fall into, even for smart and stable kids; Frankly, I know how much fun it can be – at first, when you’re young and bullet-proof. So yeah: it worries me.

But the Valk’s college isn’t quite like yours. The Chancellor has openly, repeatedly stated that he’s against lowering the drinking age – he thinks it’s just a ploy to avoid taking responsibility – and a big part of the school’s (apparently highly ineffective) orientation program was about not drinking, as well as dealing with the drunks you’d run into. They’re trying to cope by putting policies into place that aren’t quite ‘zero tolerance’ – and I agree with them, I think zero tolerance is a stupid, modern-day variation on Prohibition, and doomed from the outset . But they have already suspended one kid (for a first-night-at-college binge that resulted in alcohol poisoning) and said “Al-A-Teen or expulsion” to two others (including one of the guys across the hall) in her dorm alone.  And AA has meetings right on campus, every night.  What’s more, the RA’s have no trouble confronting the drinkers directly, and the Valk swears that these drinking kids, and others like them, are being ostracized from most activities. Binging is hugely popular with a small group, it seems, but avoided and even shunned by the majority — including, by the way, the majority of Greeks on campus.

So she says. And so I believe. Because I have absolutely no alternative but to trust she’s not into it. After all, at this distance, there’s nothing I can do. And as for changing the culture that says, “Drinking until you’re so hammered you throw up and fall over in your own sick is FUN!”…heck, I don’t know how it got to that point in the first place, so how can it be fixed? We just have to shiver in our jammies and hope that even the semi-healthy students will see just how dangerous and stupid binge drinking is, and take a step back into the Land of the Occasional Beer.

But truthfully? Confidence is low, Ground Control. Confidence is low.

Brad, the “dad”

The Valkyrie, at 17.6 years of age, will be going off to college in just a few months. She’ll be joining a friend we’ve known for years who’s two years older than she is. I like her friend a lot – smart, enthusiastic, talented, hard-working…

But.

I happened to walk in on a conversation between them just yesterday, where Friend was telling a story about a silly thing she did when she was just a little bit drunk last weekend. (Friend isn’t quite 21 yet, which means she’s too young to buy alcohol.) It wasn’t anything horrible – she didn’t drive her car into a wall or have sex (or even make out) with some stranger; it was just silly. And they both treated it as oh-so-harmless and funny and inconsequential.

I’m pretty sure the Valk hasn’t done any drinking yet; Lord knows here in California the institutional “don’t drink/do drugs/ have sex” messages start in preschool, and maybe even prenatally. And I’ve seen her calmly, firmly keep away from that stuff in a high school where alcohol and drugs are available, though not epidemic. Besides, I did a fair amount of recreational imbibing myself in college, and I’m not naïve. It’s going to happen.

Still…

It’s yet another instance where we have to trust that the messages we’ve given her and the behavior we’ve tried to model will be enough to give her guidance. After all, that’s the central question for parents of ‘departing’ teens, isn’t it? Not What can I do? (since the answer almost always seems to be “Nothing now,”) but How much should I worry?

So: How much should I worry?

Mary, the “mom”

Well Dad, no matter what anyone says, you’re going to worry when the Valk departs. I’m not there yet, but my sense from what I’ve seen is that it just goes with the territory. But, on this particular issue, I’m thinking that if the Valk’s come this far – end of senior year of high school – without drinking, then you’re doing something right! And, to give credit where credit’s due, she has her act together!

Lots of kids are exposed to those “don’t drink/do drugs/have sex” messages, but many don’t listen. Since the Valk has apparently listened, at least you know that she “gets it” about drinking and how it impacts teen brains. And, you know that she’s observed the good model you’ve provided. I know that no underage drinking is acceptable, but if she chooses to experiment, I think you can feel somewhat comforted believing that she’ll proceed with caution.

The Valk has made good decisions so far. So, Dad, focus on that and try not to worry so much!

Rach, the “teen”

I think the amount of worrying you do should relate directly to how you’ve taught your daughter about making safe decisions. You taught the Valk not to drink, do drugs, or have unsafe sex. You enforced those rules, you were an example, and you let her know what was acceptable (and what was not) in your household, right?

I bet you did all of that. But, no matter how much you trust that your daughter will make safe decisions about alcohol, you will still worry. A lot.

Now you have to trust that you taught your daughter the right lessons. That you were an example, and that that will be enough to help her through all the decisions she will have to make without you.

Mom is right, focusing on the positives up to this point is important. And continuing the messages of “no drugs, no sex, no alcohol” in college will help her (and you) feel better about the Valk making her own informed responsible choices.

Brad, the “dad”

I had just dropped the Elf at middle school when I heard a familiar name on the radio. It was the top-of-the-hour headlines: a 13-year-old had been shot and killed over a dispute involving a pick-up basketball game. Shot twice, no less. By a fellow student.

And it happened at my old middle school. Back when it was still called “junior high,” and less than a hundred yards from the house I lived in at the time. I suddenly, chillingly, realized that I had been playing pick-up basketball (badly) on that same outdoor, asphalt court, at the same time of day, exactly forty years ago. Before they put up the security fence all around the campus. Before the fire that burned most of the original building to the ground. Before…well, apparently before everything changed.

Yes, I know it was a long time ago, but this wasn’t some impoverished gang-infested, inner city school on the Bad Side of Town.This was the same moderately overcrowded, moderately well-run school in the same middle-class, highly diverse, Southern California suburb it had been in 1968, so…what the hell has happened? What kind of world has grown up around us in the last forty years? What was I dropping my daughter into? It wasn’t just ironic that I had just deposited my own kid at her own eight grade mere moments before; it was downright terrifying.

I’m probably worrying too much. I don’t even live in that neighborhood, or that town, or even that county, anymore. And I know we hear stories like this every few days, and click our tongues and shake our heads. I know the only thing that makes this one different for me is that it’s my school, in my ancient and distant home town. But still…is it worse ‘out there’ than it was forty years ago? Or am I just being paranoid and overprotective? Again?

Mary, the “mom”

I don’t think it’s paranoid or overprotective to worry, because there is plenty to worry about, but it doesn’t accomplish anything. All we can do is teach our kids to be good and be careful and then we just have to hope they’re not in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When I say ‘all we can do is teach them to be good and careful’, I don’t mean the standard “be good parents and it will all work out”. I think we need make sure our children are tolerant of others and, to quote the ‘Golden Rule’, “treat others as they would like to be treated”. I’ve been trying to get my 9 year old to see a little social squabble from the other girl’s perspective. Maybe it’s a lot of these little teachable moments that add up to them having empathy for others. It seems as though much of the senseless violence in schools today is perpetrated by kids who have been bullied or excluded. Sometimes all it takes is one kid standing up for the outcast to make that kid’s life more tolerable. Of course, if I’m being honest, I have to admit that standing up for the outcast against a popular crowd could be downright dangerous in and of itself. But, if enough kids have empathy for others, maybe some of this senseless violence will stop.

However, since it won’t all stop, I also think we need to try to educate our children to be “street smart” and the ‘street’ might be a city street or it might be the playground at school, but they need to know to lookout for trouble and avoid it. That can be a little hard to accomplish in suburbia, but I think we’ve got to try.

All that said, the news I heard on my drive home today included a report of a group of third graders plotting to attack their teacher. My youngest is a third grader – it’s beyond my comprehension that 9 year olds would do such a thing. It makes you wonder what they’ll be doing when they’re in middle school. I guess I’m worried, even if it doesn’t accomplish anything.

Rach, the “teen”

Every year, without fail, there is a bomb threat at my high school in the suburbs. Every student here looks forward to “bomb threat day” – we love it. They take us out of classes and let us hang out on the fields across from the school. It’s a great day spent in the sun while bomb-sniffing dogs search the entire building and grounds.

In fact, we have lockdowns (where we aren’t allowed to leave our classrooms for an hour while the dogs sniff the building, or someone gets arrested) more than we have fire drills or student assemblies.

Violence is part of our country, our culture, our schools, and our media. And that’s what really so scary to me. That society lets all this violence filter through into our thoughts and the thoughts of our children.

Of course, education is the best way to protect people against violence. Teaching them that it is not OK to harm someone with actions or with words is important. And, sadly, it’s our only option right now.

So, mom and dad, you are dropping your kids into a scary violence and hate-obsessed world. And I’m sorry.

I don’t want to live in a world where kids shoot other kids, or where students plan kidnappings of their teachers. But I don’t have a choice. It’s really scary for us, knowing that there could be a shooting at our high school or college campus, or that the draft would come back and we’d all be shipped off to war.

We want you to worry for us, because then it doesn’t seem so irrational when we are afraid of what’s next.

Find helpful resources on School Violence on ParentingTeensOnline.