My daughter
’s 17th birthday affected me more than her 16th, perhaps because
when I was 17, I was a senior in high school, preparing for
college. Though I checked in with my parents, I felt like I was an
adult, free to travel around the county for basketball games,
school activities or whatever.
My daughter’s 17th birthday affected me more than her 16th, perhaps because when I was 17, I was a senior in high school, preparing for college. Though I checked in with my parents, I felt like I was an adult, free to travel around the county for basketball games, school activities or whatever.
Of course, I wasn’t, and she isn’t. As my daughter struggles for independence and I struggle with knowing when and just how much she is ready for, I receive counsel from mothers I admire.
One friend who just sent her sixth child off to college advised me to extend curfew this year, because, she said, “kids are going to make mistakes. You want them to make them when they are home when you can help them learn the lessons so they won’t make worse mistakes when they are on their own.”
My mother always said the hardest part of parenting was knowing when, after doing everything to ensure her child is grows and thrives while safe, to go against the instinct to protect the child and loosen the reins. She agrees with my friend, but cautions “you still have to take steps to ensure that they are not totally unsafe.”
Sometimes, it’s asking all the nagging questions: What are your plans? Who will you be with? Do the other parents agree with this? And the one the kids hate: What is their phone number? Because I’m going to check. And sometimes, it’s going beyond asking questions; it’s stepping in to change some details because the risk factors just seem too high (to you, never to your kids).
So, I had an immediate reaction to the news of the Live Oak senior who was injured after the school’s senior ball. After the ball, a bunch of high school kids went to a hotel to spend the night, allowed because some parents were concerned that driving the distance would be a problem for teens leaving a dance at midnight.
The reasoning was they should have a hotel room where they would be safe with friends and then come home the next morning.
That choice involves an incredible leap of trust I couldn’t make. Teens want to be trusted and feel disrespected when they aren’t. I remember feeling “disrespected” when asked those irritating questions, when all my friends and I would be doing was eating synthetic cheese snacks and playing ping pong.
But as a parent, I also know that sometimes it’s not that we don’t trust our teens, it’s that we don’t trust who or what we don’t know, the “friends” they’re with, or the environment that might be conducive to more trouble than anyone should handle. Having a bunch of teens unsupervised in a hotel in the early hours of the morning is an environment where I would expect trouble to be the rule, not the exception.
The girl who fell doesn’t remember what happened, so I don’t know if substance abuse contributed to the accident. But something happened, something unplanned, surely, but something that was the result of a questionable judgment call by someone that sent her tumbling off the third floor and into a hospital bed.
One parent interviewed thought the school should do something. Among some other precautions, my daughter’s school is very clear that it neither supports nor approves of hotel rooms for its students after the ball. Officials tell parents when their children first arrive as freshmen and they repeat it at every opportunity and write it on the permission slip required to attend. No one even thinks to call the school for a recommendation on where to stay or what to do.
Everyone has lapses of judgment now and then, but 17- and 18-year-olds, because of their lack of experience, are bound to have more than adults over 30, so it helps when both school officials and parents work together to minimize the risks of harm. Los Gatos High, which held its ball in San Francisco, chartered a bus in response to parental concerns. Presentation has its formals in its gym.
Finally, the last thing a school needs is a reputation for descending on a town for the ball and monopolizing the police time. Events like the senior ball are milestones in a teen’s high school years. They should be the memorable events they’re meant to be, because they are fun, not because a classmate was seriously injured because there were no parameters provided by parents and the school.
