Be Wary of Adults Who Just Never Grow Up
It’s great to act 16 or 18 if you happen to be that age. But to behave as if you’re 16 when you are 40 is at best pathetic and at worst deviant.
Every high school, college and neighborhood across America has its share of adults who perpetuate their adolescence well beyond all bounds of appropriateness.
I call them “youth vampires”--adults who refuse to grow up.
These are the campus staff members, neighborhood parents, uncles or older siblings who seek to “relate” to our children by acting out and encouraging the very worst behaviors among our teens. These are the cool “adults” who party with our kids, often supplying alcohol in exchange for adolescent affirmation and admiration.
You know, Mr. So-and-So who is “way cool, because he knows what it’s like to be a kid.” He knows because, tragically, on an emotional level he still is one.
Fortunately, these characters who lack character represent a small fraction of our adult population. Yet their presence can have a devastating impact on young people. When these individuals find their way onto our campuses, they are often protected by the very kids they prey upon. Their antics are seldom discovered without the help of a student who will brave the stigma of being known as a “rat.”
When the true rats are ferreted out, school administrators do their best to send them packing. But the river between rumors of such behavior and actual proof runs deep and wide. There have been times when a decent, dedicated teacher has been unjustly accused by a student disgruntled over a grade, or a detention, or an office referral.
In recent years, teachers have become apprehensive of becoming victims of such character assassinations by clever and unscrupulous students or parents. Meanwhile, those who truly violate teacher-student boundaries will carry on with nary a worry.
Apparently, either these types lack conscious awareness, or they have no conscience. Who knows? It’s a touchy subject, the boundary defining appropriate interactions between adults and teens. Especially when the “teens” by definition are “adult”: those 18 to 20.
Certainly, high school campuses are not the only places where these vampires seek victims. My college-age sister knows of several “hip, happening” professors who have a reputation for partying with their students. Shades of a Birkenstock-shod prof I once had who would “turn on” at Grateful Dead concerts where he would go in search of “modern day Dionysian metaphors.”
This is not to say that adults should never engage in social activities with young people. Adults attend gatherings or parties for teens all the time: birthdays, graduations, debuts, etc. Yet, there is a difference between attending a teen’s party as an adult where other adults are present, and attending an unchaperoned gathering of young people to join in their raucous revelry.
As my students begin a new school year or make the leap to community college or university, I hope they have been well warned of these parasites who will seek them out as a means of bolstering their immature egos. I always tell my students to steer clear of any teacher, staff member, friend’s parent or neighbor who elicits a friendship with them on a peer level.
Of course nothing is new under the sun. I can remember more than 20 years ago when certain substitute teachers or campus supervisors would scope our lunchtime gatherings to find out where the next party would be held. We minors relied on these “adult” friends to supply our parties with the “refreshments” we couldn’t legally purchase on our own.
These wolves in sheep’s clothing prey upon the desperate need many young people have for adult attention. This is especially true among teenage girls, who often have their first sexual encounters with adult males and too often then find themselves pregnant and abandoned by these boy-men. And lest we should feel that men are the only ones who can remain at an adolescent impasse, I have had students blithely tell me about So-and-So’s mom who is “the bomb cuz she gets all brewed with us.”
Young people need to be leery of those adults who refuse to grow up, and of those adults who would use our children to replenish their depleted fountain of youth. This fall, as your son or daughter settles into high school or college, be sure you have taken the time to educate him or her about these predators. Such teachers, coaches, or professors are not cool, they are sick.
It’s one thing to compassionately relate to kids; it’s another to “be a big kid” at your child’s expense.
Next time your teenager tells you that So-and-So is really cool, find out why. It could just be that your teen has unknowingly identified a “youth vampire” on the loose.
