Gird

My teenagers find themselves in trouble occasionally.  I know it’s probably hard to believe, it certainly was for me when it first started happening.  Kids don’t get slapped on the wrist anymore, sent home to their parents to deal with their poor choices.  Opportunities to look the other way have diminished and consequences are much more serious than they were a generation ago.  But I’m finding in our increasingly toxic world, there is thankfully no shortage of people who want to help. 

The customary prescription for a juvenile brush with the law these days is some sort of educational program coupled with community service work.  Instructors with varying degrees of expertise, enthusiasm and experience offer presentations on the standard adolescent fare:  Drug use, drinking, anger management, respect, bullying, and peer pressure. While I’ve encountered many parents who grumble about the effort they themselves are forced to exert for these interventions, I’m finding a wealth of knowledge and ammunition to use in the battle I’m forging to preserve my boys’ futures.

I’m not particularly proud to admit it, but I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur of these courses.  Teenage boys are a tough crowd to engage.  I’ve watched many kids fiddle with their smart phones and doodle on the hand-outs, ambivalent to a droning monotone recitation and weak attempts to extract thoughtful responses to obvious questions.

Tonight’s curriculum was different, though.  Here’s what made it so:  The instructor, an older gentleman who evoked the image of a loving grandfather, started his presentation with a photo of his own grandchildren and told these kids he does this for them, for their futures.  We watched a video, clearly targeted to parents, but he paused the tape very early on to tell the teenagers that while this is material for the adults, he believes they’re old enough to hear the truth:  A very pointed move to engage, which worked, at least for my kids.

It was the first time that I, even as an adult, heard the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse clearly stated in terms of a cycle of addiction, a black hole of slow decent.  The message was so perfectly crafted; seducing the adolescent audience into attention by acknowledging that drug use starts as a reasonable effort to feel good, but then derails into a dependency just to feel normal. An observation that this is truly a medical problem and not the moral one we parents try to make it, the recognition that our brains are the last organ in the body to mature, at 21 years as the minimum.  

What broke my heart, though, was the statement that drugs alter every element of a developing brain.  Not just that piece that makes our babies feel good, but also the parts that make them think, decide and dream.  Yes, dream. 

Tears sprang up in my eyes at the mention that drugs could steal my boys’ dreams. Our dreams are stowed safely away inside of us, waiting patiently for us to grow into them. The thought that a predator lurks with the power to take that away from them is unfathomable to me.

There was a lot of discussion in the video about why we should fight for our kids in this arena.  Isn’t it just easier to place our heads in the sand, to look the other way, to say they’ll get through it because we did at their age?  Maybe so.  And believe me, every time I think it’s too hard, these thoughts cross my mind. But I walked away tonight so thankful that someone out there is willing to talk to kids (and parents) straight.  Even my oldest, who is staunch in his views, admitted it was the most fact-based presentation he’s seen to date.

As we drove home, I didn’t ask whether my boys believed everything they heard.  Instead I reminded them once again, that if they choose that path of destruction they will be waging a war with me that they can’t win, because I love them too much.  They’ve watched me discover and go after my own dreams. They are no foe for me when it comes to preserving whatever it is they have yet to dream.