Privacy vs safety: teen level

Nathan Jones wrote in message . ..
I would certainly agree to not tell the other parents. Safety should
always come first.

I would argue that it is also a matter of short-term safety versus
long term safety. In the short-term, silence indeed helps ensure that
the teens get home safely. In the long-term, you are depriving a
family from being able to develop strategies for dealing with their
teen's problem drinking.

I'm always astonished at the complexity of the love-hate relationship
between parents and teens. We were hosting a group of girls some
years ago, and in the morning while everyone was showering, I went out
running, returning in plenty of time to cook breakfast. "Oh, that's
so cool that you were exercising," one of the girls said. "I want to
be like you when I grow up, not like my mother."

The other girls burst out with protests, because apparently her mom is
really "cool." And I've met her mom, and I concur. But to one's own
offspring, it may be impossible to be cool.

Imagine a family were the parents are uncaring tyrants who don't
appreciate their teenager's individuality, who interfere in their
young person's choices, assign chores that are tantamount to slave
labor and who would punish the teen severely if they ever learned
about substance abuse.

Then imagine a family where caring parents try to connect with their
kid, when each attempt at contact is met by cold silence and rolling
eyes, where the teenager routinely hastens from the front door of the
home to the closed door of the bedroom, talking to friends on the
phone for hours but offering only grudging monosyllables in reply to
the parents' concerned queries.

Now imagine that these two families are really the same one, only seen
from two different perspectives.

That is the reality in many homes, and part of the problem in deciding
what to do in cases like this. When a young person tells you that
their parents would "kill them" if they knew, one has no way of
telling if they really would kill them, of if the youth is
horribilizing.

Colleen Kay Porter