My wife had an old friend who died, leaving a recently overhauled Chevy Cavalier behind. Everything was mint. The gentleman was an old farmer, who was the fifth generation to live on his farm. Of course the land was paid for, and needless to say, he was wealthy; so, he put lots of money into the car. About a year after his death, his surviving brother sold the car to my wife for our daughter. The car went for a song and dance, my daughter putting up 30% at first until she gets more money. She was ecstatic to say the least! 

I had no idea that this transaction was taking place. I came home from work one day to find a strange red car in my driveway. This was nothing new to me: raising four teenagers, we needed a parking lot, not a driveway…and our driveway is almost four hundred feet long. Inquiring about the car, I found out that my daughter now had her own vehicle. 

My daughter is a really great kid: good, honest, kind hearted, hard-working (when she wants), goal-oriented, meek, gentle, compassionate…oops, sorry… I guess I was getting a bit carried away. But what Dad is not proud of his children? Anyway, she’s very busy: She sings in the choir at church; she works at a local home-schooling bookstore with her mother on a part time basis; she is a Girl Scout, working on her Gold Award; a junior in high-school, she’s taking a full load of college courses (not college prep, but at a local community college) and at the end of this year, will have an Associate degree, even though she hasn’t graduated from high school yet; and she in a member of a local theater company, preparing for a Christmas special, which will be performed in our little part of the country. Would you consider that busy?  

I think busy is good for teenagers; as a matter of fact, I think it is essential these days. Which brings me back to the car. A car is every teenager’s dream. They start dreaming about it when they are old enough to reach the pedals and see above the steering wheel. It represents the prime objective of many kids…FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY AND PARENTAL OPPRESSION!!! I marvel how a teen’s life can change so drastically, just from the introduction of a license to drive a car, but they’re still under the thumb of mom and dad because usually, the teen still has to drive either mom’s or dad’s car. However, the first step of freedom is obtained with the acquisition of a driver’s license. At least they can go somewhere without having to be driven there by mom or dad. The teen can always say they going to the store for milk, but drive past their friend’s house on the way to celebrate their new-found freedom ticket. How do I know this? Cause I did it when I was sixteen, that’s how! 

Why is it that teens crave freedom from home and hardly give a thought to the responsibilities that must certainly accompany that freedom? Oh, I’m not writing about gas, insurance, or the other obvious stuff. I’m referring to the things they do, the places they go, the decisions they make when freedom is granted without proper parental instruction and discipline regarding those (and more) things. I have seen teens’ lives change direction completely, all because of a car. I know it isn’t the nuts and bolts, it’s much more than the hardware, it’s the opiate of the teen: the imaginary “freedom from rules and regulations.” Tired of being told what to do, they want to make their own decisions now. Well-trained and prepared teens will make good choices and decisions, but unprepared teens could end up shipwrecked, or worse…dead. I have seen goal-oriented teens loose their focus with the introduction of a license to drive. College goals are traded for party time, chastity is traded for promiscuity and freedom traded for real bondage. I have also known of a teen here or there that use his or her new-found freedom to exercise a little more time management: getting to places earlier instead of later because they do not have to wait on mom or dad to take them. Those are the kids who have been prepared for their expanding freedoms. 

With these things in mind, I’m looking at my daughter’s car, wondering: should I get the sledge hammer now or wait?; “maybe I can drain the oil out of the engine and blow it up!”… yeah! That’s it! I feel like Mr. Grinch now. 

I just don’t want my daughter to loose her great focus and lofty goals. She wants to be a Registered Nurse and use that to work her way through Law School. After she graduates from high school, she will just have one more year of misc nursing curricula to consume and she will have a BS and a RN. These are great goals and are reasonable for her. I know that she can do it! It is just this car thing that has me worried. You see, I know that parenting is not the only influence in our children’s lives: there is TV, movies and their friends. Friends are also influenced by TV, movies and other friends, so it is quickly that a child’s upbringing can be changed drastically unless parents maintain a line of communication with their child. If my daughter doesn’t feel welcome at home, or worse, feels lonely in her own home because I’m too busy or her mother is too busy, she will want to fulfill the needs she is lacking outside our home. That is what I’m worried about. And a license to drive makes it all that more easy for her to accomplish. 

Sometimes moms and dads have issues of their own that take them away for a little while: although they’re home, they’re not home, if the reader knows what I mean. And they need a little time to refocus on what is really important in life. If a teen is continually running off in the car, parent/child reconciliation may not occur for years. My wife and I have four wonderful children that are all grown up now, with the exception of our youngest daughter. Our first three were told that if they were going to drive, they would be responsible for insurance and gas, because we feel that driving is not a right, it is a privilege. If they wanted a car, they would have to buy it. That led to their wanting a job in order to finance their new-found freedom; and perhaps even expand their freedom by getting a car. What I have found in our family is that this new-found freedom took precedence over their former goals. So we decided to relieve the monetary pressure from our youngest, so she could concentrate on the things that were more important for her future…education! 

I guess that kids are so accustomed to schooling by their teen years that they think school can be entered at any time, regardless of what they are involved in (jobs, rearing babies, etc), so they blow off their education goals for some fun and freedom in the now. They get a job at Mac “D’s”, flipping burgers, and think that things are really great because they’re paying for gas and insurance, but fail to realize that they’re still being supported with a huge safety net… Mom and Dad!  We want our youngest daughter to focus on her education so that paying her dues now, she will reap a more free’er freedom in the future. We’re paying her insurance and for 70% of that nice red sports car. I’m trying to keep the lines of communication open so that she won’t feel lonely in her own home, and we’re making sure that she stays busy and uses the car that she calls “hers” for transportation and not an all-encompassing escape from reality.