DR. WALLACE: Our school will soon be having cheerleading tryouts for next year's cheerleading squad. My mother was elected head cheerleader when she was in high school and she has been pushing for me to become a cheerleader at my school.
The only problem is that I really don't want to be a cheerleader. I'm not too coordinated and I'm really shy. When I told my mother that I wasn't going to try out, she didn't say anything, but she started to cry and went to bed without making dinner.
My parents are divorced and my father has remarried and lives in Utah. So it's only my mother and me, and now I feel really bad because I made my mother cry. I know she is disappointed in me and this makes me sad because she is a kind and gentle mother and I love her very much. I really feel like I've let her down. Do you think I should have made my mother proud of me by trying out for cheerleader even though my heart wouldn't have been in it? I also know for sure that I wouldn't have made the squad any way. — Nameless, Phoenix, Ariz.
NAMELESS: Parents cannot live their lives through their children, but sometimes they forget this basic truth. Your mom had high hopes that your high-school career would follow the same path as hers, and she overreacted when reality made itself known.
Parents always err when they put pressure on a son or daughter to follow in their footsteps if doing so is not in the child's own nature. My sense is that your mother's disappointment was momentary and she will recover from it and move on, hopefully with an apology to you. I'm sure you make her proud in many other ways.
WHAT IS A BINGE DRINKER?
DR. WALLACE: My best friend is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. We stay in close contact by email and sometimes a phone call.
A couple of days ago she emailed me and told me that she met a really nice guy who is president of his fraternity and active in national politics. That's how she met him because she is also active in politics, especially this year since it's an election year. She has been dating him, but she says he has one small problem. He is a binge drinker. I'm not quite sure just what a binge drinker is. Can you fill me in? — Erin, Milwaukee, Wis.
ERIN: You may want to tell your friend that the guy she is seeing has more than a small problem. Binge drinking is the serious pursuit of self-destruction.
For guys, binge drinking is defined as consuming five drinks in rapid succession. Girls are considered binge drinkers if they knock back four in a row. Binge drinkers are 10 times as likely to drive after drinking as other students, 7 times as likely to have unprotected sex, and 11 times as likely to fall behind in their studies, according to a survey conducted by the Alcohol Studies Program at Harvard School of Public Health.
Of the more than 17,000 students surveyed on 140 campuses nationwide, almost half (44 percent) of the students who drank said they had binged at least once. Nineteen percent said they were frequent bingers, having done so at least three times in a 14-day period.
Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. E-mail him at rwallace@thegreatestgift.com. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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