Parenting Teens - When Having Fun Goes Wrong

I was talking to a friend this morning who told me of an accident that happened at a place not far from here. Apparently there were some teens out at a place called Lookout Point, it is a cliff like spot that is a picnic area etc with the view of a river.

The boy who was driving was only 16 and didn`t have his license, he was with 3 girls. Somehow they went over the cliff when they where coming down, it is steep and winding, he avoided the trees but I guess couldn't get stopped.

It breaks my heart to think about it. The girls got out but the boy and his dog drowned.

We discussed that part of the problem with things like this is that kids don't know enough about consequences, obviously they knew that they were doing something they shouldn't be doing and that it could be dangerous, of course in their rose coloured kids world, they thought that they would be ok.

Maybe it's more than that, maybe kids have always been doing things like this and every once in awhile something tragic happens. Is it peer pressure? Was he driving too fast? Showing off? Was it inexperience in driving? Drugs? Whose car was it? I don't know.

What were they doing there? Did their parents know, probably not. Why not?

It's a fine line, being too tough as a parent and creating rebellion and bitterness, in which case they will go out of their way to do what you say not to and will not respect anything you say, or trusting your kids, giving them the benefit of the doubt, being too easy and having kids that are so innocent that they have no concept of real concequences and just want to have fun. I remember being that age and although I was raised with many consequences, I still don't think I had a concept of cause/affect in real terms, I had never dealt with a serious tragedy, hadn't never had to deal with death in my life at that point.

Parenting teens really is harder in some areas because the stakes are so much higher, kids at that age still have the joy and energy of childhood in them, but not the experience to know boundaries with a real knowing that comes with experience, it's a bit of a double edge sword. It reminds me of when they pulled walkers off the market for little kids who couldn't walk yet but where given wheels, too much power with too little knowledge.

But when they are going into adulthood, you can't just "pull their wheels". You need to let them learn but where and how do you draw the line. It's like walking on eggshells sometimes it seems, but stories like this shake me up.

The bottom line is that those kids should not have been doing what they where doing and they knew better. But they where not evil, they were not trying to hurt anybody, they where just having fun and it went very wrong. The consequences seem harsh but that is life, how ever hard it is to accept, even at my age.

Any thoughts?