<p>Just glad that the blinders on meant you had a reason that you couldn’t see the forest through the trees.</p>
<p>Involved parent? I will give you involved parent. </p>
<p>We had a rule that our kid couldn’t get a ride from their friends in high school. H had a record of driving D1 to and from various activities 5 times in one day.</p>
<p>Whenever our kids went out at night, we did the drop off and pick up, and we stayed up until they came home. It meant we didn’t go out most weekends so we could be available.</p>
<p>When our kids slept over at friend’s house, they had to call us from the house land line so I could see they were where they were suppose to be. I also called from time to time just to make sure they were where they were suppose to be.</p>
<p>My kdis weren’t allow to have friends over unless one of us was home, and we did everything possible to make we were home whenever they wanted friends over.</p>
<p>D1 wanted to have a dinner party at our house for her 18th with wine. We got permission from all of her friends’ parents to serve wine. We cooked the food, served it and provided very good wine for her friends. They all slept over, so no one DUI.</p>
<p>I am sure there are parents here who do certain things that we do not do to make sure their kids are safe. But as most of us know, no matter what we try to do s**t could still hit the fan because it is their rite of passage to test our boundary and trying to go out on their own. What is important is for them to know that we would still be around to be on their side even when they messed up. So don’t come around here to corner the “best parent award,” because you have told your kids “it is not ok to break the law, so don’t drink.”</p>
<p>^so GA2012 you think you know my kids better than me?..can you try posting without being insulting?</p>
<p>imho it is better to give HS students the room to make some mistakes (for those who are prone to mistakes and/or lapses of judgement) while we can still pick them up and help sort it all out…</p>
<p>Okay, okay. geeps wins the best parent award. </p>
<p>Happy now?</p>
<p>oldfort…my simple point was that an involved parent would know what their kids were up to in high school…that’s it…and yes, it would be bad parenting if they didn’t. Obviously, many(not all) kids drink in high school, it’s a parents job to know.</p>
<p>GA2012…just can’t help yourself…can you?</p>
<p>^
I think the simple point is that even a GOOD PARENT might not know what their kid is doing. No, you are not smarter than the average bear.</p>
<p>^smarter than an average 17 year old though…lol</p>
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<p>Me too. We should ask that this thread be moved out of the parents forum into one college kids post in so we can find out…because a bunch of parents discussing what college kids do and don’t do is kind of funny :)</p>
<p>It would be nice to know if we were to do X, Y, Z then our kids would turn out perfect. No, most of us are not smarter than our 17 year old. They got our genes and they are younger.</p>
<p>“my simple point was that an involved parent would know what their kids were up to in high school…that’s it…and yes, it would be bad parenting if they didn’t. Obviously, many(not all) kids drink in high school, it’s a parents job to know.”</p>
<p>That is ridiculous and impossible. Do you have a GPS on your kid? Do you drug test them? Smell their breath every time they walk in the door? Do you call their friend’s parents to check up on them like they are a 4h grader? Are you at home when they walk in the door from school every day? Do you go with them and their friends when they go to the mall, to the movies, to the local pizza shop? Do you blood test them?</p>
<p>“smarter than an average 17 year old though…lol”</p>
<p>Doubtful.</p>
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<p>Stating an opinion as indisputable fact that “X” means someone is a bad parent isn’t very nice either.</p>
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<p>There are certainly people who are good role models and loving parents who are plugged in and doing a pretty good job who have had a kid who, in spite of all of that, went out and broke the rules, and through luck or really good planning, pulled it off without getting caught. Even you might be one; you might not, but you can’t ever really know for sure. I mean, you can’t know what you don’t know, can you? If they actually pulled it off, you would naturally continue to harbor the arrogant notion that you always knew what they were doing even though you were quite mistaken. Even good kids from time to time make bad decisions or rebel against parental values.</p>
<p>Additionally, any good parent can make a mistake-trusting too much, becoming distracted by a family tragedy, being ill, etc., and could miss something. A rare breakdown with the antennae does not a bad parent make. I’m fairly confident that I was pretty on top of what my kids were up to. But while my husband was going through hell with his cancer treatments, going back and forth between home and our apartment near MD Anderson, I couldn’t have known categorically what my kids were doing every single moment, even though I had put in place the best possible caregivers I could think of. So while I didn’t always know for sure what my kids were doing every minute while they were out of my sight, in no way was I a bad parent.</p>
<p>A few of my guiding principles in child rearing:</p>
<p>If you think your child is perfect you just haven’t caught him yet.</p>
<p>Raising children is like herding cats.</p>
<p>The tighter the tether, the sneakier the teen.</p>
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<p>So that’s what this is really about! I was beginning to wonder where all the heat was coming from. Happily, I at least have not been trying to claim any such award, just explaining the basis for what I thought was a setting a pretty low bar (ie, “it is not ok to break the law, so don’t drink.”). If expecting kids to obey laws is unreasonable now, I really am badly out of the loop.</p>
<p>emeraldkitty4, I’m sorry I didn’t acknowledge your post. I just didn’t know that you were expecting a response. I was looking for a deeper reason than “it makes them feel good” and I think gadad’s and nrdsb4 answers were closer to what I was seeking.</p>
<p>Calling one another “bad parents” is a pretty ridiculous game, given that we all live in glass houses. I’m assuming that most of us think that the current state of on-campus drinking is problematic even if we disagree about the reasons and solutions.</p>
<p>The defensiveness, personal attacks and name-calling are not helpful, IMO but carry on if it makes you happy.</p>
<p>Well said, eastcoast. </p>
<p>When I was in high school, back in the early 70’s, my parents gave me permission to smoke pot in the house because they were scared to death of the harsh drug laws (aka The Rockefeller laws) in New York, and my father is a lawyer! I pretty much stopped cold after that, smoked again once in college (in Boulder of all places!) and that was it.</p>
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<p>Really? Now YOU are above it all? You are looking for deeper meaning now?</p>
<p>joblue:
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<p>No judgement here.But of course when it comes to your own judgement call on what it is appropriate:
R rated for “Saw” was correct, but R rated for “The Matrix” may not be quite right, so it was worthy for you to make an exception to the rule.</p>
<p>I did not know the OP was looking for advice on how to parent…</p>
<p>I am sick of the bickering. I am just hoping my kids develop good judgment, respect laws and rules, stay healthy and safe. I am not trying to tell everyone that my way is the right way, and that your way is doomed to failure.
Kids make mistakes. So do parents. Even in the way they parent.
But there are a lot of theories here and anecdotes. So that is all we have to go on. Everyone’s experience is different.
(I have one at BS, after having the first go though a day HS, so I am familiar with both, and also both day and BS in family I grew up in.)</p>
<p>Look I grew up in a huge family, too, with lots of stuff happening in this area. So that is part of my experience which is biasing how I choose to parent and what I am trying to accomplish with my kids. And a a tight bubble with a helicoptering is not it.</p>