Winter Break Worries

It doesn't seem that long ago that my high school friends were breaking free of parental supervision to spend winter break camped out in various hotels and motels down in Miami Beach. I was never allowed by my (from my vantage point as a teenager) overprotective parents to go alone, yet I managed once or twice to get down there with a friend's parents. I remember the scene well, and it wasn't pretty. Smoking and drinking (and worse) were pretty much the main activity, and parental supervision was basically nil.

This week's NYJW features a piece written by two mothers of teens who found themselves in front-row seats, observing the Yeshiva winter break scene in Miami Beach. From their take, it looks like things haven't changed all that much:

We flew down with our teenage daughters who attend co-ed camps, watch TV and movies, and seem connected to their iPods. We were looking forward to an innocent week of fun in the sun. But what we witnessed was anything but innocent. During several late-night walks we saw hundreds of Jewish teenagers in groups large and small roaming Collins Avenue, the boardwalk and several hotels, drinking and smoking, completely entranced with the goal of getting “high” and intoxicated beyond belief.

The girls, aged 15-18, were so scantily clad that bathing suits would have covered up more. Nothing they possessed was left for the imagination. Thin figured or full, they wore outfits that seemed to say, “I’m here! Come and get me!” The boys dressed in jeans, T-shirts or shorts may have looked fine, but they huddled in groups, beer cans in hand and cigarettes and matches at the ready.

The interaction between the girls and boys was grotesque. Hands and mouths were everywhere. Nothing was private, no body part untouchable. A small boy of 15, walking around in a daze searching for his older sister, was easily deterred from his mission by a “friend” who smacked him on the back and said, “Come on, let’s go find us some chicks!” He followed.

The angelic-looking girl with the long blond hair in a red hoodie was heard pleading with the boys she was with, “Come on, give me the weed, get me some weed … it’s my birthday!”

I'm not sure exactly when I reached the point in my life that a description like this would cause me to shudder as it did when I read it this weekend - I know it would not have given me pause when I myself was a teenager. Did my perspective change when I gave birth to my first child and became a parent, directly responsible for the safety and well-being of another human being? Did it happen when my eldest went off to school for the first time, and I entrusted his care to that of another ostensibly responsible party? Did it happen when my kids started sleepaway camp, and I had to grapple with the uncertainty of not seeing them, not knowing their daily activities, for weeks on end? Likely it was gradual, the transition from someone who sees these teenage hijinks as a perfectly acceptable rite of passage to someone who sees them for what they are - dangerous behavior that should never be allowed to go on unsupervised. Yet they do.

Hey, I'm all for giving kids a little freedom - God knows that they need some, considering the constraints of attending 6 days a week of Yeshiva. But never without proper supervision, never without proper attendance to their safety. Is it easy to strike the right balance? Of course not. But getting it wrong can have dire circumstances. Too much freedom, and they end up on the streets without breaking any rules at all. Too many rules, they end up on the street simply to break them.

I'm just so scared, as my kids enter their teenage years, that I won't strike the right balance. Isn't everyone?