Off The Cuff

Spring Break: Let’s Party! Or Not

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me?, Family stuff on Apr 07 2008

Welcome back!

Thousands upon thousands of college age teens and young adults stream to the spring break hangouts….like Cancun, Vegas, New York, Daytona Beach, Lake Tahoe and Hilton Head plus a raft of others. And what is the one thing almost all of these college students doing? DRINKING, DRUGS and SEX. The problem here is that the young people are left to their own devices. Boy, are they ever!

Now, you might think that your child, the one you raised lovingly and trust implicitly, will not be part of that ordeal. Yeah, think again. If they went, they are getting involved, one way or another, no matter what you may think. Know how I know this? Because if they did not want to participate, they would not have gone in the first place. Every college student knows what goes on in these places on spring break.

This is the time of their lives when the last thing they need is to get into trouble with sex, drugs or booze. But all of that happens regardless of what you may think. For an enlightening look at teens and young college students during spring break, go to Momlogic.com and take a good look around. One of the most popular posts has to do with spring break.

Now, some of the “experts” believe that a teen’s brain is not developed enough to make good judgment calls. They say that the young person cannot make these decisions until they are in their twenties. Uh huh. If that is absolutely true, then why is it that most teens do NOT go to those places on spring break?? I believe that most students do not want to do the things that the ones we see on videos are doing. IF it is true, then almost all students would be doing this, right? That seems logical to me.

The truth is that a lot of college students can make good decisions. I did not say all. Actually, I think that sometimes it’s because they were not raised a certain way. Sometimes it is simply that they get loose from Mom and Dad and want to party hardy while they are away from the eagle eyes. Did you do that? I know I did.

I did foolish things when I was that age. Most teens and young adults do stupid and foolish things. Does that mean that they did not have the power to decide better? I actually think that there are teens that will not make good decisions, period. Some will, however, and it is not about the development of the brain, IMHO. Much of this is in how they were raised, their environment. The real problem I see is that we seem to be able to let the teen go off to college by themselves and expect them to make good decisions. Then, when they make the decision to party in some spring break place, it’s a stupid decision and they didn’t have the mature brain to do it.

COME ON HERE!!! You cannot have it both ways. Either you trust your teen to go to school and do the right thing because you raised them that way or you don’t. If you don’t, then for the sake of the teen, do not send them off to school in the first place. Allow them to mature before they get into the world. Does that sound nuts to you? Possibly.

Colleges are mostly geared to the teen student coming from home for the first time. It’s a brand new world and it’s totally overwhelming to a vast majority of the students going into college for the first time away from home. Some colleges do help with that but most seem to think that once the kid gets to college, “You’re on your own, Jack!” and they mean it. Oh, they talk about guidance counselors and residence people. But are they helping enough? Maybe and maybe not.

I do not have the answers to this question. I do know that if it were in my power, the college student would not be going off to spring break in some party city to get in trouble with sex, drugs or liquor or any combination. The whole spring break thing bothers me. Once upon a time, it was MAYBE innocent and fun. But not any longer. Fun is a relative term and it depends a great deal on whether the teen wants to get into those things that have consequences a few minutes, hours, days or months down the road.

Perhaps next spring break, you can check and see where your student is and what they are doing. Give them something better to do than follow the crowd.

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