From: manning@cco.caltech.edu (Evan Marshall Manning)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Potheads of the 70's Raising Kids
Date: 26 Jan 1993 20:56:37 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: alumni.caltech.edu



neville@cs.washington.edu (Dorothy Neville) writes:

>Let's see if I can recap some of the arguments of this thread.

Apparently not ;-)  The order in which things were said really
matters...


>First
>someone (Laura?) said that she had a great time doing drugs, and

I do not know who, but it was certainly not Laura (my wife, BTW.
She's not on the net today, but of course I have full authority to
speak for her ;-)).



>wonders how she can tell her child about that and also keep them from
>doing drugs.  Then Nancy said to talk about the bad experiences as
>well, and tells of a couple of her own, and some stories of friends

She did not say "as well", she wrote as if all drug experiences are
horror stories.  In fact she suggested that we share "some of" our
horror stories, implying we all have many!



>who had some bad times with drugs.  Then someone flamed Nancy and said
>if she had more than one bad experience then she is stupid and no one
>should listen to her.  And a whole host of folks reiterated that drugs
>were all fun for them, no problems.

Backwards!  Lots of folks responded to Nancy's suggestion that we
tell our kids horror stories by saying they had no such horror
stories.  Of these posts Nancy chose Laura's seemingly at random
(maybe the first to reach her site?) and flamed her, saying that if
she had no horror stories then she had no business posting on this
thread.

*Then* I flamed Nancy, pointing out that by her standard none of us
had any business posting on her thread because to my memory no one
but Nancy has yet come forward with horror stories.  (Not that I
have any real doubt that there are one or two more to be found.)

I did say that if she had more than one horror story then she was
perhaps not as smart as she'd like us to think, and here I did cross
the line and I'm sorry.  The correct word would really be
"rational", not "smart" and the proper comparison is her level of
rationality as a teenager vs. the level of rationality her scheme
requires of current teenagers.  If she did not learn anything from
having bad experiences herself, how can she expect her kids to learn
from being told about them?



>(then why are you trying to keep your kids from having the same fun?)

Well, for starters saying that we had no real horror stories is not
the same thing as saying that we only enjoyed life while tripping!
Beyond that, drugs are more dangerous just now than they were then.


>OK, first a comment to whoever flamed Nancy for being stupid for
>having more than one scary experience.  All I can say is that if you

I flamed Nancy for flaming Laura.  I'm really quite forgiving of
stupidity when it is not actively nasty.


>use that same attitude with your teenager, you are not going to get
>anywhere.  They are more likely to pick up on the attitude you
>demonstrate by deciding that no one should listen to Nancy, just
>because you thought she did something stupid.  If I were your teen, I
>would use that as an excuse not to listen to you, who of course is
>going to do something I think stupid, that's the definition of parent
>from a teen perspective.

>Teenagers do not have a sense of mortality.  I reckon that
>the things Nancy (and others -- she is certainly not alone) realise
>now were scary and bad times were not considered that risky or
>horrible back then.  As parents and other people who work with
>teenagers, we have to take that into consideration. 

Also do remember that both drugs and sex were objectively less risky
back then.


>Now here's my 2 cents on what to tell kids.  (I think that this is in
>the same category as being sexually active, so will include that.)
>Sex and drugs can be very pleasurable.  But both activities can
>involve some physical, emotional, legal and financial risk.  I am sure
>that anyone of us could come up with a fairly objective list of what
>those risks are.  And one main point I would try to make is that one
>of the best things they can do to reduce the risk is to delay
>experimenting with either sex or drugs until they are older.  Just
>being older won't make all the risks go away, but being out of
>puberty, adolescence, with the growth spurts and hormone rushes
>associated with it might mean that they are better able to make
>educated decisions about their bodies and what they want to do with
>them and who you want to do it with.  Now as I look at what I wrote, I
>think I am being hopelessly naive, how many teens want to hear that
>they should wait for anything?  And how many of them believe that they
>are vulnerable to risks, which by their nature are probabilistic?  But
>at least I think this is an honest approach.

Sounds good to me.  I especially like mentioning that drugs can be
pleasurable.  I think I tried drugs partly just because I knew that
what I was told in school about them couldn't be the whole story
because then nobody would be using them.  I was somewhat surprised
to find that drugs are FUN.  Perhaps I was not too smart back then
either.

<<<<<<<<<< Evan M. Manning ======= manning@alumni.caltech.edu >>>>>>>>>>>>
Your eyes are weary from staring at the CRT.  You feel sleepy.  Notice how
restful it is to watch the cursor blink.  Close your eyes.  The opinions
stated above are yours.  You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
From: fristrup@hplred.HPL.HP.COM (Jenny Fristrup)
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 18:48:17 GMT
Subject: Re: My 1 year old is hitting me
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA