Shadow Enabler
By gnosal
It is just a regular Friday for the seniors at [a county] High School, but for one very special Senior it is her Birthday! The party was planned weeks in advance: her boyfriend, a well known varsity athlete was staying home for weekend, while his parents left town to attend a family reunion. The parents didn’t think twice about trusting there son to watch the dog and the house while they were away. As of matter of fact, his girlfriend’s mother even volunteered to stop by and check in. What she forgot to mention to the parents is that she had also planned to purchase and deliver 2 kegs of beer to the unsupervised house for her daughters 18th birthday gathering.
The theme for the event was called “dress to impress” and the birthday girl was to invite only 30 of her closet friends. The kegs were tapped, the cars of the guests were effectively hidden, and the neighbors couldn’t hear a peep. The night was a complete success!
By Monday morning, facebook and myspace were flooded with pictures of the young girl in her birthday dress doing “Keg stands” in the middle of her boyfriend’s parent’s living room. It didn’t take long till these pictures ended up in the hands of the boyfriend’s parents and they were outraged.
Underage drinking is not just a youth problem. It is also very much an adult problem. Adults continue to allow those under the legal drinking age to drink—illegally—by selling alcohol to those under 21, providing or purchasing alcohol, looking the other way when teens openly talk about their drinking exploits and refusing to hold other adults and youth accountable for breaking the law.
This type of behavior happens every weekend in our community. We need to hold our neighbors accountable and put an end to this underage drinking tolerance.
This story is 100% true and has opened my eyes as a recent college to the state of mind of high schoolers and there parents. At what point of desperation do you buy your 18 year old child, 2 kegs of beer and help throw a party in a house with no parents. The liabilities that could fall on the owner of the house, whether or not they are present at the event were clearly not a concern for this enabling parent. The most disturbing and shocking concern is the impact the parent is making on her child and her children’s friends.
Preventing teens from drinking before they are 21 may be the most difficult issue for parents. Teen drinking is often thought of as a rite of passage, glamorized on television shows and romanticized in teen movies. Drinking is a legal activity for adults and is very common among the parents of our community. It runs deep in our culture and for these reasons; it often leaves many parents to turn a blind eye. This needs to stop!
We need to WAKE UP! WE ARE THE CAUSE AND CAN BE THE PREVENTION OF THE ALCOHOL RELATED ACCIDENTS THAT HAPPEN IN OUR COMMUNITY EVERY SCHOOL YEAR
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