What is it about a prom and graduation season that makes rational parents go bonkers?

As we move into the prom and graduation season, many parents and school officials worry about the safety of their children. An Internet search under the term “Safe Prom” turns up hundreds of websites that focus on encouraging students to make safe and healthy choices and schools conducting pre-prom events showing the dangers of drinking and driving. However, there were few websites encouraging or guiding parents to take a leadership role in creating a safe prom night.

For over a decade, I’ve worked as a drug education specialist in independent and public secondary schools educating principals, headmasters, parents, and students about the dangers of underage drinking and other drug use. When conversation turns to a horror story about prom night or graduation party disasters, in many cases, it is a parent who has either rented a hotel room with little or no supervision or purchased the alcohol the teens’ consumed.

A 2002 study revealed that 40% of teen traffic fatalities during the prom and graduation weekends were alcohol-related. Fatal car accidents, injuries, and assaults are not an adolescent rite of passage for any teen. Underage drinking is a major factor in the two leading causes of teenage deaths: car crashes and fatal injuries. Underage high-risk drinking is also linked to two-thirds of sexual assaults and date rapes of teens, and increases the likelihood of unsafe and unplanned sexual activity. According to the American College of Preventive Medicine, approximately 75% of adolescent morbidity and mortality is associated with behavioral health risks, of which a large portion can be attributed to alcohol and other drug use.

Under the new social host laws, many states are prosecuting parents who serve alcohol to minors. Ohio has a program called “Parents Who Host Lose the Most.” Here in my home state of Massachusetts, not a month goes by without a courtroom appearance by a parent for serving alcohol to a minor. Schools, law enforcement, and parent associations need to reach out to parents and educate them about the legal and financial risks of serving alcohol to minors, renting hotel rooms to minors under their name during the prom, and allowing minors to drink in their home.

Proms and graduations are celebrations full of hopeful expectation. Each is a meaningful milestone for students and should be celebrated with friends and family. Many students who normally choose not to drink or engage in sexual behavior are tempted and under enormous pressure to be “part of” the party. Parents need to set appropriate expectations and continue to reinforce household rules about alcohol use and curfews.

Recommendations for Parents:

Curfews — Teen car crashes and deaths increase exponentially late at night. If you decide to extend curfews, do not give large blocks of unaccounted for time. Know where your teen is, how long they will be there, when they will be leaving, who is there, and who is supervising the event.

Do not rent a hotel room — Is anyone really surprised when a tragedy happens after a parent rents a hotel room unsupervised? If a room is rented for teens, an appropriate adult (s) must be there to ensure safety and manage risk.

Be up when they come home — My mom told me that her anti-drug plan was coffee and lights. She was wide-awake, lights on, coffee in hand, when my siblings and I came through the door at night. A teen’s curfew should never exceed the parent’s ability to stay up. My dad’s favorite expression was nothing ever good happens after midnight. The older I get, the more true that statement feels to me.

Initiate a dialogue about your expectations — Although you may feel you’ve communicated your expectations for healthy choices and consequences for unwanted behaviors many times, the prom and graduation season is a great time to remind your teen. Talk to them about drinking and driving and getting in the car with drunk drivers. Consider role-playing a few scenarios. Research points to parents who discuss possible scenarios and seek their teens’ knowledge about what to do increase the chances of their teen’s safe decision-making.

Keep the party local — Don’t be tempted to allow your children to celebrate at a beach or other remote location. Allowing your teen to take off to a remote location with no supervision creates unnecessary risk.
The prom is a rite of passage that your teen should enjoy and remember for a lifetime. The following are talking points and should be part of your family’s prom preparation.
• Talk with your teen. How are they feeling about the prom? What is your teen most excited about? What is your teen most nervous about?
• Who is your teen’s date and/or group of friends with whom they will be attending the prom? Does your teen know them well? Do you? What are the conversations you need to have based on the age, values and beliefs of your teen and this group?
• Have you met/do you know the parents of your teen’s date and prom group?
If parents provide leadership and guidance, the only horror will be when your teen looks back years from now and says, “Oh my, what was I wearing!” and “Look at my hair!” Those are the types of memories we can live with.

Jeff Wolfsberg is an experienced speaker and consultant in alcohol and substance abuse prevention and intervention at the secondary school and college level. He has worked with adolescents, educators, parents and professionals in the U.S. and abroad, and shares his message of empowerment, education and inspiration via consulting, workshops and in the media. Visit his website at www.JeffWolfsberg.com

For the writers among you, this is an opportunity you should consider. Write for Charity is a not-for-profit that is dedicated to using the written word to improve the world. They are publishing an anthology of 101 contributed stories and poems about parenting, the proceeds of which will be donated to children’s hospitals and disease research. Don’t wait; the submissions are due April 15; details can be found on their website.

Are you watching NBC’s PARENTHOOD on Tuesday nights? You should. They are doing a really good job of bringing up important issues and sharing the points of view of both parents and teenagers. I consider it my duty to watch this show (not tough duty at all! :>) and I invite you to watch it and join the discussion about it afterwards here and on my Facebook page “Parenting Teenagers” (where I post discussion questions.) One thing I want to point out to you: This show presents a great opportunity to open up dialogue with your teenagers that can be really productive for you both.

Here are some parent-teen discussion ideas from last night’s show:

Here is an NBC video with parents discussing the privacy issue: good food for thought…

Parents of teens: Please take our survey: With the changes in communications and technology forever altering our landscape, parents of teenagers have new ways to stay in touch with family, new ways to gather information about parenting, and new technologies you need to  become comfortable using. We are conducting a survey to learn more about parents of teens, your needs and preferences; this will guide us in our work. Will you please take 10 minutes to complete this online survey? Your input is vitally important and will help parents all over the country. Your participation is completely confidential.

Click here to take survey

Please help disseminate the survey: If you serve on a community board, school PTO or other group and can share this opportunity with other parents of teenagers in a newsletter, listserv or on a website, we will be very grateful! And to say “thank you” to you we will share the resulting report with you if you want it.

To share this survey on a website, simply copy the link above. To send this out in a newsletter or email, copy this link to the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TeensTechnologyParenting

Either way, send us a copy of your promotion of the survey and let us know you want to see the report so we can send it to you when it is completed.

Don’t wait! We plan to close the survey on April 8.

Thank you!
Sue Blaney, President, ChangeWorks Publishing
Shelly D. Mahon, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Here is what one community is doing to promote Please Stop the Rollercoaster! parent discussion groups. Great job, Needham!

If your community is beginning to plan for fall and you are looking for programming to support parents with teenagers, consider offering Please Stop the Rollercoaster! parent discussion groups. What makes this program unique is that we don’t tell you how to parent. Rather, we guide parents by providing evidence-based information in a context that respects their beliefs and values. We ask parents questions that get them thinking and talking together with their peers. This process helps parents gain an important sense of empowerment and confidence, while they develop a supportive network within their communities.  More than anything, parents learn that what they are feeling and experiencing doesn’t have to isolate them, when they share it with their peers they realize they are all experiencing similar things…. and it helps to share the journey.

The program is modeled after a book group except here the group meets after reading each chapter. Everything for the discussion group is contained in the book Please Stop the Rollercoaster! How Parents of  Teenagers Can Smooth Out the Ride. The 8 chapters in the book cover the range of issues typical families are likely to face; the content is appropriate for parents with children in grades 6 – 11. There are two ways Rollercoaster! groups can work: they can be self-facilitated, just like a book group, or they can have a facilitator who guides the group by using one of our Leader’s Guides. We offer Leader’s Guides that are secular, and ones that are customized for use the Christian and Jewish faith communities.

Parents across the country have enhanced their relationships with their teenagers through Please Stop the Rollercoaster parent discussion groups. Learn more, download excerpts and watch our short video.

As more and more parents are allowing your teens on Facebook, and as many of you are trying to figure out now to make your own way through the social networking maze yourself, you’ll want to be aware of what is happening at Facebook. In several recent redesigns they have made some alterations to their default privacy settings which have some interesting implications. The day I saw the notice from Facebook about new settings I was, as is often the case, in a rush. So I took the easy way out and accepted their recommendations for their default privacy setting. However, upon further inspection, I feel this is not a good choice. Their default privacy settings allow people to see my information – people who are NOT in my personal network. Not what I want, and probably not a good choice for your teenager either.

The New York Times reprinted an excellent piece from ReadWriteWeb The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Out which will guide you through the privacy setting issue. It will take all of 10 minutes at the most. Walk through this how-to article and make sure your settings are what you want on your Facebook page; then sit down with your teenager to walk through it on her page as well.

Facebook, like many institutions, isn’t out for our best interest. They are out for theirs.

“Girl power” isn’t just a topic for youngsters. Adult women, too, sometimes discover that finding one’s voice takes intention, effort, and spending time in the company of other women in whom you can find your reflection. I’ve had the privilege in the past two weeks to have been in the company of several groups of women with whom I find such opportunity for personal exploration and growth. These deeply satisfying conversations help us bring out our best; they give us a safe place to reflect, and to give voice to our struggles and questions; they help us grow.

I was enchanted when I received my “song of the month” from singer/songwriter Anna Huckabee Tull last week. Anna’s approach is unique; she writes custom-crafted songs for which she is commissioned. Always meaningful and deep, she touches a special cord with all who know her work. Her song this month tells a beautiful story about girls, and is the new anthem for a a non-profit in the Boston area called LEAP, an organization dedicated to helping at-risk girls “unlock their voices.” One LEAP girl notes the value of her expression by saying “What you don’t express seems less and less real until you become unsure if it even exists.”

Read about the backstory, how this song came to be, and enjoy.

http://www.customcraftedsongs.com/leapstorybehindthesong

Jeff Wolfsberg is an expert in teens and drug education, prevention and intervention. What I really like about his approach is his realistic understanding about the complexities that parents and teens face… he doesn’t take things at face value, but gets to the heart of the matter. Maybe that’s because he’s a tough one to fool; you see, he’s been there. He was his high school class president, student council president…. and addicted to crack at 23. Jeff is an internationally known speaker in drug education and I offer you this clip as an introduction to him. Visit his website at JeffWolfsberg.com.