<p>jrpar, how will you control that 17/18 year old when he departs for college? Is he less likely to encounter disaster 6 months from now? You either trust your kids or not. You won’t know the half of what he’s doing in 6 months so why not let him spread his wings now with some directives?</p>
<p>Now if you don’t trust him and his friends that’s another story. However, he’s likely to choose a similar peer group in college.</p>
<p>Wjb, I’m with you.</p>
<p>I will not “control” my son in college, nor do I have a “controlling” relationship with him now. I think living on a college campus is a lot different than a party-fueled trip by teenagers to the Caribbean. You can’t compare the two. He’s more than ready for college, and I expect he will mature enormously in his first year, even first semester, at college. I would not object to a spring break trip freshman year in college.</p>
<p>I also like all of his friends. Hope he does find a similar peer group in college.</p>
<p>jpar, about colleeg being different than a party fueled trip anywhere, you’re kidding yourself! This is meant in a respectful parent to parent way.</p>
<p>Further, it is my humble observation that kids who were restricted in high school are the wildest when they are finally set free at college.</p>
<p>As I mentioned on another thread, we have arranged to rent a decent-sized townhouse at the ski slopes for spring break, and have encouraged our DS (college freshman) to bring his friends. The number planning to join us has been a bit of a moving target, and as my s. said to me, some of his friends who had originally planned to join us have been “summoned home” by their parents. (I thought there must have been something wrong with us as we’d originally expected our s. to go off to the beach with his friends and had originally given our OK.) At this point it looks like we have 2 coming for sure, and 2 others planning to come out for a day or 2 from Denver. I am excited for us (that we’ll have the whole family together for spring break) and for him (that we were able to extend this offer to his friends). Unfortunately, younger s. struck out on finding someone to join us-- hope he’ll do ok… He and older bro. are very close, but he’s never had to share older bro. with his college friends before–</p>
<p>I remember going for a ski trip with a bunch of friends over xmas break my freshman yr. of college- about 8 of us piled into 2 modestly priced motel rooms at Killington. We skiied on a bare-bones budget, but all had a blast. Still have fond memories <em>many</em> years later 
Hope my s. can have similar memories from this trip. As parents, we will be there to supervise. We will try to be unintrusive but will supply lots of food. </p>
<p>Momofwildchild-
S. was going to go the the beaches near Galveston, but had heard they still had some problem with that <em>nasty</em> flesh-eating bacteria in the water. Is that all gone??? (I HOPE!!)</p>
<p>As for the q. of letting HS senior go on vacation with friends-- we were struggling with that last year, when it appeared that the beach house they were planning to drive to owned by one of the kids’ parents was not going to have adult supervision. As fate would have it, we didn’t have to make a decision, as my mom became ill and passed away just before spring break, precipitating a family trip up to NY. I do not recommend this solution. :(</p>
<p>Not sure about the flesh-eating stuff in Galveston. I HOPE that is gone by now. Galveston beaches are fairly nasty at their best. Where D and her crowd are going is South Padre, which is an 8 hour drive from Houston. Texas is a BIG state! Padre has great beaches, but a pretty big party crowd. The Rice spring break is early, so it won’t be as wild or crowded.</p>
<p>fendergirl, you rock. I love that idea.</p>
<p>MOWC-
That’s reassuring… I think :)</p>
<p>Zagat, I am fully aware of what college life is about. Frankly I find your remarks about being “controlling” and “restricted” not even remotely respectful parent-to-parent remarks. Maybe I’m thin-skinned, but your remarks just bugged me for my entire commute home. Which is absurd, given that you are a stranger and this is just an online community. But, do you speak like that to other parents in your community? Are you a parent? I wonder. </p>
<p>My son is a good kid and I am so proud of the thoughtful young man he has turned out to be. Over the past year my husband and I have been thrilled to watch him mature into a responsible adult. We have given him lots of free rein, especially this year, and in large part he has handled it well and earned our trust. But my friends and I joke that now we know why kids go to college at age 18 - they are ready, and so are their parents!</p>
<p>That does not mean, however, that I need to endorse a hare-brained scheme like a trip of 20 kids to another country for spring break. I have problems with this idea on a number of different levels, and as a parent I am not comfortable OK-ing it. When the idea first came up, it was interesting that the first of the other parents who were against the idea were the ones who had Ok’d it for older siblings, and learned the hard way that it wasn’t the greatest of ideas. </p>
<p>As I said above, if he wants to go spring-break of his freshman year in college, that is OK with me.</p>
<p>Sorry if I offended. I love on line communities because I can say what I mean. You just can’t in every day life.</p>
<p>Anyway, my feeling is that I’d like to give my kids lots of rope while they’re still under my roof in case some life lessons need to be stepped up. Kind of like in the thread that talks about what a kid needs to learn before leaving home.</p>
<p>I would let my 17 year old go. I’d tell him what the rules were. He would have a fully charged cell phone on him at all times. I’d call him at random times. I think giving this rope debunks some of the mysteries and he will be less likely to be the great kid that shocks everyone by dying from alcohol poisoning at a frat freshman year.</p>
<p>Just one mother’s outlook.</p>
<p>Personally, i think on-line communities work best when people can speak with the same civility they’d use face to face. </p>
<p>Also, I’m not sure the typical frat-party, wild, uninhibited springbreak beach scene is the ideal place to learn that rresponsible drinking he’ll need to know later…</p>
<p>I’ve heard of spring break trips for HS seniors but that did not occur at our son’s HS. The only unsupervised trip many students took was an overnite away after senior prom. However, our regional paper did a feature story on HS spring break trips to Mexico a few years back and the stories reported were shocking!! It seems that the students attending private schools or living in wealthier districts were the ones doing this.</p>
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<p>Well said, Garland - that is indeed our desire (and requirement) here at CC.</p>
<p>I don’t think an unsupervised trip to another country is equivalent to sending a kid off to college. I love Mexico, but I certainly wouldn’t want to have an encounter with the local police. On the other hand, in most places alcohol will be served to anyone who can pay for it. Bad combination…</p>
<p>Colleges, on the other hand, offer a relatively safe environment for experimenting with freedom from parental supervision. Even though colleges are backing away from the in loco parentis concept, they still offer a fairly controlled environment. Campus police won’t shake down an inebriated freshman, while adult supervision is readily available for any serious or dangerous situations. By and large, campuses and dorms are kept free of predatory outsiders. Certainly, a newly liberated student could still get into trouble, but the odds of a major disaster are much lower, IMO.</p>
<p>We used to do college spring break at South Padre (it was cheap and we could drive). Sometimes there would be 20 or 30 people on the beach! I understand it’s a lot different now. </p>
<p>I would have said yes with my oldest, but he did a 3 day college preview thing and slept instead. He didn’t even ask. I’ll let you know about the youngest in a couple of years.</p>
<p>jrpar
I agree, I would never send my son with 19 other boys!!! Not even to the mall. (jk)That is too many ingredients in the disaster recipe.
I don’t mind having that many kids in my basement, and we do, all the time. Even so, there have been minor incidents.
On a trip, to another country, even with the most responsible and mature friends, 5 to 8 would be my limit of tolerance for safety, planning, sightseeing, shopping, and being able to look out for each other.</p>
<p>My oldest didn’t ask to go anywhere on spring break, and as she was a minor I was not inclined to allow her to go just anywhere
She had a volunteer job that she took very seriously and spring break was a major busy time.
However for junior year/high school she did go to Costa Rica with a group through Ecoteach & her school during spring break and a week or so after, and senior year if I remember right, she went backpacking through the Mazatals ( four corners area) as part of a senior year “growth” experience.
I wouldn’t allow something like a friend of mine is currently doing, which is to allow her senior daughter to fly to Florida to spend midwinter break with her army boyfriend. Not only is it too unstructured for me to feel comfortable with, this girl is already on the wild side, and from stories that my older daughter told me, who was a camp counselor at an overnight camp where this other girl attended, my gut feeling is justified.
It is one thing to do something with a group that is somewhat supervised, including in college, and it is totally something else to allow a group of minors to tour an area unsupervised, especially in a foriegn country.</p>
<p>Okay, here’s a personal perspective on these spring break trips…</p>
<p>I lived on South Padre Island for ten years, working in the Island Clinic. The closest hospital was over twenty minutes away so we saw everything. Thus my perpective of the wild spring break party scene was colored by starting IV fluids on dehydrated alcohol poisoned kids with second degree sunburns acquired from passing out in the sun. The third degree burns usually resulted from the really drunk ones that actually passed out on the hoods of their cars during the day or walked over the still burning embers from the bonfires from the night before which people had scattered sand over in feeble attempts to quench the fire. Also broken bones (collar bones and spines mostly) from the rented four wheelers flipping over in the dunes. Oh and the broken knuckles and black eyes we saw from those kids in whom alcohol and testosterone and rival universities caused confrontaional behavior and fighting. These mature college students turned back into little children when they were calling home to explain to their parents why they needed their medical insurance info. Trying to get the severely injured or sick ones off the island to the hospital in traffic that moved literally one hundred feet in thirty minutes due to an unsafe amount of cars crammed into the couple of miles that is South Padre Island was hard even for the ambulances. South Padre is a wild, wild place during spring break. A town of about 2,000 permanent residents was suddenly overloaded with 20,000 people. Imagine televisions and other condo and hotel furnishings being thrown from lofty heights. People diving from balconies into swimming pools (more broken bones). Oh and how 'bout the ones that drove thirty minutes over to cross the Mexican border, got drunk cuz it’s legal there and then get on the road with all the other drunken teenagers to drive the thirty minutes back to their hotel on the Island. Scary.</p>
<p>Now imagine all of the above in a foreign country where medical services are of a slightly different standard than the good ole USA. And that for property damage you are thrown in jail and assumed guilty until proven otherwise (unless a huge bribe is readily available) </p>
<p>I agree that parents are gonna have to give the kids some leeway in their senior year. Just be judicial about how much rope to give them and where they take that rope. Obviously, many kids will go down for spring break, and just have a pleasant time. Maybe they’ll be safer with a little heads up about what could happen if they get too wild. Be sure the cell phone’s always charged and the medical insurance info is readily available. Especially if they’re still 17 and thus require legal consent to be cared for. At least that was the rule back when I lived down there.</p>
<p>To be fair, there was really only one week a year that was really like what I described above on South Padre Island. The week that UT was down was always the craziest. The other weeks were much more manageable.</p>
<p>We are taking S skiing at spring break with some other friends of his and their parents. The topic came up tonight at a meeting about kids wanting to run off after graduation doing this and that on their own. Our group of friends are thinking about taking the kids on a cruise - that way they are stuck on a boat and can’t get away from us!!</p>
<p>It’s funny how “Spring Break” translates to kids being drunk on the beach in Mexico. That really wasn’t the sort of Spring Break I was referring to…and now what my son had in mind. Actually, his group is going to Disney World. </p>
<p>I didn’t hear any of the other parents on here, who were okaying the trips, mention Mexico or wild beach vacations. But, I suppose that might be a more popular Spring Break kind of trip. But, it wasn’t what I had in mind when I started this thread. I was thinking of more mature, level-headed trips…such as what some have described. Well, I guess Disney isn’t exactly mature…but it’s a far cry from what Islandmom describes about South Padre.</p>