Evening Up the Sides

• Conduct Disorder and the Automobile by James Brody, 5/25/97
  
  

Children, particularly by 6th grade, often have mutual alliances between themselves but against individual parents or teachers. The children communicate daily in school; the parents rarely. The children in shopping centers move, stop, and signal in small troops of 2-6.

It's been remarked that a chimp alone in the forest is soon a dead chimp. Parents up until recently have been dead chimps when dealing with their children. Face-to-face meetings are a great start. Some other possibilities might include an internet home page for each neighborhood that summarizes offenses and penalties levied and against whom as well as information about beer parties, traffic citations, and school events.

One 16 yo male put it well. "My friends were getting into a lot of trouble and these parents' groups starting forming up. They get together once a week and talk about whose kid got in trouble and what the penalties should be. They've started watching us. It's retarded and is killing us, but I guess they are doing their job."

No Replies