Summer Challenge

There are many weeks to fill from now until the beginning of the 2011-2012 academic year. If today’s students are anything like me and my peers those weeks of free time seem to stretch ahead endlessly (that is until the last week of summer which is spent furiously reading the assigned summer reading books).

Because parents have to work, most adolescents are left home to their own devices all summer. A recent survey of Clinton youth tells us that 45% of them spend two or more hours alone at home on weekdays. This time can be used in many ways – in productive and creative ways (riding bikes to the beach, hawking lemonade or working a summer job), by being lazy (watching Jersey Shore reruns and cruising Facebook for hours) or experimenting with friends. Studies show that this unmonitored free time is usually when kids try alcohol and drugs. In our community (and across the country), students say they first drank alcohol and smoked marijuana when they were 13 years old.

This is why today, the first official day of summer, is a good time to have a frank discussion with your kids about drugs.

• Talk to them about the reasons they shouldn’t drink alcohol or experiment with other substances (because it’s illegal, because it can cause irreversible damage to their still-developing brain, because it can lead to injuries, crime and death).
• Lay out your family’s clear no-use expectations for alcohol and other drugs.
• Determine appropriate consequences should one of those rules be broken, explain them to your kids, and enforce them consistently should you need to.

There are many great tools for facilitating this conversation. One is the Safe Summer Pledge that is attached to this blog. In the last week of this school year over 200 students at Morgan signed the pledge to summer safer. The signed pledges were posted in the cafeteria which created a powerful statement for students and visitors (see photo). You can print the pledge right off of this blog and have your kids sign it at home. There are also notes that  you can print and tuck into your teen's wallet or purse before they go out.

You can also visit the Task Force’s website to watch and discuss our Be the Wall PSA with your family. There are lots of other great resources there too, including links to the Search Institute. Their Parent Further program has complied a lengthy list of summer activities for kids of all ages and encourages families to complete as many as possible as part of their Summer Splash Challenge.

Clinton Youth & Family is also offering summer cooking and hiking programs for elementary and middle school students. More details can be found here. Lastly, if you see or hear of any behavior that is not safe this summer, contact the Clinton Police at (860) 669-0451. Police will investigate tips they receive and all callers may remain anonymous.