Will had passed his Biology II final with flying colors! However, he also got grounded for three months and was no longer actively speaking to his parents.
Will and his study group were caught vaping by Mike’s parents. While Will refused to join in, he continued to study with the group and he was guilty by association. Mike’s parents reported the infraction to the other parents. Will’s parents were livid when they heard the news and grounded him from any extracurricular activities without letting him explain that he hadn’t actually been one of the people vaping.
Being practically constrained under house arrest, Will spent most of his time after school doing homework and being an angsty teenager. While his grades improved, his social life drastically declined as he was forced to drop all of his extracurricular activities.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Barbara Greenberg’s article, “Why I Dislike Grounding Teens” on Huffpost.com, states that during a long-term grounding “everyone gets upset with each other and this type of punishment drives a wedge between the parents and teens. The parents don’t really want the teens home for a month and the teens feel cut off from both their friends and their parents despite being home with them.”
Carole Bank’s article on Empoweringparents.com, “‘You’re Grounded for Life!’ Why Harsh Punishments for Children and Teenagers Don’t Work,” claims that harsh punishment causes a child to resent their parents and they will only be thinking about their anger towards the parent and not the consequences of their actions.
Feeling like kind of a loser, Will was desperate to have some type of social interaction and the biggest one coming up was the Courtwarming dance, but, despite his begging, his parents wouldn’t let him go.
It was the night of Courtwarming and Will was about to go to bed when his phone dinged and a notification popped up. It was from his friend Kyle: “bro there’s a gonna b a sic party @ my house, u shld def come”
He stared at the text for a while before getting dressed, he was sick of being trapped at home on a Friday night and he refused to miss the Courtwarming afterparty.
“Benefits derived from partying,” an article on Fthinking.org by Kostas Deroukakis, says that one of “the most common things people do at a party [is] conversing and interacting with one another. Attending a party is surely one of the best opportunities which help boost your social life in making new friends.”
He closed his bedroom door, turned the lights off so his parents would think he was asleep, and slipped out the window. He silently started his car and drove 15 minutes to Kyle’s house, where a party was already raging.
Everyone was excited to see him and quick to offer him a solo cup filled with warm beer.
According to “Dangers of Teen Drinking,” by Consumer.ftc.gov, “there is concerning evidence from small-scale human brain imaging studies that underage drinking can harm the developing brain. In the long term, heavy alcohol use by teens can alter the trajectory of brain development and cause lingering cognitive defects; whether these defects are permanent is not now known.”

Will is offered an alcoholic beverage at a party, what should he do?

• Refuse the drink
• Drink the beverage
• Keep the beverage, but don't drink it

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