40-year-old coach marries 16-year-old student

The moment a teacher rides my daughter home from school, I would probably ask questions non-stop. Should have been a severe red flag right there.

 

Kids can hide stuff. That I get.

The parents seemed on top of it. They questioned the coach, they went to the principal, the police. I really think they did as much as they could do, and now they're letting their daughter deal with the repercussions.

 

Kids get rides home from coaches all the time.

 

With a daughter, I would be far more cautious with that than I would a son. And while I know it not to be unique to most small-town schools I've covered -- you know, the kind where people don't lock their cars or homes because there's little to no fear of stuff like that -- I wouldn't like that arrangement at bigger towns or schools.

 

I should stop repeating my points, I know.

I just think the young adult needs to take more responsibility.

We say the parents are to blame, the parents are to blame ... to me, they did as much as they could do.

I'm walking away from this thread, just because I don't wanna come off as a total asshole in case I go too far with my point.

 

A lot of us are missing something here. Even some of the experienced moms and dads here, probably because you have good kids who never tested you to this extent.

But there's a nice little slice of purgatory that some parents get to experience, and that's the point where your "what I say goes" as a parent just isn't good enough.

It's an area I had never thought about until my daughter reached her teens and showed a strong-willed side ... mostly to her detriment.

In our case, it was about school. At some point, she got the idea that 1) she did not like school; 2) she REALLY did not like studying; 3) she did not need the lessons she was being taught.

From ninth grade through 12th, we punished. We tried to talk intelligently to her. We actually took away a sports season -- her biggest sport, basketball. We personally sidelined her for her sophomore season, and I'm sure you can understand how earth-shaking that can be for a teen-ager.

And when the teachers came around for the next day's homework, this girl, who had been raised well by us, consistently smiled sweetly at the teacher and simply said, "I didn't do it. Sorry."

We tried a psychologist. No help. One wanted to pump her with Ritalin until she was a zombie. A second wanted to scold her like a 1920s schoolmarm, and the girl simply tuned her out. Next.

She had to take an extra semester of high school to graduate. It did not matter.

We still tried to get her into community college -- twice. Each time, the professor would come around for the homework, and this girl would smile sweetly and say, "I didn't do it. Sorry."

After the second time, her mother and I realized that she had "won." There was nothing more we could do on this count. We told her to go out, get a job, and get an apartment.

Which she did. And she got a job, third shift in a lawn tools factory.

And she loves her life. She wanted to work and be left alone to enjoy life when she wasn't working. She doesn't get into trouble. She has a good boyfriend. She comes over on weekends to do clothes, hug her parents and basically act like a different person than she did when she was 18.

I hope you get my point from this tale. Even at 16, a teen-ager is a thinking animal. Maybe they don't make all the right decisions, but they make decisions. You can't make them all those decisions for them, and there's every chance you won't even get to make big ones for them.

And at the end of the tunnel, you might have to say, "OK. It's your life." And hope it works.

 

Thanks for sharing, Shotty.

I was a know-it-all at 16, too. (Some things never change.) I think parents should keep saying what needs to be said -- kids will listen, even if they don't listen to you -- but I think, too, a lot of kids need to figure things out on their own. I know I did. It didn't really matter what my parents said, or how they said it, I still had to learn it for myself.

My parents couldn't control that, they couldn't change that, they couldn't say anything or do anything to make the light bulb click ... I had to do that myself.

I suspect it might be similar for this 16-year-old girl here. As a parent, you can say or do whatever you want to "protect" her or watch out for her or influence the situation or keep her away from the coach/get a restraining order or whatever ... but she still has to figure it out for herself. And there's nothing you can do as a parent to change that, no matter how much you love them or how hard you try. You can't control that.

 

I can relate, with Editudes in this age bracket, but there seems to be a difference in deciding whether to go to college (which, in this economy, is a sizable decision) and deciding to marry an authority figure who will never be nor approach being her equal.

 

My reaction if my 16-year-old daughter was about to marry someone my age: