Author and Richmond mom, Suzanne Sherif
By: Suzanne Sherif
Thanks to Suzanne Sherif who authored this article. What do you think? Have we gone too far?
“Mom, I can’t bring my water bottle to school anymore,” my seventh grader told me one day.
“Why?”
“Because apparently, some kid put vodka in one once, and took it to school. Now nobody is allowed to bring a fillable water bottle to school anymore. We have to bring a sealed one from the store, or buy one at the cafeteria.”
I sighed heavily. Why is it that these days one kid’s misbehavior means one more thing gets banned at school?
A couple of weeks later, he told me another one.
“Apparently,” he said (insert dramatic tween pause here), “apparently… we can’t have Gummy Bears at school anymore.”
Gummy Bears? Really?
“Ummm, okay. Why?” I asked.
“That’s because some kid at one of the high schools soaked Gummy Bears in vodka before a dance, then brought them to the dance, and some kids ate them and got drunk. So now we can’t have them at the Middle School either.”
Which of course left me wondering what the heck they could possibly ban next.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the fact that our school district does everything possible to look after our kids and keep them from harm from bad influences. I really do. I would not want my kid to have a Darwinist middle school experience like the one I had.
Back in my day, in middle school kids were free to leave school at lunch time without signing out, being picked up by another adult, or anyone otherwise keeping track of them. If they felt like leaving the building at lunch hour, they just did. Most of the time, they came back in the afternoon. Of course, some didn’t, and weird stuff happened. For some kids that was their “cigarette break”. Others went over to someone’s house and broke into the liquor cabinet. I even remember one of my friends coming back to school stoned! (She produced some really weird stuff in art class that day.)
Do I want a return to that type of lack of oversight for my kid? No way! I like the fact that responsible adults watch over him from the moment he gets on the bus in the morning until the moment he steps off the bus again in the afternoon.
But still, sometimes I wonder if our schools go too far in trying to protect our kids from every possible thing that might harm them. What if some enterprising delinquent tries soaking fruit slices in alcohol, and packing them in his school lunch? Would they ban fresh fruit? What if someone else gets creative and sneaks some of mom’s Vicodin into her tuna sandwich? Would they ban tuna next?
I want to protect my kids from bad influences, but at the same time, I wonder if as a society we’ve gone too far. If have our kids grow up in a “plastic bubble”, so to speak, what will happen to them when they go away to college? Don’t they have to have the opportunity to practice making good choices when they are growing up, in order to have enough character to make the right choices when they are no longer living with us?
When I was growing up, Gummy Bears was a candy. We are now living in a society where Gummy Bears are perceived as a potential threat to our impressionable young people. Think about it.
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