Teen Brothers Advise Parents: Teach Discipline, Manners, Draw Boundaries

COURT HOUSE – The older generation frequently bemoans the younger as not being as good as they were but then they never met the Blood brothers. Austin, 18, and Dylan, 16, have lived all their lives in Cape May County.
Austin is a recent graduate of the Cape May County Technical High School where his brother Dylan is a junior. The Herald interviewed them at the school.
Both brothers are altar boys at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic Church in Court House since third grade. They frequently serve together during the liturgy. Both have been Boy Scouts, members of Troop 1065 and members of the New Jersey National Guard Community Youth Corps.
Austin is a volunteer firefighter in Avalon and his younger brother is in its junior program. Both admit unabashedly to loving Avalon. As we talked, the brothers teased each other good-naturedly, especially about dating.
“I save my money. You can’t date and have money. I bought my own car with the money I made and saved,” said Austin. Dylan has dated in the past but has decided to follow in his brother’s path and wait for a while so he can save some money. That decision has made his mother Beatrice happy.
The brothers speak lovingly of their family. They are proud of their mother’s Cherokee heritage and recount the vacation they took with their grandmother Patricia Vallon to see Mount Rushmore in North Dakota.
There were many members of Sioux and Cheyenne tribes living in the area and the young men, who have the best features of both parents, fit right in.
“It was pretty cool,” said Dylan, who remembers the comments and compliments he received from other tourists who mistook him for a native. They are very proud of their father’s military service; he served in Iraq.
Austin has hopes for a military career but first he wants to fulfill his dream of becoming a welder, a vocation in great demand.
Both brothers play musical instruments. Austin plays drums and Dylan the flute. And both are ardent gamers. They are no strangers to Xbox and World of Warcraft. But it is not the organizations, clubs or activities in which they participate that they credit with keeping them out of trouble and on the straight and narrow. It is their family life.
Discussing the scourge of heroin addiction in the county, they acknowledged that the deadly drug is readily available for anyone who wants to indulge. Asked how they have avoided it, Austin responded first. “I got smart,” he said of his recent high school days. “I chose the people I hung out with.”
But it is the values he has learned from his family and the sense of belonging to a community that has informed those choices.
About his faith he said, “Your religion keeps you straight and teaches you what is right and wrong,” adding with a twinkle, “and my mom would kill me if I got in trouble.”
The younger Dylan nodded in agreement. “Austin is more serious and smart and thinks things out,” Dylan observed. “I think God put me here and in this area to make somebody happy, no matter where I am, even in school.”
Dylan said he makes it clear to anyone who wants to hang out with him that he is not into drugs, alcohol, bad language or promiscuity but just into having some fun, such as music and skateboarding.
He said his favorite teachers are the “ones who keep it real – like Mr. Jackson the welding teacher.” While he looks up to the men in his family it is clearly his mother and grandmother he would never want to disappoint.
When asked for the best advice they had for parents, they answered in unison, “I would tell parents to discipline their children and teach them manners. Kids want boundaries. It shows you care about us.”
Neither has ever received an allowance. “Our mom said she paid all our bills and fed and clothed us, why would she pay us to do our own chores?” Dylan said.
Both brothers have always earned their own spending money.
As the interview wrapped up, the brothers Blood left with these words “Believe in God and your family and they’ll believe in you, oh and you can have fun too,” which clearly they were.
ED. NOTE: Faith and religion are important facets in the Cape May County community. The author plans to do stories on various aspects of religion and what impact it has on those who practice it. She encourages those with ideas on subjects to email her at hmccaffrey@cmcherald.com for consideration.