Raising children isn’t as easy as it was for the past generations. There was a time when parents, religious affiliation and faith were the major influence.
Now, mass media play a major role in our children’s lives. Nowadays, while parents are busy working, sometimes with multiple jobs to provide for their family, our children are being influenced by advertising commercials and exposed to violence and sex, and are guided by television, video games, even Internet chat rooms. Peers have become their role models. There are so many opportunities to go astray, including succumbing to alcohol and drugs, and unsafe sex.
Parents burn candles on both ends to create a safe haven and try to keep their children level-headed. They feel proud and fortunate enough for raising decent kids. Still there are no guarantees what’s in store for everyone when the children leave home.
One of the most difficult things about parenting is knowing when and how to let the children go. But with the start of a new academic year, after advising them about do’s and don’ts and moral priorities, parents have no choice but to send their children to the local schools or away for higher education. Hug them tight before sending them away and pray and keep your fingers crossed in hopes that everything goes well.
As young children are sent out, parents have to worry about sexual predators and social-psychopaths and drugs like Ritalin, which is irresponsibly prescribed for millions of children. Today’s children are smart. They are zealous and overachievers. At our time, kids like these were called “brats,” but today they are labeled as “attention-deficit disorder” and prescribed Ritalin, though there’s only controversial evidence that ADS exists and Ritalin (a stimulant in the same family as cocaine) may have permanent therapeutic value. But it certainly raises negative side effects.
Parents, if your children are leaving home for campus life, advise them against drinking. If they are looking forward to joining a fraternity or sorority, alert them about hazing rituals. When it comes to life-or-death situations, make sure that they know staying alive, even without joining their peers, is a lot better than being dead.
It’s a sad but recurring campus story. In autumn of 2004, students drank themselves to death. Colorado State student Samantha Spady had consumed as many as 40 drinks when she was found dead at a fraternity house. In addition, Lynn Gordon Bailey was taken to the mountains near the University of Colorado with fellow Chi Psi Fraternity pledges and told not to leave until several bottles of whiskey were finished. Blake Hammontree at the University of Oklahoma had a blood-alcohol content more than five times the legal limit. At the University of Arkansas, Bradley Barrett Kemp had downed a dozen beers. All those deaths and many more were officially ruled alcohol poisoning. The vast majority of the estimated 1,400 alcohol-related deaths each year among college students come in automobile accidents; they go largely unnoticed.
Debbie Smith sent her son, 21 year-old Matt Carrington, away to college in August 2004. In the first week of February 2005, within six months, they called to inform her that he was dead. The most ridiculous thing is Matt Carrington’s death was caused by drinking water, not alcohol. Authorities said the fraternity members kept him up all night ordering him to do push-ups and slashing him with cold water and forcing him to drink gallons of water. His mother was told: It was the water that killed her son. Carrington wanted to be a member of Chi Tau. Michael Carrington, the father, divorced from Debbie Smith, didn’t know that Matt had collapsed, was vomiting and was already suffering from hypothermia, and his brain stem was swollen from water intoxication.
Fortunately, seems like, after all, there is a ray of hope as far as today’s teenagers are concerned. Time magazine recently polled 500 13-year-olds online to get a glimpse of their world. The results are surprisingly positive.
Unlike the 20th century rebellious teens, today’s 13-year-olds tend to get along with their parents, are less likely to drink or do drugs, and are highly focused, competitive and determined to succeed. Whether it’s sports, the arts, or academics, today’s young teens are in it to win it, says Claudia Wallis, an editor at Time. She adds, “They are seeking perfection. They want to look perfect, perform perfectly, maintain a perfect school record. And you know, be the well-rounded, ideal package.”
Today’s go-go teenagers are cheerleaders, no longer just one among the crowd. Athleticism, the endless practice, rising cost, academic requirements push the teens to the edge. They think the fact that they’re in a more conservative time than their parents reflects on them.ˇˇ
However, the deaths caused by hazing and drinking do not make any sense.
What a waste of precious life! And what a torturous pain parents have to endure! Burying one’s own child is the hardest thing any parent has to do. Hug them tight and advise before you say goodbye. Ask them not to test poison to see if it kills and hope that they learn from the experience of others.
After all it’s their time, their life and their choice. So let us keep our fingers crossed in hopes that our children make wise choices.
A period in every person’s life 16-27, called the critical decade, is capable of helping one to make make-or-break decisions. Let’s hope this trend exhibited by Time magazine poll helps to ease a little bit of parents’ worries for the future and our children learn from others’ experiences like these to keep themselves from harm’s way. May God bless them with long, prosperous, healthy lives.
Mandakini Hiremath is a Claflin instructor and coordinator of the university’s writing center.