by Teri Ong
I woke up Saturday morning (as I do most mornings) to the voice of the KOA early morning talk show host. The regular Saturday morning man and woman were not on the air and were replaced by a man who usually “talks” at a different hour of the day. The topic of conversation filling the minutes between news, weather and sports, was whether it was good or bad that the drinking age had been raised from 18 to 21 many years ago now.
The host’s point of view was that since 18 year olds can make many significant choices in life without parental oversight, such as vote, get married, join the military, enter into contracts, etc., they should also be able to make the choice to drink alcohol legally and responsibly. He did admit that research has shown that the frontal lobe of the brain is still maturing between the ages of 18 and 21, but he thought that might less important than the fact that most 21-year-olds are gone from the home. Since they are gone from the home when they are allowed to drink legally, parents have less ability to teach them how to drink responsibly. He related the issue to the “kids are going to have sex anyway, so we had better teach them how to do it safely” line of reasoning. If young people were allowed to drink at a younger age, perhaps parents would be able to exercise more oversight and inculcate better habits. (Dan Mandis, 7:00 A.M. hour on KOA 850 AM/ Denver, Colorado, Feb. 9, 2013)
He made this all sound responsible and logical. I was not able to listen long enough to hear if anyone took him to task of not. I imagine that nobody much did, in view of the current mood on legalized recreational marijuana use. The only socially untouchable item these days is tobacco. But here is what I would have said if I had called in.
1) Teaching children how to drink by letting them drink doesn’t seem to have been a particularly successful strategy in Europe. I have spent several months, two to three weeks at a time, in England where I have witnessed first-hand that public rowdy drinking and public drunkenness are epidemic. London buses and underground trains reek of alcohol on Friday and Saturday nights, as well as any other night if there is a football match in the neighborhood. We have never been out on a weekend without seeing evidence of vomiting and urination in unseemly places, due to the physical demands of drunkenness. And these children were raised in a culture where they were allowed, if not encouraged, to have wine or beer with dinner from the time they were weaned.
2) There is no need to give up the battle before it is even engaged, with a dismissive wave of a hand. It is NOT inevitable that children must dabble in illicit sexual behavior. Nor is it inevitable that children must dabble in alcohol and illegal drug use.
I can now say that I have raised all seven of my children to adulthood and that none of them experimented with destructive social behaviors. Some people might argue, “Yes, well, you are strong fundamentalist Christians and you just kept such oppressive and repressive household rules that your children were afraid to misbehave.” But that line of thinking would miss by miles what I believe was the real factor in raising a family that never needed to resort to common forms of vice. While it is true that the standard in our family is that we don’t drink and we don’t chew and we don’t go with people who do, no code of conduct enforced by any level of draconian punishments could cause children to whole-heartedly avoid “normal” sinful behavior. If God’s laws and consequential punishments don’t keep people out of sin, our puny family “rules” would have no chance at all.
So what did make the difference for our children?
I believe it was the same thing that made the difference for me as a teenager. And I believe it might make the difference even for children who are not raised in a Christian home and who don’t have a personal commitment to Christ.
When I was a teenager, our church youth group made regular trips to the rescue missions in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota. We participated in a Friday or Saturday night Gospel service held there for the street people who were going to spend the night. Almost all of them were drunks or addicts. They would gather in a dining area and we would give our testimony of conversion, sing gospel songs, and the youth pastor would preach a sermon. After the service, we would talk individually to the ones who were there – women with women and men with men. Then we would load back onto the church bus for a quiet ride home. The ride home was always much more somber than the trip to the mission as we reflected on the ugliness of sin and the brokenness of humans caught in it.
Our three oldest offspring were recruited in their teens to be character coaches for a program called “Character First.” The coaches would go into different public schools once a week and work with kindergarten through second grade students. After a large group assembly with nature lessons and stories about historical figures that exemplified some character trait, the coaches would meet with small groups or with individuals. Their goal was to get to know each child and help each one understand and grow in the character qualities that were being presented.
Our three coaches over the years were assigned to work in four different schools in inner-city Denver neighborhoods. They were “bad” schools in “troubled” neighborhoods. Every week my children had stories to tell about little children hurting because of neglect and abuse perpetrated by parents and live-ins who were alcoholics or addicted to drugs. They saw first-hand the devastation of broken relationships caused by vice-filled existences.
My younger four children were likewise involved with children from welfare housing and underprivileged neighborhoods in our city of Greeley. They have faithfully been involved in helping children who daily have to cope with the consequences of their parents’ vices.
Have my children ever been tempted to imbibe, do drugs, or engage in sex outside of marriage? Probably. But the temptations only flew over their heads; they weren’t allowed to “nest in their hair,” as the old saying goes. Why? Because almost every day of their lives they witnessed the degradation and destruction to whole families and especially to innocent children that resulted from “doing what everyone’s going to do.”
Do children need to be able to drink alcohol in order to be taught responsible use of the substance? Do they need to be able to smoke a joint? Do they need to be given condoms so they can be “safe?” I don’t think so. I think they need to spend a few nights at a rescue mission or drunk tank. I think they need to spend some time with children who ask questions like one did of our son, “Am I supposed to forgive my mommy’s boyfriend when he beats her up?”
We don’t need to hold their hand when they take their first steps on the road of sin and vice. We need to take them to the end of the line to see where the road goes. Perhaps they will “get wisdom and get understanding” so that they won’t want to head down the road in the first place. (Proverbs 4:5)
