THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060479
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 182 lines
BARBARA HALL'S 13-year-old daughter has an old photograph of her mother-as-hippie, dressed in jeans, wearing a floppy hat, with long, straight hair. She also has a picture of the Harley motorcycle her mother once owned. And she knows about Hall's past - including her sojourn to Woodstock and her experimentation with drugs.
So Hall, like many baby-boomer parents whose children are entering adolescence, has adopted a different approach from her own parents' when talking with her daughter about drugs and sex.
``I'm not going to tell her not to try drugs,'' the 45-year-old Chesapeake woman says. ``Because everyone has to experience life accordingly. The only thing I can do is give her the values, the strength in herself and the confidence in herself. From there she has to make her own decisions.''
As baby boomers - the generation that invented free love, urged each other to ``turn on and tune out,'' and vowed never to trust anyone over 30 - watch their children turn into teenagers, they are uttering one unifying cry: Don't do what I did!
That's a hard message to convey. A study from the Gallup Organization showed that half of the boomers, including the president of the United States, smoked marijuana. One-fifth tried LSD or other psychedelic drugs. A third of women who turned 18 between 1965 and 1973 had sex by their 18th birthday.
But boomer attitudes have shifted.
As demographer Cheryl Russell notes in her book ``The Master Trend: How the Baby Boom Generation Is Remaking America:''
Eight out of 10 baby boomers believe the liberal attitudes toward drugs in the 1960s were bad for society.
60 percent of baby boomers with children under 18 want their children to have less sexual freedom than they did.
``Indeed,'' Russell says in her book, ``now that most baby boomers are raising children, this life-transforming experience is causing them to embrace moral values with a passion not seen since the 1950s.''
But new attitudes don't erase past actions. What's a repentant boomer to do?
For starters, tell them that the '90s aren't the '60s.
``This is the first time in the history of civilization that parents can get away with telling kids that times have changed,'' says Dr. Victor Strasburger, chief of adolescent medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque and author of the book ``Getting Your Kids to Say `No' in the '90s When You Said `Yes' in the '60s.''
For instance, although many boomers smoked marijuana in their youth, the pot of today is up to 250 percent more potent than the weed inhaled in the '60s and '70s.
Free-wheeling sexual activity, which birth control made possible in boomers' younger days, is now fraught with the peril of AIDS.
And the physical dangers of smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and driving and using other forms of illegal substances are better and widely understood.
``We now know far more about certain drugs than we did in the 1960s - enough so that now we can unequivocally say, ``Don't do as I did, do as I say,' '' Strasburger says in his book.
``Yes, we made a mistake in believing that marijuana was `a harmless tickle.' It's not. It's a dangerous drug. So are LSD and cocaine and amphetamines.''
Marijuana, for instance, has been shown to adversely affect short-term memory and judgment, and studies show that the lung-cancer danger of smoking a joint is the equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes.
Hall uses the changing-times argument with her daughter.
``I believe in honesty,'' she says. ``So anything she asks me I will answer honestly and explain my views. My views now as opposed to when I was younger are completely different because you learn and experience things through life.''
Melanie Freeman of Virginia Beach didn't wait for her children to ask about her early years; she went ahead and told them.
Freeman, 35, wanted to let them know from experience what doing drugs and having early sex was like and that ``it wasn't really fun.''
Her two children, now 19 and 17, were in junior high school when Freeman talked about her past.
She was 16 when she had her first child, so her early sexual activity was obvious. And she lived, she says now, ``a very rough life.''
She didn't tell her kids not to do drugs or have sex; she let them know they'd have to make their own decisions when the time came, depending on the circumstances.
That honesty has paid off.
``They are doing excellent,'' she says. ``And with me being honest with them about what I did, they've been very honest with me. ''
Sandra Haner, 48, of Norfolk also confessed to her daughter early.
``I did some nutty stuff, stuff that scares me now,'' she says. ``We drank, oh yeah, we drank all the time. All through high school. The cops used to chase us down the beach.''
She and her friends used speed - in the form of doctor-prescribed amphetamines - and most also tried LSD and marijuana.
And they had sex.
Haner says ignorance was the reason she and her four best friends got pregnant in high school.
``We couldn't ask anybody about sex or anything like that; you couldn't talk to your parents at all.''
She vowed that would never be the case with her daughter.
When her daughter turned 14, Haner told her she could start dating when she was 15 but that Haner hoped she would not have sex.
``But I told her even before she met her first boyfriend that if it ever got to that point, she was to tell me and I wouldn't be mad and I'd put her on the pill. A lot of my friends told their own kids the same thing.''
With drinking, she told her daughter: ``I'm not stupid; I know that when you're in high school, you're going to have some beer. And I'm not going to say you can't do it, because you're going to do it anyhow, so what's the use. I said, `Please don't get wiped. Keep your head, don't drive and don't get in the car with anyone else.' ''
Her daughter listened. Several times during the girl's adolescence, Haner or her husband was called out in the middle of night to pick up their daughter after a party, because she or her friends had been drinking. Haner didn't get angry - because her daughter was at least acting responsibly in calling for a ride.
Of course, there is no rule that says you must tell your child everything you did when you were their age.
``You have to ask yourself, `What's the purpose of the disclosure in self-disclosure?' '' says Thomas J. Socha, associate professor of communication and theater arts at Old Dominion University.
Socha, who is an expert in family communication, says that whenever you peel away a level of yourself and show or reveal what's inside to someone else, you should also think: ``Why am I telling you this? What are we going to accomplish by revealing this part of ourselves?''
If parents tell their kids about their own drug experiences to show or reveal some of the shortcomings of using drugs, then the disclosure might be relevant and useful, he says.
``But if it's just to tell them `I did drugs' in order to bond with the kid, that goal is served, but to the detriment of what else?''
And, he warns, once parents disclose information about their own past illegal or immoral activities, a credibility issue pops up. Who else will the child tell?
So the adult's privacy needs to be considered, Socha says.
``Just because we're parents, we don't waive our rights to privacy. All of us have parts of ourselves that will remain hidden, revealed to very few people.''
Strasburger offers another warning sign on this bumpy road of child/parent communication. For your message to be heard, you must have changed your own behavior during the past two decades, which some boomers have not.
``Those of you who have not quit smoking marijuana or using other drugs are fighting a losing and unreasonable battle if you blithely expect your kids to stay away from drugs,'' Strasburger says in his book.
``Try cleaning up your own act first, before you take it on the road.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Barbara Hall, as she appeared in her hippie days, at about age 19.
She hopes her 13-year-old daughter, with her in top photo, will make
wiser choices.
Graphic
TIPS FOR PARENTS
WHAT DO YOU tell your kids when they ask about your own
drug-taking activities?
First, if they don't ask, don't tell them. The situation is
analogous to telling your spouse you've had an affair: it may make
you feel better to make a confession, but it certainly will not make
your spouse feel any better, and it's likely to make your
relationship more confusing and unstable. As your children's most
important role model, you gain nothing by volunteering the
information that you were a drug freak in college.
Second, if they do ask, no need to elaborate in explicit detail.
If you tried marijuana, you can say that, even if you smoked it
every day.
Third, times have changed. Not only do we know more about its
effects but marijuana also is a different drug from the one we
experimented with.
Fourth, be firm and clear. If you waffle about drugs, your kids
will pick up on your ambivalence and not get a clear and consistent
message that drugs are bad news.
Finally, use information that is most important to kids and that
they most readily accept. For instance, talking about the effects of
marijuana on monkeys isn't going to reach them. Tell them instead
about the effects of the drug on short-term memory and what that
could mean for grades and college.
Source: ``Getting Your Kids to Say `No' in the '90s When You
Said `Yes' in the '60s'' by Dr. Victor Strasburger.
by CNB