S1 is on disciplinary probation this year for his alcohol use last year. D does not drink. I doubt my parenting attitudes had much to do with either result. Their campus, by the way, is well known for alcohol related disasters.
So what are those parents supposed to do exactly when they’re hundreds of miles away? I am not going to cut of my kid’s tuition because they confessed (perhaps many months later) that they got a fake ID.
For us, college is about more than an academic education - it’s about learning the consequences of your actions, and my kid would have likely learned more if they’d been ticketed and fined for a fake ID, than mommy and daddy cutting off their college tuition and they have to move back home.
My parents were of the type that told me, “You do this, that, or whichever, and your college education is over.” Let me tell you far that went in deterring me from ever developing a mature, adult-level relationship with them… zilch - as I got older, I learned, to them, it was more about what others would think of them if their snowflake had strayed, as opposed to really being able to sit down and talk about why certain choices were bad. Of course, as I got older, I also learned (not from them) they had some pretty serious secrets themselves.
Us? We want to be able to have conversations with ourr kids, in a manner that keeps the door open, as opposed to condemning them and cutting them off for making mistakes. So far it’s worked pretty well - we have much better relationships with our kids than our parents did with us.
It’s not black or white, we can make our opinions known very clearly, but once they’re out of that door, it’s pretty much a crap shoot. I’m sure every person on this thread can name several families where the parents were dire-hard, hard liners with discipline, yet they had kids who screwed up big time with either pregnancies or drugs/alcohol. And yea, it even happens at the rigid evangelical colleges where every piece of clothing, haircut, piercing is monitored.
I am one of those parents who has accepted the reality of college (and high school) drinking and fake IDs. I have posted previously that every single student- male and female- on my son’s freshman dorm floor at Penn arrived with a fake ID. We witnessed them all comparing them. My son got caught at one point at the Jersey shore (he was 20 by then) and had some monetary consequences and legal proceedings. Busting the kids is a money maker in NJ.
I don’t like it, but, yes, I also had a fake ID in college. I want my kids (and all kids) to be safe. Unfortunately, it’s a crapshoot.
Fake IDs: yup. We had a 20 year old from Turkey staying with us for a semester while she attended a local university. She had her fake ID within days of arriving in the US. As someone who in her country (Turkey!) could drink at 18, she was baffled by the whole highly hypocritical system here. She also could not believe her eyes at the binge drinking here. She’d never seen anything like it in Turkey - where she attended an American university – or in Europe, where she spent quite a bit of time studying. Only in America…
Copied from report linked above: " After the age-21 MLDA was implemented, alcohol-involved highway crashes declined immediately (i.e., starting the next month) among the 18- to 20-year-old population. Careful research has shown declines are not due to enforcement of and tougher penalties for driving while intoxicated, but are directly a result of the legal drinking age. Studies have also shown that education alone is not effective at reducing youth drinking (Clayton et al., 1996; Ellickson et al., 1993). To achieve long-term reductions in youth drinking problems, we have to change the environment by making alcohol less accessible to teens."
I don’t think it is strictly a crapshoot. Certainly there are cultural, regional, and social group factors at play. Is having access to alcohol important enough to risk monetary and legal consequences? Safer, cheaper, and less complicated just to obey the law, imo.
sounds like you achieve the same thing by making driving less accessible to teens, too,
– But you do bring up a good point, @atomom, about teens and driving and accidents, etc. But there’s tremendous hypocrisy in this as well: our DUI laws are lax compared to many nations’, both in terms of what’s considered an illegal limit, and in terms of punishment. Keeping things status quo is certainly less complicated, but I’m not sure status quo is terribly healthy or rational.
From the US Dept of Treasury, National Highway Safety:
One big difference is that 18-20 yos could not go to bars, which generally require driving longer distances than going to a neighborhood friend’s house. At some point in that period, the consequences for drinking and driving also became much stricter. It is hard to determine which had the most influence on declines in drunk driving.
There are parents that condone and even encourage drinking and allow it in their homes. Then there are the many parents that know their kids drink, (but don’t drive when drinking), yet aren’t entirely clear how to stop it when essentially all the kids in their child’s social circle and most of the other social circles drink. The parents could decide to lock their children in the house, but that generally does not work all that well for extended periods of time. If the kid is grounded for life, what do they have to loose?
Some parents choose to take the moderation approach - punishing when the kid comes in visibly drunk but otherwise ignoring it. Many kids can drink moderately and come home with no outward signs. Parents can sometimes be fooled into thinking that their kid is not partaking, when they may well be, but in a responsible way. Some parents have found that their non-drinker in HS turns into a binge drinker in college. Do parents really believe that it is their message to their kids, the threat of punishment and not the kid’s personality or choice of friends that really drives this?
One of my kids did not drink at all in HS. I was frustrated by the attitude that they all do it and that parents should not believe that their kids were not drinking (which came from the HS substance abuse counselor). I thought the school should at least acknowledge that some kids don’t drink and support those kids, instead of insinuating that the parents were simply foolish to believe this. I absolutely believe that kid didn’t drink. One of my kids probably has upon occasion, but not so that it is visible. Same parents, same rules, different personalities and friends.
I would love to know what really works to curb underage drinking. I don’t think anyone has actually come up with any method that effectively deters these kids. I agree with those that say an occasional bottle of cheap beer or a glass of wine is of minimal concern in an 18-20 yo, but binge drinking or getting into a car either as a driver or a passenger with a driver that has been drinking can lead to disaster. The binge drinking really worries me.
If you want to have your hearts broken, click through the photo slideshow at the top of this article http://www.courant.com/community/middletown/hc-wesleyan-mdma-students-arrested-0226-20150225-story.html The kids’ lives are ruined…and so are their parents…
(though i should note: The kids who are currently in critical condition (and their parents) are in a much worse place).