My teammate's keeper?
The blog has been “all Anglican, all the time” lately, and I’d like to change the pace a bit.
I’ve been thinking a lot about teens and alcohol recently, in part because I have a son who will be entering high school in September. I’d previously thought of alcohol consumption as a personal matter, as long as you didn’t get behind the wheel of a car. But the issue presented itself to me in a new light in the context of youth sports.
Championships in a few of the scholastic leagues that I follow were influenced by the suspension of players who had shown up to school functions drunk. Because my son is a serious baseball player, it was easy for me to imagine him as the teammate of one of these players, and to imagine how he would feel having his season damaged by a star player’s drinking.
And that got me thinking about the whole array of alcohol-related concerns he will have to handle in the coming years. First, he has his own choices to make about consuming alcohol. Obviously I hope he chooses not to drink, or delays drinking until, well, until he is of legal age. But suppose he makes the right choice and some of his friends don’t?
Does he discuss it with them? If discussion doesn’t help, does he remain friends with them? If so, does he do anything about the fact that he thinks his friends need to stop drinking? A few words with an authority figure? How likely is he to take this step? What would be the consequences in his peer group?
Now suppose a teammate who is not a close friend is drinking? Suppose it is clear that if this person gets caught, they will be thrown off the team? And that without this player the team will suffer—that kids who may have scholarships on the line and kids who are playing their very last season of organized sports, will be deprived of something dear to them? What would a good teammate do in that situation?
For some reason, adding “team”—you could substitute the word “community”—to the equation made me take another look at the ways in which self-destructive behavior extend beyond the self. I feel myself being nudged toward becoming what a few days ago I would have thought of as a more meddlesome person. As an introvert, I am having a hard time figuring out how to respond to this.
Getting back, briefly, to the presenting issue, I don’t have problems talking about this sort of thing with my own children. It isn’t parenting tips I am after. But I’d be interested in hearing people’s thoughts on the individual’s duty to intervene in other’s lives, and how one acts on that without alienating, oh, everyone.
It is funny, Jim, that just this morning after our morning run, I was talking to my running buddy about this very issue. Great minds, right? My eldest is a little behind yours but not much.
I concluded that perhaps it is time for the school's athletics departments (both HS and College) to say that if you wish to be on our team, you must behave appropriately (which would include restrictions on drinking). The Duke situation could have been avoided if such a policy were in place. Is such a policy Draconian? Sure. But as Hilary said, it takes a village.
All of the above may simply be the ramblings of a nervous, anxious parent.
Posted by Widening Gyre | May 26, 2006 9:32 AM
It requires some judgment on the part of a very young person. However, if my teen did tell the other kid to stop doing whatever it was, or even reported it, I think the experience, even if a very hard one, would be a good lesson for everybody. A young relative, down south, had something like that happen. She was one of the drinkers, and admitted it. The results were staggering - zero tolerance (this was public school - in private schools up here there seems more proportionality in discipline), the amazing attitude of some of the other parents, and social ostracization for a while, some by other kids who drank but did not get caught. It was hard. But in hindsight, she and her parents would tell you that what she learned - not just about considering consequences, but about human character, about what people are like when they are under pressure, about who you can count on, what a friend is and all the rest were an invaluable life lesson. More important than sports, or a scholarship, and better to learn as a teen than at age 40. And it drew the family closer together. In God's world, when you do the right thing, things have a way of working out well even when they work out badly from an outwards perspective.
Posted by pendennis88 | May 26, 2006 9:33 AM
PD88, I am going to hold on to this story you've told because I think it will come in handy somehow.
WG,I think my son's own school has actually done a good job communicating that there will be consequences if kids get caught drinking and I am grateful for that.
Posted by Jim Naughton | May 26, 2006 9:39 AM
There's a difference between drinking and public drunkenness though. I grew up around the Creature and I drank it under my Fa's supervision at such events as Purim and wine for the Seder. As I got older (15 and up), I was allowed to drink more and no one got neurotic about it as long as it was with the family. But my Fa would not have let me go out drunk!
I think this is an infringement of the schools on the family's role if they are restricting even kids who imbibe as part of their family. I can see rules about people showing up drunk or getting DUIs.
Posted by a_cermak | May 26, 2006 11:05 AM
Jim, I kept on hoping, while reading this entry a few days ago, that you were about to extend the "team" into our lives today. There is a powerful parallel between teammates and ourselves in society, if you will stop to ponder it.
How are we to react when one of our acquaintance becomes taken over by drugs, alcohol, or whatever? What responsibility do we have as humans to our human teammates?
In the adult society, are we as unafraid to speak truth to friendship as we are to speak truth to power?
Posted by Jim, Sr | May 27, 2006 8:13 PM