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Alcoholism
Adolescence and accidents.
Why no adolescent accidents are wholly accidental.
Posted June 15, 2010
Accidents are part of every adolescent's life because as more freedom is taken there are more mishaps to risk.
"It was an accident. I didn't mean to!" (And something borrowed is lost.) Intention is denied.
"It was an accident. I didn't know!" (And a law is innocently broken.) Ignorance is claimed.
"It was an accident. It just happened!" (And there's a bad drug reaction.) Unpredictability is invoked.
"It was an accident. There was nothing I could do!" (And two cars collide.) Helplessness is pleaded.
"It was an accident. I was just unlucky!" (And only he or she was caught.) Chance is blamed.
Is the adolescent innocent as claimed or negligent as charged?
Such statements make it sound like accidents occur when adolescents are victimized by an unintended, unexpected, unpredictable, uncontrollable, or unfortunate occurrence. And in one way, this is true. And in another way it's not.
The concept of "accident," particularly during adolescence, is a tricky one. It's true that an accident is experienced as an unanticipated, usually unwanted, event. However, no accident ever really happens accidentally because there is always cause for consequences the teenager did not foresee.
Actually, accidents are usually multiply determined, the outcome of many causes -- blind choices and changing circumstances and historical influences -- that can stretch back from the immediate present into the distant past.
The problem with accidents is not only the damage they can do, but also the tendency of young people to disown responsibility by blaming them on bad breaks, other people, faulty workings, or a host of external agents and conditions, and so cast off complicity in what occurred.
It's true, for example, that the young couple didn't intend to create an accidental pregnancy, placing blame on the defective contraceptive they clumsily used; but they did choose to have sex.
Labeling an event as "accidental" can be a way of escaping one's share of responsibility. After all, if more thought had been given, if more impulse had been controlled, if more care had been exercised, if more foresight had been consulted, the accident might have been averted.
The recent Gulf oil spill is a harsh example of dealing with an event that players all seem to agree was accidental, but for which victims argue there should be culpability because more precautions could have been taken and different choices made.
The accident question is always the same: Why did it happen? The more causes that can be found, the less "accidental" the accident appears until misfortune is re-framed as malpractice.
It's complicated. Although ignorance is no excuse for accidents, it also is. After all, life is risky because change keeps traveling us from the known into the unknown. We are limited in what information we have, in what we can control, in the degree of care we can take. As for the future, what we can't predict we are unlikely to prevent. To make matters worse, in our ongoing search for understanding, the best knowledge of today is often discredited tomorrow.
Or think about parents who agree to let their 16-year-old get behind the wheel of a car. This is a mid-adolescent that is still at an impulsive, shortsighted, inattentive, easily distracted age. This is a young person who often proceeds through life on the basis of "act now and think later." High accident rates here. Add alcohol, and how "accidental" is a drunk driving accident? And who is accountable? Is it the teenager, the parents, the licensing laws, the alcohol advertising, or all of them? The problem of complicity gets to be complex.
In any case, come adolescence more accidents of one kind or another will happen. So how to deal with accidents is the question.
Perhaps next time your adolescent, by way of excuse, claims "it was an accident," you could agree and say, "yes, I believe it was." Then go on to explain what an accident really is - an unwanted outcome of some identifiable causes that surprisingly came to pass.
"Of course we know you were not planning for this accident to happen, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time for your own reasons was a function of what you decided to do. And where there is choice there is always a measure of responsibility. So let's talk about your share of responsibility so that by owning it you are less likely to have this accident again."
There are no accidents. There is a cause for everything. That's how events occur.
"Who can read the cause of an act is half way to freedom." (Kipling, "Kim.")
For more about parenting adolesents, see my book, "SURVIVING YOUR CHILD'S ADOLESCENCE" (Wiley, 2013.) Information at: www.carlpickhardt.com
Next week's entry: Parenting after the adolescent becomes adult.
