LIVING WITH TEENS

Spring Break: What You Should Know

by Michael Ross for Living With Teenagers
Living With Teens - July 2001
©2001 LifeWay Press

Sun. Sand. Surf. A dreamy stretch of Florida beach is exactly what Jeff had in mind for this year’s spring break bash. So why is he sitting in the back of a police car instead of riding the waves?

“The guys and I got caught drinking in public,” the embarrassed 18-year-old tells his parents later. “The crazy thing is, we’re all Christians. I should have said ‘no’ when they handed me a beer. I guess I just wasn’t thinking straight.”

Seventeen-year-old Mandy is frustrated. What she thought would be a weekend of spring snowboarding in Colorado’s Vail Valley turned into a guy-chasing, drinking binge.

“Why can’t you chill out like the rest of us?” blurts Mandy’s best friend. “So we’re cutting loose and partying a little. It’s OK—we deserve it!”

Mandy rolls her eyes. “Give me a break! It’s NOT OK! My parents would freak if they knew what was going on here. And nobody told me that our chaperone would be a freshman in college!”

Mom and Dad will never trust me again, Mandy tells herself as she picks up a phone to call home. How did I get talked into this?

It happens every March. Countless teenagers like Jeff and Mandy follow the crowds to a spring break hot spot—and end up getting burned.

“Add extreme peer pressure to an extreme party atmosphere and you’ve got a dangerous mix,” says Jon Middendorf, a youth pastor in Oklahoma City. “Even good kids can get caught up in the spring break hype and find themselves in circumstances they later regret.”

Last year in Panama City Beach, Fla., for example, nearly 2,000 misbehaving students were charged with various misdemeanors (everything from underage drinking to damaging property). The teens, who were mostly first-time offenders, were required to attend “spring break court”—a speedier alternative to the regular court system. They were then given a chance to keep their records clean: pay a $215 fine or spend a day cleaning up the area’s roads and beaches.

But one teenager in Panama City Beach didn’t get a second chance. Andrew Guglielmi, 19, of Findlay, Ohio, died last year after falling off a hotel balcony. The Associated Press (AP) reports that shortly after midnight on March 23, Andrew fell from the third floor of a Howard Johnson hotel, striking his head on a sidewalk.

Sadly, Andrew wasn’t the first spring breaker to die from a balcony fall. According to The Orlando Sentinel, since 1984, more than 44 people in Florida have fallen off balconies, resulting in 13 deaths. Many of the mishaps involved underage drinkers who attempted to climb or hang from hotel balconies.

Check out these other alarming snapshots of spring break. A random AP survey of 442 females and 341 males taken at a Florida beach revealed that:

• 32 percent used marijuana, and more than half said their drug use was up.
• 52 percent were offered illegal drugs.
• 21 percent of the males had sex.
• 45 percent selected Panama City Beach for spring break because it had a “good party reputation.” Another 28 percent said they were there because of their friends.

Gimme a Better Break—Please!

An estimated 500,000 college and high school students are expected to invade Panama City Beach this year. Thousands of others will head to places like South Padre Island, Las Vegas, and Cancún. On their heels, as usual, will be MTV camera crews, fueling the party hype—not to mention adding to a false sense of what the “cool kids” do for fun.

“Each spring, the pressure to party really heats up in my town,” says Will Thompson, a 17-year-old from Hood River, Ore. “And if teens like me listen to MTV, we can’t help feeling as if we’re missing out. But as a Christian, I want more than a party. I want to spend my time doing something worthwhile.”

Sixteen-year-old Lara Roebbelen of Sacramento, Calif., agrees. “I’d love to get involved in some kind of service activity,” she says. “But my church youth group doesn’t offer too many positive alternatives for spring break.”

What You Can Do

Parents, take seriously the potential dangers of spring break and take action. Doug Fields, a noted youth speaker and pastor in Orange County, Calif., encourages parents to help their teens unplug from a “party mentality.”

“Help them discover the many exciting ways they can serve others during spring break,” he says. “Express how awesome it is to do something with eternal implications—like telling street people about Jesus or building a home in a third world country.”

Here are some ideas to consider:

• Get them connected. Even if your church doesn’t offer a spring break alternative, chances are, other churches in your area do. Check them out, or plan an outreach to the homeless in your city. For Naureen Choudhury, a freshman at Chicago’s DePaul University, a spring break mission trip was the only choice: “I can go to Cancún and get drunk with my friends, which is meaningless, or I can go broaden the scope of what I know about other people.”
• Host a positive spring break bash. Despite having five kids, Kerry and Jenny Abernathy of Gruver, Texas, have found the time to reach out to neighborhood teenagers during spring break. “We open the doors to our church for several nights each March and give local youth a place to come for some safe fun,” Kerry says. “The goal is to show teens what a real celebration means; a celebration centered on Christ, not alcohol.”
• Take a family vacation. Why not spend quality family time together on a spring break vacation? “My family spent seven unforgettable days together in Florida last year,” says Kathy Gowler of Colorado Springs. “It was a much-needed break and an awesome time of growing closer, not apart.”

Michael Ross is editor of Breakaway, Focus on the Family's monthly magazine for teen boys. He is a national youth speaker and stays connected to teens and their needs by co-hosting a radio program for teens with Focus on the Family. He stays actively involved with teens and mission activities.