Party Parents in the House

Very early Thursday morning (we're talking 4 a.m.), I woke up to what I thought at first was Brian's alarm clock going off, tuned to an annoying pop radio station. After a minute, I realized it was our teenage neighbors and their friends hanging out in their backyard. This family lives two houses down, but on the block north of ours, so their back yard is about fifty feet away from ours. This is not the first time their kids have kept us awake. They evidently have at least two teenage children, and apparently enjoy being the "party house" among their kids' friends.

Two years ago, we first noticed the party scene at this house because they have a pool, and consequently a steady stream of high school kids jumping in and out of it, squealing (really, one girl sounded like a pig being chased), nearly every night of the summer. Mercifully, the parties would die down at 11 p.m. on weeknights. But trying to go to bed before that was futile, even with our windows closed. Then one day around Thanksgiving, we read in the Chicago Tribune that our fun-loving neighbors hosted a party at which 50+ teenagers were cited for underage drinking at their house. Yet the parents got off scot-free because they said they were asleep the whole time the party was going on and didn't know the kids were drinking. Are you kidding me? Come on, people, unless you're using a horse tranquilizer as a sleep aid, I highly doubt you could sleep through the sounds of a basement full of drunk teens. At the same time this story came out, I read about several other stories of parents providing alcohol to their high school aged kids.

As a soon-to-be parent, and a former teen who was by no means perfect, I wonder at what point did some parents start feeling they needed to be "cool" and "fun?" Why do some parents need to be their kids' friends, and not their parents? And what are our neighbors teaching their kids about responsibility and obeying the law? When I was in high school, my dad was already 60 years old, and my mom was in her mid-50s. They were older than my friends' parents, but because they'd already raised seven kids, they were probably wiser. While I felt at the time that they were out of touch (they listened to the classical music station!), I did respect them for the most part. They knew what was up, and though they weren't strict with me, they also weren't stupid. By the end of my senior year, I had shown them that I could hold down a good job and manged to get into a decent school, so they eased up on my curfew and gave me quite a bit of freedom. Never, ever would they have bought me alcohol or hosted a party at our house that allowed drinking.

Anyway, now it seems there are way too many "cool moms and dads" out there who wear their North Face jackets and their Uggs (the moms, not the dads) and look as if they wish they were still 18 and their kids' best friend. I like to think these are people who peaked in high school and are raising their kids to believe that high school is the pinnacle of one's life? I hope not. And I hope they realize that Amy Poehler character in "Mean Girls" was a charicature. http://video.aol.com/video-detail/mean-girls-cool-mom/3013608018