Key Moments To Tempt A Teen When Today’S Kids Come Of Age, The Equation Is Painfully Simple: More Choices, Less Guidance.
PART VII
Coming of age in the United States? Enter the cultural megastore that dazzles today’s kids. There are choices galore … more than ever … fast, cheap or free. Short lines. Endless supplies. Always open.
Want booze, drugs or cigarettes? They’re cheap and easy to get. Blue-light special: methamphetamine, packaged to snort, smoke, shoot and swallow.
Music? Rap, pop, punk, rock, techno, heavy metal, Christian, country, alternative - so many choices, even kids can’t agree on what’s cool.
Sex? Step right up. Prices are steeper than ever, with HIV and all - but you can pay later.
Can’t find something? Sure you can - on the Internet. If you can spell it, it’s yours. From college directories to hard-core porn, it’s user’s choice. Yesterday’s teens sneaked past adults into R-rated movies. Today’s kids can view R or X without leaving home, no ID required.
More choices and less guidance: That’s the way kids come of age at the turn of the century.
They’re home alone more, half have parents who are divorced, and both parents work in most families. Nearly half a million latchkey kids entertain themselves after school until their parents return from work, a time slot that produces more teen pregnancies and juvenile crime than any other.
Some young people shop carefully in the megastore, making healthful choices that broaden rather than limit their opportunities as adults. Many do not.
If the many temptations carried consumer warning labels, they might say: ”Proceed with caution. About 8,000 U.S. teenagers contract a sexually transmitted infection each day and 900,000 become pregnant each year, costing the United States almost $7 billion.
”Alcohol-related crashes are the leading cause of death among people 15 to 24 years old. The average age when kids begin drinking is 14; one in four fourth-graders has been intoxicated.
”One-third of young people experimenting with cigarettes are addicted by age 20; many will die early from smoking-related illnesses.”
While caring parents may view society’s megastore as a huge shop of horrors, adolescents are more likely to see rows and rows of tantalizing products begging to be sampled.
Risks are opportunities to see what they’re made of, to prove themselves, to try on new identities. Kids always have been risk-takers. It’s an inherent part of growing up and injects mystery, romance and excitement into the sometimes grueling process of maturing.
”Kids have physically developed bodies and want to test out the mechanics of those bodies, whether it’s bungee-jumping or having sex,” says Lynn Ponton, psychiatrist and author of ”The Romance of Risk: Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do.”
The catch: The body is far more ready and able than the mind at this stage. ”The body is (saying) test it, drive it, use it. And the mind is not able to assess it in a fully responsible fashion,” says Ponton.
Adolescents have it better nowadays in some ways. They’re growing up in a time of economic prosperity, and there’s no military draft threatening to steal all their choices.
But even parents who grew up when ”sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” was a teen mantra find today’s kid culture daunting.
”Back then, if you were not looking for trouble, you would be fine,” says Alison Olzendam, principal at Mead Middle School. ”You’d walk places at midnight, hang out. Now a kid can not be looking for trouble, and trouble will find the kid. Now kids use weapons. Where in the past, a good old-fashioned fistfight would settle it, now the ante is higher.”
Adolescents must navigate these risks and yet simultaneously complete such huge developmental tasks as gaining impulse control, taking responsibility for their actions and forming an identity separate from their family.
And parents play a crucial role: They must equip children with skills to gauge risks and decide which are worth taking.
The first step for parents is accepting the mission. ”In terms of drinking and drugs, too many parents are trying to be cool dudes themselves,” says Patricia Hersch, the Reston, Va., author of ”A Tribe Apart: A Journey Into the Heart of American Adolescence.”
”A shocking amount of parents are providing drugs and/or alcohol. We’re not doing anyone a service by being hypocrites about that.”
Coming-of-age issues are managed more easily when parents lay the groundwork for open communications early. It’s the best way to help kids, but some parents find it the hardest.
Without guidance, adolescents are left to dissect their struggles in private journals, lie awake searching for answers or watch peers for cues. Typical teenage angst? Perhaps. But sometimes a single bad decision - drinking and driving perhaps, or having unprotected sex - can hurtle a child down a road he or she never would consciously choose.
John Gottman, a psychology professor at the University of Washington and a nationally known marriage researcher, weaves meaningful conversation with his 9-year-old daughter through daily routines. At family dinners, everyone shares high and low points of the day. While bathing together, his wife and daughter have casual conversations about things such as menstruation and boys.
Talking openly when a child is young sets the stage for a warm relationship later on that is conducive to honest talks about the consequences of early sex, binge drinking, reckless driving and other temptations the child likely will face. When kids feel free to talk, parents have more opportunities to guide them.
But don’t wait for them to come to you, says Gottman. ”You have to be really proactive.”
Kids confront alcohol, drugs and sex at much younger ages than their parents did. Kids say marijuana is especially common and easy to get. ”Last week, I had an adorable seventh-grade girl tell me, ‘I’m addicted,”’ says Olzendam, the Mead Middle School principal. ”You can’t assume it’s going to be the kids who wear black and wear a marijuana leaf necklace. A lot of parents are really naive in what their kids are exposed to.”
Many teenagers don’t talk openly about their struggles - whether to have sex, for instance, or whether to drink at parties - because they worry they’ll disappoint or anger their parents, says Marilyn Underwood, a counselor at North Central High School in Spokane. Adults should let children know they’re willing to listen without lecturing them. ”I always tell parents: You’ve talked for 14 years. Now it’s time to listen.”
Some parents, on the other hand, fear they’ll drive their kids away with rules. But adolescents need orange cones, lovingly but firmly placed, to guide them around sinkholes. They’re almost always grateful later.
Author Hersch clearly defines for her sons what’s negotiable and what isn’t. ”Choose your issues,” says Hersch. ”I let my boys be in charge of their ears. They can pierce their ears, but I absolutely did not want them to get a tattoo,” something she thinks they’d regret later. She also draws the line at beach parties with reputations for turning into drunken brawls.
Alcohol concerns most parents for good reason. It’s the drug of choice among teens and the one most associated with risky behavior, from violence to unprotected teen sex. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, one in five teens has had blackouts in which he or she can’t remember what happened during a drinking binge.
Many teens attend keggers, often referred to in code as ”camping trips,” says Lorenzo Driggs, executive director of the Northeast Washington Treatment Alternative. But parents, even those who went to keggers themselves, should be aware that today’s beer bashes often are more dangerous, he says.
”Most of these so-called camping trips are not just alcohol. They have the whole array of drugs - methamphetamine, cocaine, even dabbles of heroin,” Driggs says.
”The first thing a parent must face is that their child is going to experiment with alcohol at some point,” says Don Elium, a California therapist who specializes in raising teens. ”It’s not if - it’s when. The strategy would be to push out (the beginning of) that experimentation as long as you can.”
Some parents find it helpful to put rules in a written contract, along with consequences for rebellion. A contract might state that alcohol is off-limits to your children, and if they drink it, they’ll be grounded. ”Then you say, ‘If you break this contract, I’ll love you anyway. But I’m not going to trust you as far as I can throw you,”’ says Elium.
Other agreements - written or not - could include rules for using the family car, smoking cigarettes or dating.
Adolescents who break agreements must earn back broken trust - and privileges such as later curfews - by keeping grades up, doing chores and staying out of trouble. Contracts without consequences are useless.
Most parents have less personal experience to draw on when steering kids through the countless choices technology offers them. ”Kids today are exposed to more information in one week than their parents were in a year. With TV, the Internet, music, videos - it’s just a bombardment,” Elium says.
The Internet plants a tree of good and evil in the homes of the 11 million teens now online. All the information a kid could need to complete a research paper is there, from online encyclopedias to the latest scientific studies. Students with e-mail accounts chat with teachers, researchers and cousins across the continent.
But that’s not all, warns Keith Cheng, a professor at the Oregon Health Sciences University. ”You can see basically any form of sexual activity without having to put a credit card in, from sex with animals to simulated sex with people whose brains have been blasted out.”
Cheng, also a pediatric psychiatrist, says many of his teen patients have chatted online with adult predators posing as kids. ”They’ll say, ‘Who’s hot? Who wants to have a good time?’ The kids will answer, and the parents get a call at 2 a.m. from some schmuck in Virginia wanting to talk to their child.”
Popular video games make kids into pretend-killers - from snipers to mass murderers - and let them choose from an arsenal including automatic weapons, grenades and aerosol cans-turned-torches. One game encourages them to kill as many innocent people as possible. If trapped, their character can commit suicide. ”It’s incredibly reinforcing,” Cheng says. ”The more you kill, the more you win.”
Music and videos offer equally nihilistic choices, although the evidence linking technology to real-life violence is mostly anecdotal. The killers at Columbine High School in Colorado, for instance, reportedly favored the shooting game Doom. Teen suicides increased for two weeks after Nirvana star Kurt Cobain killed himself.
Studies have shown that college students who watch violent TV programs tend to think of violent solutions when conflict arises, says John Dunne, a psychology professor at the University of Washington.
Parents face the task of setting limits for their children. But two-thirds of parents have no rules about their children’s computer use. Many experts on adolescence advise against computers and televisions in adolescents’ rooms. Keep them in common areas, and perhaps get an Internet filter that restricts the Web sites kids can use. Most important, talk to your kids about making good choices. Let them know why you approve or disapprove of certain movies, music and Web sites.
If a child shows signs of depression, it probably isn’t wise for him or her to listen to the abundant music about death and suicide. ”There may not be a causal link, but it sure should be a red flag,” says Cheng.
As in every aspect of child-rearing, networking with other parents is key. Know which ones monitor children’s online activities as well as video games and movie and TV viewing.
It also is important to help children strike a balance between structured and free time. Back-to-back activities and practices can stress children and stifle creativity. But too much unplanned time, especially with no adults around, invites trouble.
Psychiatrist Ponton, who studies teen risk behavior, role-plays with her teenage daughter to prepare her for tempting but threatening risks. Together, they plan the girl’s escape. ”I usually pretend I’m the bad kid trying to draw her in,” says Ponton, who goads her daughter with challenges such as ”You’re a coward if you don’t do it. Anybody could do it.”
But removing unhealthy risks from a child’s life isn’t enough, says Ponton. They should be replaced with safer avenues for adventure and exploration. Parents with children who crave adrenaline can steer them toward in-line skating or supervised white-water rafting. Excitement can be found in photography and dancing rather than in running away from home.
Navigating these challenges successfully can supply the stimulation and self-confidence kids long for while diminishing the drive to take more dangerous risks.
His parents’ parting words echo in Ryan McLellan’s mind when he leaves the house on weekends: ”Behave yourself. Make good choices.”
He finds it difficult sometimes, especially when friends kick in a few bucks each for a 12-pack of beer. On boring nights, it’s cheap entertainment.
But a new mountain bike has changed the way McLellan, who will be a senior next fall at North Central High School, weighs those decisions. Downhill racing provides a bigger thrill, and hangovers don’t help his speed.
”That helps me not drink as much,” says McLellan. ”I look at the pros and I know they don’t do it. And that’s my dream.”