Overprotective?

We took the kids to see a movie yesterday. (The Dark Knight…which we all loved, btw.) Before the movie there was thirty minutes of previews. And before those previews were some ads for local businesses and organizations. One of those ads was for the Linn County Partnership on Substance Abuse. According to this advertisement 40% of teens report getting alcohol from a friend’s parent.

I immediately thought about my teens’ friends and their parents. We’ve already had some run-ins with some parents I’m less than thrilled with. There was the parent who left my not-quite-fifteen-year-old home alone all night long while she went over to her ex-husband’s house for a booty call. And we also had the weirdo mom who called my son at 2am to tell him not to call her daughter after 9pm.

Some parents just don’t have the same house rules that we have in our home. Some parents don’t have the same morals that we try to instill in our kids. We worry about other teens pressuring our kids to do things we disagree with, but we also need to worry about some of their parents. It can be confusing to a teen when another adult is encouraging behaviors they know are wrong. Often that turns in to “your mom is so cool” and “my mom is such a prude.” When in reality the “cool” mom is reckless.

I tend to be the mom who calls to make sure a parent will be at the party. I like to meet the parents of my kid’s friends. I’ve even been known to look some parents up on the court website to see if they have any outstanding warrants or assault charges. Overprotective? Maybe. But now that I know 40% of teens are getting alcohol from somebody else’s parents I would rather be overprotective than uninformed.