Binge drinking lesson for youth group???
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| Mon, 04-10-2006 - 11:49am |
The Fri night of spring break DD's b/f went with some friends to Memphis. DD made him promise to not drink too much before he left but of course he did. He called her at 2:30 in the morning saying he was lost and the guys weren't answering their cell phones. Keep in mind he doesn't have a car and they had been at the bars in downtown Memphis - not the safest place in the world. He actually wanted her to come get him but he didn't know where he was. Well she called the guys he was supposed to be with but they weren't answering so she called one of his friends that didn't go. He got up at 3:00 am and drove to downtown Memphis and drove around. In the meantime, she's still trying to call everyone she knows in Memphis to find him. Finally at 5 am, she gets ahold of one friend that says the b/f is in his friend's apt and is passed out. No one knows how he got there and where he had been. She mentioned all this in passing to me the next afternoon when the youth director called her wanting to know if they had found b/f. She had called the youth director to see if he knew the directions to his fraternity house in Memphis b/c one of b/f's friends is in that fraternity.
I want to impress on DD just how serious this is becoming. The weekend after that he beat someone up when he was drunk and then earlier this semester he got lost on campus walking around drunk.
There is a story in the news about a student that got drunk and was walking home in the snow. He took a wrong turn and was found 4 days later dead in a river. The youth director and I both feel that due to the high number of high school seniors in the group we need to address drinking in college in the next few weeks. I want to take this story and let the senior high students take on the role of one of his family members or friends. They are to write about how this 'accident' will effect their lives and how they felt during the days this young man was missing. We are then going to do a mock wake/memorial type of thing with the middle high kids watching. The hope is that the senior high will take on the role of this young man's mother/father/brother/girlfriend, etc. and give it some thought. They will each write their own parts. In thinking about and writing their parts, I hope it will help them to realize what can and does happen. I also think the middle high will listen to this more if it comes from the senior high.
Our youth director also has a speaker planned for that night on teen-age drinking. So they will also have an outside source to think about. Do you think this will make an impact?
My first thought was just to sit down with DD and read this story to her and talk to her about the seriousness of this situation. But I think she'll only hear part of it b/c she will get defensive after a few minutes even if I don't mention his name. I think if she has to really put a little thought into this and come up with the answers herself it might make a difference.
What do you think? I don't want to use the entire group to accomplish my own personal agenda but I also think that my daughter isn't that much different from most of the kids in the group. They will all face this at some point and they need to think now about how they will handle this and about the impact that their actions has on others.
Here's the link to the Patrick Kycia story. http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2006/04/drinking-and-drowning.html
I would like your opinions on this and any other suggestions that you might have as to how to handle this.

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I've talked to the seniors about this and I have one girl that is very mature. She is the second of five children and spends alot of her time with her youngest brother. She actually asked for the role of the mom and said she would get her dad to help her. He's a writer and motivational speaker so I think she has a great resource in him. Combine that with the role (mother-figure) that she has with her younger siblings, I think she can do it pretty well. But it is as you said, unless you've been a parent, you really can't get it but completely.
All the kids seem pretty excited about this project. My DD is even not resisting it so that tells me she thinks its a good thing.
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