18 Years Old

Taught a parenting workshop today in Philly, getting ready to teach another one tomorrow (Monday) night at a church in Jersey. One of my favorite elements of teaching these workshops is talking with parents afterwards, trying my best to answer their questions, and hearing their stories.

I’ll share one story I heard that I found humorous.

A mother of several teenagers had an interesting experience the night before the workshop. A group of teenagers came over to the house, and two of them were intoxicated. They weren’t fit to drive and were most likely going to get themselves in more trouble as the night went on, so this mom kindly talked with two of them and told them she would call their parents to come pick them up.

No kid is ever excited about “telling mom” in this situation. One of the two complied, but the other one, the one who had supplied the alcohol for the group, refused, declaring, “I’m 18. You can’t call my parents. I’m an adult. I can do what I want.”

The mom tried to reason with him. He didn’t budge.

So the mom called the cops.

The cops came, and ironically, since he was 18, they took him downtown and prosecuted him as an adult. If he was 17, they said they would have just took him home. But when they heard him claiming, “I’m 18!” They said, “Okay, you wanna be an adult… we’ll treat you like an adult.”

They took him down to jail and busted him for providing alcohol to minors.

Nice!