In the third episode of High School Confidential we met Jessi. Jessi was “terribly, terribly shy” when she was a child so her mom put her in acting and she loved it. Her parents were engaged, but split up before Jessi was born. She never met her father.

When asked what she expected from her first year in high school, Jessi said she expected it to be terrifying. She also said she thinks there will be a lot of teen pregnancies and teen drug addicts. She was worried because she never felt like she fit in.

Her freshman year did not go well. She had some problems with friends and gossip. By the end of the year here grades were “not good.” She said, “people are mean and cliquey.”

After a trip to the doctor she was diagnosed with ADD. She was happy to finally have a reason for why she couldn’t concentrate and why her grades were so bad. She made a decision to work harder and stick with her medicine in hopes that the next year would be better.

For her sophomore year she transferred to “The Academy” which is an alternative. She was excited about this change because it was a smaller school where the teachers could focus on her. Plus the kids at The Academy were a lot more like her. There she was with other kids who also didn’t seem to fit in to the public school.

That year she met her first serious boyfriend, Aaron. They met at a punk concert. Aaron had wild pink hair that he often wore in big spikes. But after a while there was a chance that Jessi was pregnant and Aaron couldn’t handle it. He split and had a new girlfriend three days later…before he even knew whether or not Jessi really was pregnant. Luckily she wasn’t.

Jessi was devastated when Aaron left. She thought he was perfect. She thought he was the love of her life. She took the breakup very hard and went in to a deep depression. She was having suicidal thoughts so her mom took her to the hospital. She spent the night in the hospital and another seven days in a treatment center.

In her junior year Jessi started hanging out at a friends house where there was no supervision. There was a lot of drinking, drugs and sex going on in that house. Within months Jessi was pregnant. Ever since her pregnancy scare the previous year she was on the Pill, but she was also on antibiotics and her medication for depression which weakened the effectiveness of the Pill. Then, just as she was getting used to the idea of being a teen mom, she miscarried.

In her senior year Jessi decided to get more serious. She tried to stay away from alcohol and got a job as a sandwich artist at Subway. She also stuck to her medications. Her mother had divorced Jessi’s stepdad and met a new man online. She was planning to marry him and was moving to Georgia so she got Jessi an apartment as a graduation gift so Jessi could finish out her year in Kansas with her friends.

Jessi found out the AMDA (American Music Dramatic Academy), a performing arts college in Los Angeles, was holding auditions in town and she wanted to try out. She figured she wouldn’t fit in at a traditional university and she wanted to pursue her goal of being a performer. She went to the audition and won a spot in the college along with a scholarship.

Even with all her problems the first few years of high school, Jessi graduated from The Academy early and on the principal’s honor role. She gave a speech at graduation and said, “Don’t try to fit in. We were all born to stand out. Be yourself. If other’s don’t accept you for it, they’re the ones who are missing out.”

While explaining her four years of high school Jessi described it as, “going through turbulent times to try to find myself and try to find out who I am. And discover what I need to be happy.”

Jessi is now living in Los Angeles pursuing her acting dream.

Yesterday I talked about a mom who I believe did not handle the news of her daughter’s pregnancy very well. Cheryl even admitted she could have handled it better when she found out her fifteen-year-old daughter, Justine was pregnant. I don’t know the whole story. We only saw glimpses of their life and the whole nine month’s of pregnancy was condensed in to about about ten minutes, but it seemed like Cheryl was only thinking about how the pregnancy affected her rather than how it was affecting her teenage daughter. It also seemed that Cheryl made the decision to give up the child for adoption rather than letting Justine make that decision. Cheryl said, “We were going to have to give this baby away and it made me….It was hurtful that she put me in that position to have to make a decision like that and to do that.”

That got me thinking. What would you do if your teenage daughter was pregnant?

Cheryl made the comment that Justine was too young to make a decision like this. Not “a decision like this on her own, but just a decision period. I agree at 15, teens’ brains are still developing and they can’t fully understand the consequences of their actions. If they could then she wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. But I disagree that you should take the decision out of their hands. They made a grown up decision to have sex. They need to make a grown up decision about what to do now.

I think a teen needs to be informed. There needs to be A LOT of conversations about the pros and cons of each option; abortion, adoption and keeping the baby. She needs to talk to her doctor. She needs to meet other teen moms who are supporting their babies. I also think she should talk to an adoption agency and maybe even meet a few prospective parents. It doesn’t mean she has to choose adoption, but meeting loving, caring people who are desperate to be parents could be a good persuader.

When Justine first talked about giving up her baby you could tell it wasn’t her decision. The look on her face and the tone in her voice told you she was devastated by this option. But after going to the adoption agency and meeting the family that would be raising her baby, she became more comfortable with it. By the time the baby was born she seemed to be at peace and even happy about that decision. So, in the end, it worked out for Justine, thankfully.

We need to remember that our teenagers aren’t little kids anymore. They need to face their consequences. They need to be held accountable for their actions. They need to learn to make the hard decisions. Parents absolutely need to guide their daughter (or son) through this difficult time, but don’t make the decision for them. It’s not something they did to you…at least not on purpose. No matter what their choice, this is something they will have to live with for the rest of their life. This is a decision they need to make.

In episode 2 of High School Confidential, we met Courtney and her family. Courtney was a good girl who relied on her faith to help her make the right decisions. She was a cheerleader and a soccer player with hopes to play soccer in college.

As they interviewed Courtney before she entered high school they asked her what she expected and about peer pressure. Courtney said she was not planning on drinking or having sex or any of those things. Just the other day I asked my son if he was ready for high school and if he thought there would be a lot of pressure to do these things. He said, “Yep, I’m ready. I don’t think there will be that much pressure.” Kids are so naive at this age.

To start the show off, Courtney and her parents had a conversation very similar to a conversation I had with my teenage boys not to long ago. Her parents asked her if oral sex was considered sex. Courtney said, “If they have a boyfriend and they’ve been going out for a while and they both really like each other, I don’t really see anything wrong with it.” When questioned about “what’s a while?” Courtney said, “Like, well at least like a month or something. I don’t know.” A month?!? That made me shiver a little. Ok, a lot.

By 10th grade Courtney was starting to feel the pressure to drink and she began to give in to the peer pressure and experiment with drinking. She said, “I want to have fun…It’s like the whole feeling of being in high school, I guess, that makes you feel like you’re grown up enough to make decisions like that. I don’t know. I guess you just feel like being older.” She went on to say she was “sick of being the good girl” and she “was bored.”

One night, before heading in to the school for a basketball, Courtney and a couple of her fellow cheerleaders drank shots of vodka in the car. A teacher caught them and they were suspended from school for three days. Those were the first three days of soccer tryouts which ruined her chance to make the varsity team that year. That’s when she realized she needed to make better decisions because there were consequences for poor decisions.

Then Courtney found our her fifteen-year-old sister, Justine, was pregnant. Their mom was not at all happy about it and, in my opinion, did not handle it very well. So Courtney stepped up to help Justine through her pregnancy, through the birth and during the adoption as Justine gave her baby to a loving family.

By the end of her four years in high school Courtney has some very good advice for girls (and boys) about to start high school. She said, “You don’t have to follow the crowd to be liked. You don’t have to follow the crowd to be successful. Actually I found that being your own person is probably the most important thing you can do in high school.”

I really enjoyed this episode. Although she wasn’t perfect (who is), she really was a good kid just trying to navigate her way through this weird place called high school.

Have you been watching the show High School Confidential? It is the brain child of Sharon Liese, a single mom of a twelve-year-old daughter. The show documents the lives of 12 girls from the start of their freshman year in high school until their graduation and everything in between. All twelve girls attended Northwest High School in Overland Park, Kansas. The school has around 1,200 students. The show touches on unwanted pregnancy, sex, drinking, drugs, health crises and family issues. We see the girls through boyfriends, friendships, heartache and maturity.

I thought the show sounded interesting so I’ve been TiVoing it, but up until today I haven’t had time to watch it. Today I finally took some time to sit down and watch the first episode. The first episode follows Lauren G. and Cappie.

Lauren G. is a popular girl. She was captain of the drill team and homecoming princess. She loves to sing and dance and be on stage. She gets good grades. Her family and friends are very important to her. Her and her boyfriend both decided to wait until marriage before having sex.

When Lauren was a sophomore, her doctor scheduled an MRI because she was having some medical issues. The MRI found a benign tumor in her brain. Discovering the tumor was devastating to her and her family. Lauren said, “You think your invisible.” Many teens feel this way. They think it will never happen to them. Until it does.

Lauren eventually had surgery to remove the tumor and everything turned out great. She is now a sophomore at the University of Denver majoring in Psychology with a minor in Business and singing in an a cappella group.

Cappie is adventurous party girl who wants to be a photographer. Her parent’s separated before she was born and divorced when she was very young. By the time she started high school she rarely saw her dad and that was very painful. She said her Dad’s “not making us a priority and everybody wants to be a priority.”

Cappie started high school thinking there wasn’t much pressure to drink or do drugs, but that quickly changed. She quickly became a big part of the party scene. She was rarely home on weekends. Her and her friends (mostly boys) hung out in basements getting drunk and playing drinking games. Sometimes they would go outside and smoke pot in the backyard. By her sophomore year she was studying less and partying more. Her grades were really starting to suffer.

By the time she was a junior she “chilled on the partying.” After a while she decided to distance herself from her partying boyfriend. She ended up dating his best friend who was also her best friend’s boyfriend. She felt bad about that, but she was really happy with him.

Today she is majoring in teaching at the University of Kansas and she’s focusing more on studying then partying. And she is still with that boyfriend. They’ve been together for more than two year.

I found this show interesting because I could really relate to a lot of these girls. Some of their experiences reminded me of my high school experiences. It can be tough to navigate through those high school years. At that age you think you’re all grown up, but yet you still don’t always make the best decisions. It’s really a time of experimenting and finding your independence and true self. This show has potential to show how teen girls mature during those four short years of high school. I can’t wait to watch the next episode.