<p>Interesting to read about the different perspectives on high school students’ spring break trips. It has never been a custom among people I know. I remember when Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba years ago, and I thought “How is it a high school girl is off carousing in Aruba with other kids?”</p>
<p>I’m not saying anything against people for whom it is normal, it’s just that it was not something that was ever on the radar screen for me as a teen or, now that I’m a adult with college aged kids, not something I ever heard of other parents I know allowing or disallowing. It’s just not something that is even an issue where I live.</p>
<p>Would I have allowed my kids to do that? No. Yes, they have gone off to college where they can behave like idiots and I won’t know. But at least they’re going to college. To just go off for the sake of carousing itself, as long as they needed my permission either because of being underage or because I was paying for it… no.</p>
<p>Our school takes kids on a senior trip every year, often to Disneyworld. It is well supervised, especially by faculty. It occurs over Spring vacation. Would I have let my kids go? Yes, because these circumstances can occur even when kids are home in their own homes. And in high school neither of my kids drank at all.</p>
<p>Did they go? No. Neither was very interested in Disneyworld again, and as for the beach, neither is a beach person and we have a beach in our community (though it is not warm here in April.)</p>
<p>I was pleased to save the money (college was coming up after all) and the worry, but had either of them really wanted to go I would have allowed it.</p>
<p>To my knowledge there has never been a serious incident at Spring break or the prom. We’re a small, tight community and parents and teachers really work together.</p>
<p>Now one is finished with college and the other almost, and neither have participated in any Spring break festivities. I think financial issues have played a part here too, and again, neither is a drinker.</p>
<p>I wonder if there is a geographic distinction as to whether these trips are more common in some places than in others? I went to high school in suburban St. Louis, and trips like going to Florida, Colorado, etc. were not uncommon at all. So I wasn’t surprised at the Aruba part of the Natalee Holloway story.</p>
<p>OTOH, it’s not as common at my kids’ hs where I am now (suburban Chicago). Having said that, it’s a different socioeconomic mix at my kids’ hs than where I went to hs and a lot of kids are saving mightily for college and it’s common for kids to go to the local CC and then transfer to the state flagship, whereas kids when I went to hs just went straight to state flagship.</p>