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Subscribe to RSSAs part of a four-week series reported on by Natalie Morales, “Dateline’s” My Kid Would Never Do That: Driving premieres on Sunday, April 22 at 7p/6c.
Giving your teenager the keys to a car is one of the scariest moments of parenthood. Will they make safe choices? With hidden cameras, we watch, along with Robert Turrisi, a Penn State professor and consultant to MADD, as teens make decisions in what appeared to be three potentially dangerous situations:
• Will they text while driving, even though they’ve promised not to?
• Will they get into a car with a teen they think has been drinking?
• What about with a driver who says he is high?
And on Monday, April 23 at noon ET, Natalie Morales will host a hangout on Google+ and DatelineNBC.com to discuss Sunday’s episode. She will be joined by Jan Withers, MADD's National President, Rafael Lemaitre who is the Communications Director for the White House Drug Policy Office, and Michele Borba, a child safety expert. In addition, the co-producers of Dateline’s My Kid Would Never Do That franchise will offer their behind-the-scenes insights, and preview next Sunday's show.
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obviously more teens feel safer with a guy high (on pot), rather than drunk. the big debate about marijuana is "foolish" it should be legal. "everybody" knows "weed" is not a dangerous drug & you can't overdose on it, i'm a medical marijuana patient in Detroit and proud of it.
as a substance abuse counselor i think some of these kids got in the car due to the fact that an adult told them who would be driving and that may have been a force in them making their decision. you would hope that they would make the right decision.
What were the books mentioned for parents on the show?
I guess we must have done something right--we are Episcopal, but my husband came from an Eastern European drinking family, I was brought up Methodist, no drinking. My grandfather died of DT's and I had a cousin die as a teen in a car crash (although I don't know if there was any drinking involved). My husband's brother was an alcoholic and he saw how alcohol can affect family relationships. My children were allowed to have wine (diluted) with meals. They had wine in church with communion. But the rule was no drinking, no driving and don't get in the car with someone who was drinking/drugging. We had kids brought to our house who were sick from drinking, kids who were incapable of driving because they were "wasted". We even had one kid to come to our house at 2:00 am, barefoot in the snow with no coat because he had been at a friend's house (parents not home) and drinking, got too loud and the police were called. He got out the back door and walked to our house. I know a lot of people might not like the way we handled those instances but we did what we thought was best at the time. One thing we did consistently was to tell our kids from birth that we (the parents) never wanted them to do anything that would hurt them because that would make us so unhappy. We wanted them to know how much they meant to us. Maybe that is the "trick"--tell them how much you love them and how much they mean to you. The are all grown with children of their own and leading by example. I am a lucky parent!
If an adult who is in charge tells kids to do something they tend to do it. The kids asked if the one under the influence has to drive. The producer says we will be right behind you. The kids need to be taught that not all situations are ok because an adult says they are and that there is nothing wrong with questioning an adult.
The kids are getting in the car mostly because the adults in charge are telling them to. They ask if the one under the influence has to be the one to drive the producer says we will be right behind you. The kids have to be taught to question adults sometimes. Peer pressure isn't as big in this case as adult pressure.
I tend to agree with what kinphx says about adult pressure. The final group that didn't get in, I tend to think the scenario is not realistic enough for that group. These kids are all strangers; don't know each other, brought together at random, with the exception of the groupings that the producers chose. In a real life situation, with real friends and real peer-pressure, the choices will be different...
I agree Coach! With real peer pressure, it's very different! Mostly today, things are candy coated too much for everyone, not only our teens but adults too! I mean the things that they say adults are not aware of, well why aren't they aware??? Where have they been, too busy to pay attention to what's going on? None of this is new! Kids were getting killed in car accidents when I was in school because they did unsafe things. There are a lot more cars and kids out on the road today, faster, prettier and more deadly than they were back then but still it's not new. From the getgo, kids are not taught to have respect for the killing machine they are steering.
I think most kids get in a car because they want to be part of the group and they don't stop and think about the consequences. And that, in itself, may be because a lot of kids today don't get any consequences when they misbehave, talk back, get bad grades because that's easier than studying, etc. Put that with the fact that kids today think their parents will never find out that they broke a rule or got into a car with an incapacitated driver and there you have it. But I do not buy into that the parents "need to start" teaching their kids---the parents should have been enforcing these things long before they became teenagers. One of the best movies for kids to see that they used to show at high school is "Red Asphalt" and "Red Asphalt II". C'mon parents, Dr. Phil says deal with kids in their own currency so that means ground them, take the cars away, no special perks. I'm a mother of three and thankfully my kids didn't get into any bad trouble growing up and they all are fine adults today with grandkids for me. I'm not saying they didn't get into small troubles, but they knew and there were consequences that were carried out.
I thought your show last night was great, Although, I would have liked to have seen more on the actual teen driving and making careless or stupid decissions. I think showing a newly licensed driver what can really happen when you are texting, talking on the phone, having too many passengers in the car, driving too fast is the best eye opener for them. All these things are happening way too offen and causing serious injuries and even death. Show a story with explicit reprocusions. The teens today can handle seeing the gory stuff, they see so much more when they are playing their video games.