Parents..How would you feel if you caught your kids drinking/smoking pot (serious)

Parent Cafe
21

<p>In CA if the police had decided to stop to see what teenagers were doing in the car, and found you with pot and beer, you’d have been hauled in and the car impounded. </p>

<p>Sounds right to me. </p>

<p>And I too was one of the partying parents of the 1970s, but like you, OP, I was young and stupid then. Now I know that partying and driving don’t mix, and I would have thought that getting off “lucky” this time was a blessing. </p>

<p>I would have contacted every parent, and insisted that they personally pick each child (yep, you’re still a child) up. For my own kid, I guarantee they’d be writing about it 30 years later on a parent’s board!</p>

<p>You and your friends are fools, and your father has set a terrible example. Shame on him. Should any of the other parents find out he let their child “finish beer” and sent them on their way after smoking pot and drinking beer, he could be in some serious trouble. </p>

<p>What’s “lucky” is that I don’t know who these parents are to tell them what happened!!!</p>

22

<p>p3T, I’m with you 100%</p>

<p>The consequences are way too big to mess around with. I’ve known 3 children who have lost college scholarships offered during the senior year and retracted after drinking violations. Two of kids ended up at our local state school, not participating in their sports, and the third has never been able to afford college without the scholarship. To minimize the legal and long term consequences of this activity is naive and, in my view, poor parenting.</p>

23

<p>I agree with mythmom; the “cool” dad doesn’t sound cool to me at all. If that’s all he did (or rather, didn’t do), he really did you kids a disservice.</p>

<p>It was very poor parenting!!!</p>

24

<p>I’m collecting compliments, and yet I’m very troubled by my own response for this reason. I said I’d send everyone away, and wouldn’t have anything to do with any of you, in part as a wake-up call so you’d realize you don’t have the right to impose this on my household and life.
Reading everyone else’s responses, I see two flaws in my thinkiing. ONe is, I would have to deal more seriously with my own kid than just triple his chores and make him the bearer or bad news to his friends.
But my response–sending all away and not dealing with y’all–means I’d be sending half-drunk or fully stoned kids onto the street system. Suppose you hurt yourselves along the way? (I am not caring, but I should if they were my kid’s real friends). More haunted by this image: my own D is driving home into our neighborhood and your car hits and kills her that evening. And I sent you out there…because you forced my hand!</p>

<p>Since we’ve moved in and out of many towns as they kids grew up (just b/c of husband’s occupation), I tend not to know any of the other parents, although I do get to know and like my kids’ friends. There just isn’t time to cultivate those relationships. So I probably should at least call the parents, yet my impulse is to cut myself off from you and deal with my own. I’m not so sure that’s a great moral position; it’s just very self-defensive of my family and my son.</p>

<p>So you see, when a group of kids has these hilarious evenings, they put other hardworking and decent families into impossible situations where there ARE no good choices and nobody’s really safe. </p>

<p>I’m hopeful that your impulse to find out what other parents would do is giving you a lot to think about. I’mn actually admiring that you wrote out; that’s a good choice. Now you have a safe way to hear what “could” happen. I’ll pray that you take this as your wake-up call and stop acting like this. </p>

<p>If you’re good enough to write out to PArents at CC because it troubles you
“in theory” I feel like you’re a good enough person to change your social patterns now before you get a real consequence “in fact.” </p>

<p>It was very serious what you did that night, so this is a safe safe way to figure out a new approach to how you make choices. Stay safer and keep us all safer. Won’t you please?</p>

25

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<p>I think mythmom’s post #19 offers the most balanced perspective, without any self-righteousness.</p>

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<p>To all the parents who responded: Would your response have been any different if it had been beer only? (still illegal since they’re underage)</p>

27

<p>?? asked: Would your response have been any different if it had been beer only? (still illegal since they’re underage).</p>

<p>Nope. No difference.</p>

<p>Still in amazement that the OP’s parent allowed them to finish their beers and THEN sent them on their way. Seriously irresponsible for a parent, in my humble opinion.</p>

28

<p>Calmom: Re the “very naive” comment.</p>

<p>Geez, give me a little credit for living life in the wide world (from NYC to Nairobi to D.C. to Moscow to L.A.) lo these 50 years. Pot and booze in boarding schools? No, you don’t say! </p>

<p>My underlying message, and it’s one I’ve told both sons, is that if they started hanging with kids who make bad choices and end up doing drugs or smoking pot, then they aren’t going to go to school where they could be anywhere near that crowd. They’d be plucked up and removed to wherever H and I deemed it would be better. Boarding school, military school, private school — some sort of uprooting would happen to make a clean break. I always used the term boarding school with them, though, since it sounded nice and distant and slightly forboding. So far I haven’t had to make good on that threat. Still watching the 16 year old like a hawk, though.</p>

29

<p>Back in my day, the threat to my brother was military school, though it (the threat) was more to toughen him up than to correct his behavior. I wonder how many lads interested in drama and music in the fifties and sixties were sent away for such toughening. Commentary on sports recruiting sites laud various prep schools for making eligible the academically weak, and it sounds like they run a tight ship in those programs. Generally it seems like a bad idea to let teens raise each other.</p>

30

<p>First I would have confiscated all substances. Then I would have determined if the driver could drive safely, if not I would have taken them home and kept the keys. I would have decided whether or not to call the parents based on their attitutdes. As far as my child was concerned, I always told them, follow my rules and your life will be easy with lots of freedom. Break the rules and your life is mine! My oldest tested this very early on. I came down fast and hard neither one ever tested me again. I’m not saying my kids are perfect and we never had tough moments, but it worked for me.</p>

31

<p>I’m currently reading all the responses but to clarify…</p>

<p>There was not a drop of alcohol brought into the car. Only marijuana, which I know still isn’t good but I just had to clear that up. And he didn’t make us leave right after. We also got a full nights sleep and left at like 2 pm to clear any of that up.</p>

32

<p>From my experience, if you think your kid doesnt drink or smoke, you’re probably wrong. Unfortunately, almost all kids do.</p>

33

<p>Thanks for the clarification. I’m glad to hear he didn’t let you drive until you’d gotten it out of your system.</p>

<p>I do hope you are aware that pot affects driving as well. Not as severely as alcohol, but it most definitely does affect driving. Back in the 70s, we prided ourselves on not driving drunk, but we always drove high because we (mistakenly) thought it didn’t affect driving. We were SO wrong! Thinking back, I wonder how I could’ve been so stupid. I very clearly remember the feeling of being spaced out and S-L-O-W. Hello, loss of clarity and s-l-o-w-e-r reflexes!</p>

<p>Under NO circumstances should you ever drive while drunk OR high, even a little high, or get in a car with someone who is.</p>

34

<p>Plenty of people drive high no problem. Not saying you should, but there’s a helluva difference between driving high and drunk…</p>

35

<p>Oh, yeah, “a helluva difference.,and plenty of people drive high no problem.”</p>

<p>Tell that to the guy in my previous rural community who left his mom’s house after smoking weed (left it on her coffeetable), drove a mile into town, misjudged the grassy bank so he drove up onto another guy’s front lawn.
DOesn’t that sound like a stoned move? ROTFLMAO…</p>

<p>UNFORTUNATELY, at that moment, a different guy was watching his own little kid sledding on the front lawn and saw the car roll right over him. The town went crazy with sorrow and rage. The only question was what to charge the driver with…homicide, vehicular manslaughter. He went right to jail meanwhile.</p>

<p>As I moved away from that town, they were working the charges out so I can’t tell you the outcome. But it’s no urban legend so don’t go looking up snopes on this one.
It happened around the corner from my house.</p>

<p>Go LOOK THAT DAD in the eye and tell him “no problem.” There was a lineup of experts ready to testify about the delayed reaction time of being stoned from maybe a joint or two within the number of minutes it took him to reach that location.</p>

<p>There was a little cross on the front lawn until the family moved away. Yeah, so… no problem. Live in your little world, Boston, and in fact the odds are you won’t do or directly experience anything like this, but realize that others have. </p>

<p>PS, I was at Woodstock, so it’s not like I didn’t like pot.</p>

36

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<p>I agree that driving drunk is FAR worse than driving stoned. Drunk drivers tend to speed, weave into other lanes, run red lights, drive on the wrong side of the road, etc.</p>

<p>I have always argued the case that if pot were legal instead of alcohol, there would be far fewer deaths from car accidents, barroom brawls, crimes of passion, etc. since alcohol tends to bring out the worst in people. Pot is peaceful and benign IN COMPARISON.</p>

<p>However, that doesn’t mean that pot doesn’t affect driving. I’ve probably driven stoned (25-30 years ago) more times than you’ve BEEN stoned, so it’s not like I don’t know what I’m talking about. Though not AS seriously impaired as being drunk, being stoned still does affect your reflexes and judgment.</p>

<p>Driving is serious business. If you want to get high, that’s your business. But you’ve got no right to endanger others, and that’s what happens when your driving is impaired even a little.</p>

<p>Driving is serious business. Driving while stoned is not in the same category as driving drunk, imo. It’s more in the same category as talking on your cell phone while driving (something else people often do ‘with no problem’ but clearly does decrease their attentiveness and response time).</p>

<p>How many of us here drive while talking on our cell phones? We are just as guilty as the guy in the story, post #35. What a horribly tragic story. Unfortunately, there are stories like that about people who caused accidents because they were distracted by their cell phones.</p>

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<p>You are probably correct about this. Most parents don’t like to think that their kids are among those that do, but since a high percentage of the kids do, well then their kids quite likely ARE among those that do.</p>

37

<p>From my experience at college so far, it’s around 90%. Losers.</p>

38

<p>p3t: I didn’t see you at Woodstock, or maybe I did.</p>

<p>One thing I would like to add to my post is keeping the kid with car at my house until the booze was out of his system.</p>

<p>Thanks lealdragon and other supporter whose name I can’t go back and look at right now.</p>

<p>Not all kids are involved with substances in HS. I know this because of confidences from my college kids.</p>

39

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<p>Since we all know that 90% of college students do NOT flunk out of college, your ‘Losers’ comment is rather subjective and probably debatable.</p>

<p>I could probably think of other, less complementary terms for those who endanger others on the road. No excuse for that.</p>

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<p>Undoubtedly the strict disciplinary measures as described on this thread are effective at keeping the kids in line during high school, to some degree anyway. But obviously many, if not the vast majority, of kids end up doing stuff in college.</p>

40

<p>Rutgers 27,
I would have let them in the house, flushed the goods, and told them to call their parents or face the cops. My own child would have spent the next several weekends raking leaves, pulling weeds, scrubbing toilets etc. and then he/she would have spent some time with visiting a local drug awareness program. This is a very serious crime in our house and we would NEVER have “laughed about it.” When are people going to figure out that kids need their parents to PARENT.</p>