Spring Break -- Just Say No.

It's not even Halloween, yet private school kids all over the city are making elaborate plans for that bacchanal festival, often turned fiasco, called Spring Break. For many it has become as much a right of passage as the prom, with the major difference being it involves leaving the country to unregulated destinations such as the Caribbean and Mexico for seven chaperone-free days where the chief activities are drinking, sunning and sex.

We've all seen the photos from Sarasota Beach, Palm Springs and Ft. Lauderdale of bikini-clad girls, blindly drunk, wrapped around guys partaking in beer drinking contests, and thousands of half naked kids dancing on the beach and passing around bottles or joints. And if you ever log onto your kid's Facebook page you've seen far worse.

That those kids are in college does not excuse this kind of indulgence, and many colleges are creating alternative Spring Break options. However, the kids I'm talking about are still in high school. They may be on their way to college but when they board those flights, passport and parent's Amex in hand, they are often still seventeen-years-old. The stats are online: the average male consumes eighteen drinks a day during Spring Break holidays, the average female ten. In Florida the arrests for underage drinking and public misconduct due to alcohol abuse are up sixty percent during Spring Break. And that's Florida, where there are laws in place and people who like to impose them.

Most kids do come back in one piece. But there are many who end up at the hospital in alcohol-induced comas, a few every year who drunkenly stumble off the balcony or out a window, and then there is the poster child for spring trips gone amok: Natalie Holloway. However, neither this nor our current financial crisis seems to influence the hundreds of parents who are at the moment making down payments on room, board and unlimited alcoholic beverages so their children can celebrate their last year in high school. I've spent the last two years making a documentary on upper middle class children and their problems, which range from eating disorders, hovering at an all time high, to drug and alcohol abuse (ditto), depression, and addiction to prescription drugs. Amidst all of this one of the biggest problems they face is that they are being raised by a generation of parents who for some reason are not able to channel Nancy Reagan and "just say no."

There is no question "Just Say No" doesn't always work. In terms of sex you are usually talking to a brick wall. Case in point: Sarah Palin's daughter. But, in terms of Spring Break they can't go without their passports and their parents' money.

So what keeps parents from doing what they know is right?

The most common response is "every one is doing it." Didn't Jim Jones say that when he was passing out the Kool-Aid? "They will feel left out." Left out of what? Comparing black out stories, who got the worst STD, who knew more people who had to be rushed to the hospital; or whose roommate threw up the most times in one night?

And then there is, "They've worked so hard in high school they deserve a break." If they worked hard they do deserve a break, but does eighteen mai-tais a day for seven days sound like the kind of break a seventeen year-old-really needs?

To make the whole thing worse, once they're home and sober they post photos of themselves in their most hideous states on Facebook and MySpace for their friends; now also a popular place for college admissions officers to check up on applicants.

My own daughter started rattling my cage about Spring Break last year. I said unequivocally, No, no way, no how. Since the down payments are due now, she recently reopened her case. The pleas, the cries, the promises of sobriety in the face of peer pressure, and then the final attempt: she just wanted to be with her friends one last time. I told her "one last time" had different implications, several of which made me uncomfortable: The answer remained, No. Then her Plan B - mean girl time, I was "ruining her life," "the cruelest mom in the world," the obligatory door slam, followed by two days of silence. This is the point where many parents give in. Madeline Levine, author of The Price of Privelige, says that parents cannot weather the storms of their child's frustration and rejection; thus the total inability for many of our generation to "just say no" and stick with it.

Numerous parents I spoke with about spring break want to say no. But I have found very few who, when mano a mano with their pleading teen, have the ability to say, "You're not going." A mother I know justified it with, "They're going to drink anyway, why not there?" Why not there? Because "there" is a foreign country, thousands of miles away from anyone who might be able to impose a little bit of moderation and if an emergency arose, God forbid, take care of it. Because without some form of parental or adult supervision average kids after five -- let's not even add on the thirteen extra thirteen -- have lost all common sense. Because without common sense and a blood alcohol level that would kill an elephant they could end up out a window, in a car with someone equally as drunk, or late at night on a beach with God knows who and it may very well be the "one last time" they see their friends.

Because as parents it is our job to keep them safe, impose rules and regulations and try to teach them values that they in turn will pass on to their children. And in twenty- five years when your grandchildren are asking them to go off on one of these ridiculous adventures, you don't want them saying -- my other favorite boomer parental excuse for not imposing restrictions -- "we did it, didn't we?"

Comments

[ResponsibleTraveler]

First I should say I have been traveling for Spring Break every year since I was 17. I've been to Bahamas, Cancun, Acapulco, and Jamaica. I along with my groups of friends always came back in one piece. Some of the best memories of my life have been during those trips with my friends and any real traveler understands that.

By not allowing your daughter to go on this trip with her friends you are either saying that she is too immature or that you don't trust her to make the right decisions. Either way if that is the case, keep her home. Traveling isn't for everyone. Teenagers need to be mature and responsible enough.

If you want to bring up the alcohol induced comas, those kids are probably the same kids that drink a case of beer every weekend at home. Maybe even the same kids who's parents allow them to drink in the basement.

But I can tell you from encountering tens of thousands of Spring Breakers you will find a lot more kids just enjoying themselves. Maybe you can think back to what it was like to be young or maybe you shouldnt have been trusted either.

[Bethab]

When I was a senior in High School and wanted to go to Cancun with my best friends...my parents and their parents came with us! We all stayed in beautiful suites so that the kids had their own room and each set of parents did as well. Most days we all hung out together on the beach (unspoiled by huge groups of teenagers because it was a much nicer place just OFF the main area) and had dinner together. Then, we went out at night with our parents blessing. Their only rules were that if we were not home by 1:00 in the morning we had to call and say we were still alive and that when we did get back to the hotel....we had to knock on their door and let them know we were back safe. They didn't care if we drank (although having to call and wake them up stopped us from getting hammered) but they knew where we were and that we were well. We also had a fabulous vacation together as we were all together all day long. It was both a perfect vacation and a perfect solution! (by the way...it was the mid-90's and times were a little better financially...I don't mean to suggest that all families can afford to do this now!)

[Schaz]

Good for you, Tracey, stick to it!

I can't begin to count the number of times my daughter--now 30--has thanked me profusely for being the cruelest mother in the world during her teen years.

[pgoody]

YOU GO GIRL!!!