Our 13-year old started acting like a 13-year old this week. We pulled him out of it and things are back to normal now, but there has been some major league drama in the house for the past five days. I'm just starting to return to my normal self again, but the white streaks in my hair got a little whiter.
As this drama was unfolding, I had lots of chats with other parents and heard lots of venting about teenage culture. Parenting takes on a whole new dimension when the kids hit these years. It's enough to make one look fondly on the potty training years. When the kids become teenagers, parenting is mostly about fear.
Last night, I talked with my coffee klatch at the Y, as we watched our little guys swim. They all had older teenage kids and were terrified that their kids were going to get into drugs and alcohol. One mom told us about a party where a bunch of sixth graders were caught drinking. The parents had gone away and left a college kid in charge. The college kids had a party and let the younger kids dip into the booze supply. The cops came, and everyone got into big trouble.
Another mom said that she was going to lock up her liquor cabinet, because she didn't trust her kid and his friends. She was worried about sending her son to other houses where the parents weren't around enough.
One woman said that she purposedly kept her daughter into a million clubs and activities, so she didn't have time to get into trouble.
Parents are also afraid that their kids were watching porn on YouTube. They worry that kids had more access to crap than in the past, because of the Internet.
They worry that their kids are being passively bullied by the mean girls in school. The schools hold millions of anti-bullying assemblies, but they never address the more subtle forms of meanness, such simply being ignored.
Are these fears irrational? Studies do show that usage of drugs and binge drinking is down from the past, but there is no question that kids are still getting into trouble.
My 13-year olds problems are so minor in comparison. Just the problem of fitting into a new school and typical insecurity issues. What happens when the bigger problems come down the pike?
Apt. 11d 
I am so afraid of the teenage years. In the conversations about guns in the home, I started thinking about things like liquor cabinets & internet use. We don’t lock up our alcohol — it’s never seemed vaguely necessary. I imagine that we don’t need to, but then I see scenes like Degrassi junior high & your description of the college babysitter throwing a party and realize that it is something I should think about.
A big issue is that the kids seem so sensible and grown up most of the time. So its easy to forget that they are still young and still incapable, many of them, of making prudent decisions, both in the short and long term.
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I have a 13 yr old daughter who’s had the “teenage attitude” for a good year now. (I think the hormones hit earlier for the girls than the boys). I’m constantly amazed by how intense and quick the mood swings are- she will be snarling at me and in tears and literally 5 minutes later be running in to the room, jumping up and down with joy because a new Justin Bieber song just came out. At first it was really hard but I’m getting better and better at knowing how to react to her moods/tears/anger and accepting this new/different girl. I do worry about what’s ahead but am grateful that so far she has picked good and diverse friends and enjoys many activities. (and the excercise and socialization definitely help her mood). I’m learning I have to let go to a greater degree than I’d like to (ie she can access the internet from a zillion places so if she wants to seek out porn or info on hiding a eating disorder or whatever, she can. I can’t control it. Scary but true). I’m working on just listening when she talks to me (not trying to problem solve which is my tendency), accepting her moods, and realizing she will become the woman she will become.
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I’m not there yet as a parent but I am watching my niece and nephew launch and it is a bit scary. My nephew’s twitter feed has highly inappropriate things in it (and I believe his mom knows) about not just drinking but pot and a lot of comments about girls I find appalling. I got banned from his Facebook account for commenting though. It makes me fear for future years.
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I’m wondering how many memories I’ll have to repress before I can hear “teenage drinking” without thinking “good times”?
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Snicker. I know. Our track coach, a divoced guy in his 40s, used to buy us cases of good Canadian beer and we would hang out after track meets at random places. I also used to drink at Girl Scout camping trips. Just an FYI to all those parents.
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The coach buying beer for the girls was probably a little bit off even then.
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I’m the mom who had them in a million activities to keep them busy and it worked pretty well for us. We’re almost at the end of it and the damage was limited to one pot pipe and one instance of someone being over at a wild girl’s house instead of at home.
Internet porn – oh god, I don’t even want to think about it!
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I still am doubtful that the parents whose kids get into trouble are truly blindsided and that those problems come out of nowhere. I suppose occasionally they do, but most of the time the parents are aware that something is going on (though maybe they choose to ignore it) long before the pregnancy, the DUI, the car accident, etc.
We do seem to live in a place that’s big on denial, though — my kids still tell me everything and they will say “I don’t want to go to that party even though you’re friends with the mom because there will be drugs there” (and it’s usually a church youth group party where the mom truly is clueless).
My kids have told me some bad stories about the party where people had sex in the bathroom, etc. but in that case, it’s a house where the parents were really negligent even before that little incident. (And the mom then “handled it” by sending her kids to Catholic school that they’ could straighten it out. Um, no, I’m pretty sure you can’t outsource parenting in that fashion and by that point it’s probably a little late anyway).
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The really wildest girls I knew in high school are now the aggressively traditional ones on Facebook. The really wildest boys I knew in high school look drunk in about half of the pictures of them, which is better than they did in the yearbook.
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“I’m wondering how many memories I’ll have to repress before I can hear “teenage drinking” without thinking “good times”?”
I’ve always wondered how you wild ones will handle your teenagers. I was straightlaced, shockingly so, I think, now that I hear about all the wildness teenagers apparently engage in. My elder kiddo seems to be similar in her decision making (i.e. internet communications, photographs, clothing) so I hope that will help her transition into adulthood. I honestly don’t think I’ve done much that would really worry me if my children did it (say, unlike having their coaches buy them alcohol, which would make me explode). That’s not to say I never did anything stupid, but that I didn’t do anything stupid enough to cause long lasting trauma or damage.
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“say, unlike having their coaches buy them alcohol, which would make me explode.”
Yep. I know Laura has said that the guy was OK, but I really have to wonder about a 40-year-old guy getting underage girls drunk.
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I’ve always wondered how you wild ones will handle your teenagers.
But I was never wild. Drinking was just what people did at night. It was illegal for teens, but it wasn’t like sex or pot or smoking. Nobody actually expected that you could get even the good kids to avoid it.
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When your kids are in high school, you will know the houses to avoid. It won’t surprise you. Parents who are attentive and use common sense when their children are in elementary and middle school don’t lose that common sense when their oldest child reaches high school. If we had taken a guess in middle school as to which houses would be most likely to host wild teenaged parties, we would have been proven right years later.
High school students divide into narrower groups, though, so it’s not like middle school. There are partiers and non-partiers, and if your child is a non-partier, he won’t be longing to attend the partiers’ gathering.
There is the problem of unattended houses. I would not recommend leaving for a weekend out of town, without arranging for adult supervision. I have friends who arrange for their high school-aged children to stay at parents’ friends’ houses if the parents must leave town. Or they arrange for an aunt or uncle to be on the premises while they’re away. The high school students have cell phones, twitter, facebook, and transportation (friends with cars.) A party really can spring up at your home very quickly. The social host law in our state makes it a real gamble to leave town while your children are in high school.
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“I would not recommend leaving for a weekend out of town, without arranging for adult supervision. ” We got this advice from our neighbor (kids now graduated from college), and I plan to follow it, even if my kid is as much of a non-partier as I am.
That’s the same concern I have about locking up the liquor. I think you can know your kids (though not perfectly), if you care, and listen, and talk. But I don’t think it’s possible to have that same knowledge of all their friends. And, I think that teens need someone else stepping in for them to make decisions about some things (a friend regrets not having intervened about overt PDA at the last middle school dance).
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“Nobody actually expected that you could get even the good kids to avoid it.”
So in your world, it was kind of like seatbelts or biking without helmets or cigarettes? So, we tell our kids to wear their seatbelts and helmets even though we didn’t, ’cause times have changed (and, in those three examples, I think for good reason, though others might disagree with me)?
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Even leaving aside bike helmets, which were just completely unheard of, I think it is still different. It wasn’t very long before I was in high school that you could drink at 18. Times really hadn’t changed, just the law. Nobody was actually opposed to seat belts, though many were opposed to seat belt laws. Even then smokers didn’t want their kids to smoke.
But plenty of people were opposed to not drinking, even if they wouldn’t have put it that way. That is, for an adult to refuse to drink on a social occasion was strange enough to cause a social stigma. For a host to not offer one was unheard of (leaving aside LDS and the sterner types of Protestants).
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The early teenage year are a gauntlet but if a parent’s policy is all about hiding interesting adult elements of life from their kids, that’s going to be tougher than it needs to be and much longer, too. Forbidden fruits and all that.
On the other hand, I tip my hat to a friend who’s parenting policy stood us in good stead: kid either hangs out with other kids at house where we know and respect parenting decisions or kids are always welcome to come and hang out here at our house.
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bj,
Don’t forget the Purell.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/04/24/dangerous-trend-teens-drinking-hand-sanitizer-to-get-drunk/
I was chatting with a woman today whose brother successfully intercepted a couple years worth of report cards before his parents realized there was a problem.
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My 16 and 14 yos have mastered ‘surly’. And, nothing happens at school. What happened at school today, Sweetie? Nothing.
Our hope in having three was that somebody would like us at all times. So far, it’s working. We’re trying to keep the lines open. One day at a time.
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My mother was shockingly negligent when I was in my teens. By 16 she left my younger sister and me home alone for days at a time, and I doubt she had any idea of my whereabouts most of the time. My sister and I were crazy high-achieving “organization” kids, except we did it all to ourselves. I started drinking at 17 with my mother. One day she poured me a glass of red wine at dinner and told me it was time to learn how to drink, and she would also order me wine sometimes when we went out to dinner. High school I only drank with my family, and only wine and beer, and in college I mostly drank on break with my friends at my house with my mother often home. I didn’t really start drinking with my peers until my early 20s.
I don’t know what I would do if my kid were really wild, since I assume they’d be like me or my siblings.
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http://www.wcvb.com/news/local/metro-west/Teens-may-face-sports-disciplinary-actions-after-Sudbury-beer-bash/-/11983044/18357038/-/8dfm8oz/-/index.html
The report seems typical. At least the teen, rather than the parents, will be charged under the social host laws.
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Interestingly, my kiddo did a debate, with “the alcohol should be lowered to 18” as a topic, middle-schoolers. They debated the con position (don’t lower drinking age) and the other team, older kids, the pro.
One of the big points of the pro-kids, which I didn’t pay a lot of attention to at the time, was the argument that cases like cranberry was reporting produced outsized consequences for an activity that was common (even now, as MH reports from his childhood). I was biased (against lowering the drinking age; my kids are younger; and they were arguing the point I’m biased for), so I didn’t attend to the arguments as carefully as I could have. But, I do think that if drinking among kids is common (in violation of the laws), that one has to think about the laws. The key point though, is the data on how common, and then what level of “commonness” means the law is irrelevant.
I’m inclined to believe that college age drinking is rampant even when its illegal, but I don’t know for sure, because I went to school right after the drinking age laws had changed, and underage drinking was easily available. Has it changed?
And, what about in high school? What percent of kids drink and at what frequency?
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I can’t speak for HS, but kids in college do drink quite a bit. I lose students almost every term to suspension from the university for violating alcohol rules. One of my A students last year was suspended. 😦 She was great, and I helped her revise her appeal letter (she was suspended for buying alcohol for a minor, which she said she didn’t do, though she did admit to drinking), but, but it didn’t work. 😦
I was in Girl Scouts and we never drank on Girl Scout trips. No adults ever bought us alcohol either, though my best friend’s mother let us try coquito a few times.
The drinking age changed from 18 to 21 when I was in my sophomore year (a subject of great amusement to my students), but I think it should be 18.
My 13 yo has a very strong sense of right and wrong and good and bad choices right now, so I have trust in her (until the day I won’t). My 10 yo will just do whatever he’s told and will need to be watched carefully when he hits his teen years. I anticipate this will be very hard for us simply because he is very impulse-driven and, at essence, a peer-pleaser. Fortunately, he is a bad liar and can also master certain sets of rules. His problem is going to be when a situation we can’t envision and prepare for happens.
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If you’re curious about teen behavior in your area, try Googling “Youth Risk Behavior Survey” + the name of your town or state.
On ours YRBS, about a third of high school seniors responding reported binge drinking in the past 30 days. Almost half of seniors reported attending parties at private homes at which alcohol was available.
Uniformly, students suspect others of drinking/using drugs/etc. at higher rates than their peers self-report misbehaving on the same survey. So, if your high school freshman says, “everyone does it,” she’s probably wrong.
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I’ve always had trouble with laws that have outsize effects on a few of the many offenders. It’s supposed to produce a deterrence effect, but I think, psychologically, it only does so if the probability of being caught is sufficiently high enough (with the actual value of “probability of being caught” = function(consequences, desirability of the activity, the pressures/desire to engage in the activity, the frequency of the activity, . . . .).
I think our public attempts at regulating behavior often fall short in estimating the behavioral change that we can produce through major, but infrequent consequences. (“Outsize” is value laden — because, essentially, we’re considering the consequence outsize because the weight of all the punishment for all the offenders is falling on one person).
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Fascinating data set (though my location isn’t covered). The national rate according to the survey as 30% of 9th graders having had at least one drink in the last 30 days and going to 50% for 12th graders. Interesting data point, but I think to analyze for my subgroup, I’d need data broken down more so.
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So I was a wild one in high school – and I believe that if you criminilize booze too much, the kids will just do harder drugs instead. (That’s certainly what I did.)
IMO you have to teach and model the skills required to drink and keep yourself safe and under control. It’s the same with video games, with cold medicine, with dieting, with anything that is OK in moderation and dangerous in excess.
My parents are clergy and were reflexively against drinking, an approach that left me to figure it out all on my own. I learned the hard way in college. One should not need dental work, as I did, after one’s introduction to tequila.
With my own kids I am very clear as to what it looks like to be drunk, how it can bring on embarrassing behavior with long-term consequences, how it’s fine to help you wind down a little but can easily become a crutch that masks your own sadness or anxiety with fake, temporary happiness delivered in a bottle.
The only bad part about all this is that now my own kids can call me out when I have too many at the Christmas party. (Busted, and rightfully so.) (Which made my husband snicker to no end.)
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One other comment – I have two girls, 10 and 12, and my biggest worry with them is body image and anorexia/obesity.
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Well, my goal, to the extent I had a goal, was to get our daughter off to college without having gotten arrested, or pregnant, or having flunked out, or been sent to drug rehab, and we achieved that much. So I guess I feel good.
I think the drinking age should be 18, but the driving age should be 21. I’ll bet my daughter would take that (she doesn’t even have a driver’s license), but obviously it wouldn’t work for most of the country.
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“The only bad part about all this is that now my own kids can call me out when I have too many at the Christmas party.”
Our 7-year-old has been known to ask his father, “Do you think you should eat that?” The kid usually has a point, too.
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“. . . get our daughter off to college without having gotten arrested, or pregnant, or having flunked out, or been sent to drug rehab, and we achieved that much. So I guess I feel good.”
Mine, too. Except that I also worry about anorexia and “perfect girl syndrome.” And, I want to see them through college graduation. But, I fear that wanting to see them through that is just the extension to wanting to see them through graduate school, the first job, and marriage, oh, yeah, and their children.
OK, I’ll try to stick with the goal of feeling good on Y81’s standards, which will be better for everyone involved.
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“I think the drinking age should be 18, but the driving age should be 21.”
Yes! I agree! My students will sometimes choose raising the driving age as a debate topic.
I’m just realizing that I have no idea what my 10yo will be like in 3 years. My daughter changed in many ways (though I guess she is very much the same at the core). Stupid puberty.
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“I think the drinking age should be 18, but the driving age should be 21.”
My version would be, either drinking or a driver’s license at 18, your pick.
“I’m just realizing that I have no idea what my 10yo will be like in 3 years. My daughter changed in many ways (though I guess she is very much the same at the core).”
I can hazily recall the sort of “discussions” my mom and I had when I was 11, usually centered around household chores (I’m a lifelong dishophobe). I’ve already seen some prickly, moody, argumentative behavior from our oldest (age 10.5) that reminds me of me when I was 11 or 12, but I’m hoping that I will be savvy enough to avoid getting swept into the vortex. I think my mom would have done very well to say, “It’s OK if you don’t want to do the dishes. You can do XYZ instead tonight.” Hopefully I can remember to emulate Elastigirl and not wage unwinnable trench warfare.
“stupid puberty”
I was going through the American Girl “Care and Keeping of You” with our 10 year old last summer, and she found it absolutely horrifying. The physical changes of puberty sound terrible from the point of view of a tween with nice skin, no weird hair and no offensive body odors.
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Let’s just say I do a lot more hair coloring now . . . We managed to make it to senior year w/o alcohol, and even now, geeky boy tells us. He says he’s mostly afraid to get drunk, but has had a beer here and there. We just ask sometimes if he drank. My parents never did, even when it was clear I was hungover. We’re pretty honest about most things. It’s not been quite what I wanted but it hasn’t been too bad, an improvement I’d say, over my own teen years.
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