Proms traditionally are a high school event or rite of passage from high school student to transitioning graduate. The pressures of social marketability, notoriety, popularity and economic visibility have created an atmosphere where even juniors in high school, middle school students, elementary school students and private/home school students plan Proms.

The logistics alone border on levels of military planning and execution. Parents plan months if not a year in advance for hair appointments, makeup consultations, pre-evening, evening and after Prom attire. The list of chores and duties grows the closer the main event gets to execution. Several items that many parents do not address either out of fear, denial, ignorance or forgetting is the discussion of possible sexual encounters during and after Prom.

When all the pageantry, partying and pimping/primping are over what may transpire afterwards are Booty Calls, Drunkin Parties, and possible Sexual Encounters. This may sound vulgar, contrite and harsh to some that read this, but many parents spend several minutes or seconds warning, joking or playfully dancing around the issues of sex after the Prom. Parents must make sure their child(ren) and the others they are traveling with, escorting and meeting with later understand the ramifications of potential pregnancy, STD’s and other dangers associated with unprotected and multi-partner sexual exchanges.

“We live in a society where teens have sex”, as Nikki Gionvanni stated on her recent visit to EWC, “teens have sex, that’s what they do. Parents have to wake up and be honest with the reality.”

Proms are ongoing now and parents should be talking to, planning with and discussing potential drinking and driving, sexual encounters and other potential dangers. Parents should remember THEIR Proms and the events and activities they took part in or were witnessed too and even some travesties either loss of life, loss of limbs or undesired, unwanted and unexpected pregnancies that stopped college entrance, military service or travel plans and scholarships to higher education. It takes more than parents saying, “they know better,” “if they do it and I catch them they know I’ll be disappointed,” “they would never do that.” Truer words have been spoken, but the results have been devastating from unwanted pregnancies and realization of exposure to STD’s or HIV.

Parents remember your responsibility to teach, train and raise your child or children, but also understand the dangers of peer pressure, societal influences of alcohol, drug use and pressures to have sex. Teens are having sex with multiple partners, and involved in oral and anal sex.

This Prom season talk to your children and their friends before Prom is knocking at your door. Before your child either male or female is ready to step out the door is not the time to try and have “the talk” or try to place condoms or other types of protection in their hands or strategies in their heads.

Conversations should be honest, respectful, open and share a high level of expectation for safety and maturity. Senior Prom only comes once in a young person’s life, parents should make sure all the memories are pleasant, happy and fun. No one should have a devastating Prom that leaves them with lasting consequences of frustration, pain, sorrow or unpleasant memories of their last year in high school.

William Jackson, M.Ed.
jacksonw@duvalschools.org
http://about.me/williamdjackson

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