Why I'm glad I'm not a teen!

[Camy]

Think your kid's being bullied? Or sending sexts? Or dealing drugs? There's an app for that.

...many parents were open to tracking their kids' every move.

"I would chip them like a dog if I could," one mother said.

Read the article, and weep for lost innocence. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30930512

[DesDownunder]

Quote: "I would chip them like a dog if I could," one mother said.

I think that any mother who would chip her kids as if they were dogs is herself, a bitch.

[Rutabaga]

For some reason I found myself thinking of the last volume of the Harry Potter series, where it is revealed that every underage wizard is subject to "the trace," an enchantment that allows the Ministry of Magic to keep close tabs on the location and activities of each youngster. Nobody in that culture seemed particularly exercised about the intrusiveness of this.

R

[Cole Parker]

Ah, the age-old security vs. individual freedom argument. No right answer, I'm afraid.

C

[Merkin]

Some historians credit our western movement and development to this tension, between those who headed west in order to escape civilization and its controls, versus those who followed after them to introduce law and order to the frontier. There's many a classic movie based upon the cowboy and the schoolmarm. Alas, we know who wins this struggle in almost every instance.

[JamesSavik]

I think that any mother who would chip her kids as if they were dogs is herself, a bitch.

I'm with you on this one Des.

My school uniform was ragged 501 jeans and a selection of concert t-shirts.

Now they have them wearing white button downs and khaki pants.

If their hair is too long they get sent to the school counselor.

I would probably be expelled for reading and writing subversive haiku.

[Guest Dabeagle]

As a child I remember going out to play and having to come home as it got dark and I could have been anywhere in my general neighborhood. That was a small town in Northern California.

Today, things are different. Kids with no concept of the future posting nudes of themselves. What about the kids who get involved with extremists and try to board airplanes to join radical movements somewhere? Or the 14 year old that hops a Grayhound to meet that great person they've been communicating with and then they are never seen again?

I definitely see both sides of this. I'll give you one more. My son, who is now ten, found porn on you tube at the age of 8. He knew it was there. I won't get into the argument here about sex vs violence and that whole dichotomy in the US, but I didn't want him watching porn. Obviously. He has an iPod Touch and he'd been lying to me, telling me he was listening to music when he was actually watching You Tube. Would I put something like that on his device? Yes, yes I would.

[Cole Parker]

As I say, there's no right answer that always works, and we all vacillate depending on the situation.

[FreeThinker]

I think if a child is mistrusted, he or she is more likely to engage in behavior that the parents object to. I think if a parent is respectful and firm and doesn't try to smother the child and will rationally and respectfully explain their fears and concerns, kids will respond. They may (and probably will) make mistakes, but kids HAVE to make mistakes to learn. I don't think there are more dangers for kids today than for Gen X or the Boomers-- they've just taken different forms. I think we just didn't hear about it back then. NBC reporter Robin Lloyd wrote a book in the mid-seventies entitled For Money or Love in which he described the many crimes committed against children at that time. I was struck by how he described the difficulty some reporters at the time had in getting editors or producers to allow their reports into the papers or the evening news. Most news outlets refused to report these stories. Now, we seem to have gone to the opposite extreme and it seems almost as if that's all we hear about, which contributes to a near-hysteria. Parents seem either to dramatically over-react or to show absolutely no concern at all.

Yes, teens need some limits. They may strenuously object-- I certainly did-- but if it's done with respect and restraint and with the knowledge that they WILL make mistakes, I think in the long run the result will be better than producing resentments and secrecy that lead to even worse results. In my own case, I became secretive and engaged in behaviors in high school that horrify me now and which I know I wouldn't have engaged in if I had been trusted and respected instead of ridiculed and verbally abused. Overprotection breeds the very problems that parents try to avoid.

[colinian]

Quote: "I would chip them like a dog if I could," one mother said.

Actually, this is being done in some places as a protective measure in case of a small child found wandering not knowing their address, or a child rescued from a kidnapping. This is so the parents can be located.

Like the chips that are in a dog or cat or other animal, they need a proximity reader to find them in the body and read the contents. These chips are not active (no power source), so there's no way to remotely or locally track a kid who's chipped this way. RFID ID chips operate on the 120–150 kHz low-frequency band and the reader typically must be within approximately 10 cm (4 inches) of the chip. Finding the chip is often a time consuming effort since there's no standard for where a chip in a human should be placed. Dogs and cats in the U.S. are usually chipped in the center of the back near the neck, and in Europe they are usually chipped in the left side of the neck. These standards make finding a chip easier and faster.

In the future there might be active chips powered by the body that provide GPS location capability. That, fortunately (hopefully), is a long way off.

Colin

[Guest Dabeagle]

I think if a child is mistrusted, he or she is more likely to engage in behavior that the parents object to. I think if a parent is respectful and firm and doesn't try to smother the child and will rationally and respectfully explain their fears and concerns, kids will respond. They may (and probably will) make mistakes, but kids HAVE to make mistakes to learn. I don't think there are more dangers for kids today than for Gen X or the Boomers-- they've just taken different forms. I think we just didn't hear about it back then. NBC reporter Robin Lloyd wrote a book in the mid-seventies entitled For Money or Love in which he described the many crimes committed against children at that time. I was struck by how he described the difficulty some reporters at the time had in getting editors or producers to allow their reports into the papers or the evening news. Most news outlets refused to report these stories. Now, we seem to have gone to the opposite extreme and it seems almost as if that's all we hear about, which contributes to a near-hysteria. Parents seem either to dramatically over-react or to show absolutely no concern at all.

Yes, teens need some limits. They may strenuously object-- I certainly did-- but if it's done with respect and restraint and with the knowledge that they WILL make mistakes, I think in the long run the result will be better than producing resentments and secrecy that lead to even worse results. In my own case, I became secretive and engaged in behaviors in high school that horrify me now and which I know I wouldn't have engaged in if I had been trusted and respected instead of ridiculed and verbally abused. Overprotection breeds the very problems that parents try to avoid.

This is a gross generalization and even if it worked with one kid there is no guarantee of it working with another, especially with personality and background differences.

For instance, my son comes from an abusive background. His behaviors won't conform to any of your theories. Additionally, being rational and explaining to kids what's up is preferred to many other things, but doesn't always work. After all, who here was told not to and explained why and did it anyway?

[Lugnutz]

Most everyone here because kids are smart and adults dumb.

[DesDownunder]

Yeah, and I'm sure we can find arguments in favour of tagging geriatric dementia patients so they can be watched for their benefit and welfare, of course.

It's bad enough having to conform to social customs let alone being forced to wear a personal GPS. The cell phone already comes fairly close to fulfilling that function.

Stifling of individual expression and development that does no harm to anyone, is itself harmful; an erosion of human rights.

The confusion of personal rights and social obligations usually ends with the individual having neither autonomy or social benefits.

Make no mistake, there is a conflict brewing between those who demand compliance to rules of confinement, and those who pursue the freedom to exist without threat or harm to anyone; to question and discover, life and love.

And people wonder why I am anti-authoritarian.

[FreeThinker]

DaBeagle, I'm crediting parents with a degree of common sense. No, this won't work in every situation, and, yes, it is a generalization. In general, when one lets children make mistakes--within reason--children learn for themselves, which is better than merely being lectured to-- or equipped with a tracking device. How Orwellian, or is this what we've descended to. Overprotection breeds children who are neither equipped for the world when they break free nor are trusting of others. It results in paranoia and hysteria, which we seem to have a lot of today.

[Cole Parker]

I think if a parent is respectful and firm and doesn't try to smother the child and will rationally and respectfully explain their fears and concerns, kids will respond. They may (and probably will) make mistakes, but kids HAVE to make mistakes to learn. I don't think there are more dangers for kids today than for Gen X or the Boomers-- they've just taken different forms. I think we just didn't hear about it back then.

This is a gross generalization and even if it worked with one kid there is no guarantee of it working with another, especially with personality and background differences.

For instance, my son comes from an abusive background. His behavios won't conform to any of your theories. Additionally, being rational and explaining to kids what's up is preferred to many other things, but doesn't always work. After all, who here was told not to and explained why and did it anyway?

I don't think it's an egregious generalization at all! I tend to agree with it fully. Over-protectiveness is harmful to a child. You want to keep them safe, but you have to let them make decisions on their own and learn from them. We all made mistakes growing up. We still make them today. We learned from these mistakes then, and still do now.

I also agree that the scare tactics used to sell newspapers and seduce people to watch the news on TV has played havoc with our society. It's almost universal now for a parent or an older sibling to walk younger kids to and from school. Back when I went to school, no one did this. Every kid walked alone or with friends. The only difference between now and then isn't the number of perverts active in our communities, it's how tragic events have been reported.

Nothing is going to work with every kid, but how can anyone say that treating a kid with respect, communicating with him, valuing him, is the wrong way to parent? Sure, one has to know his kid and use techniques that are tailored to his needs. One size doesn't fit all. But saying one should respect their child and set consistent boundaries for them hardly sounds like terrible advice to me.

C

[Guest Dabeagle]

I think those things are all very easy to say and sound like wonderful ideas. Like most plans, however, they frequently disintegrate when put into practice.

I used to think that way, too, when I didn't have one living with me. Now I know that speaking kindly, being respectful and trying to model behavior doesn't get me very far. Ground him from the computer for a week and you get results.

I hate to sound snobbish, but unless you've raised some you're lacking in some vital, real world experience that your textbooks and good intentions can't replace.

[Cole Parker]

Dave, you're missing the point! I said, and FT said, that this is a good way to parent, BUT OF COURSE IT WON'T WORK FOR EVERYONE. You're dealing, quite obviously, with a special case which requires a different style of parenting. Some kids need strict discipline, some need coddling, some are destroyed by strong and sarcastic language and put downs, some rise to that challenge. This is why I said you have to know your kid and what works with him. But, for the most part, I agree with the technique mentioned above. FOR THE MOST PART!

C

[DesDownunder]

My experience, suggests that kids respond to example provided that it is accompanied by explanation when it might appear to the kid that adults abandon what they preach.

It is so easy to explain that "Do as I say," is part of a learning process aimed at providing the child or teen with skills and knowledge that permits them to acquire the ability to abandon the limits of the learning process. The more we can encourage the means to abandon the rules of limits, via education, the more we encourage the kid to utilise the knowledge they gain.

Before any of this works, trust must earned and provided by both child and parent in this mentoring process.

That it doesn't always work, is often due to the parent failing to accommodate the natural rebellion of youth.

Too many parents try to limit the child's pathway to independence simply because they want the child to be a clone of their own ego.

Protecting a young person is part of parenting and mentoring, but providing the young with the means to develop life survival skills, and their own unique perspective, is quite often restricted by both the parents and the culture. At best it is an endurance test for the adult and a burden for the young, but if there is a basic understanding of the value of questioning everything then the value of diverse acceptance will be transmitted as being unconditional love in both directions.

Anthropologically, this amounts to the nurturing of the young for survival, but as we can see from ancient and even more recent examples, the adolescent eventually must be free to explore their own cognisance and experiences. Hopefully they will succeed in what really amounts to that common desire to pursue happiness, and if we have succeeded in the parenting/mentoring process, without harm.

[Guest Dabeagle]

My issue with the ideas expressed isn't that they aren't worth trying, but that they work best for people who aren't the parent. If you came in to meet someone else's child you'd likely get their best behavior, all things being equal. Children always give their parents the worst things they can dish out. How many times have you heard of the parent who hears how wonderful their child is from others and wonders how little of that side of their kid they get to see?

When I mentored young people, those approaches worked great - and I wasn't their parent. Want to make friends and mentor? Probably the way to go, good start anyway. As a parent you're about structure and guidance because in the end you cannot force your child to be good - only provide incentive for 'good behavior' and consequences for less desired behavior. You can model things and present respect to them but things - people in general - aren't logical creatures. You cannot reason with small kids. Teens are a different story and far more useful to treat them as a person with a brain, and yet you still cannot make them be truthful. You cannot make them 'be good'. You cannot convince them not to say mean spirited things.

Even if you raised a brood on your own, each kid will react differently and if you've had no experience doing it, then your discussion and opinion is academic at best.

Having said that, I chip my dogs because if they get out and lose their collar they can't tell you where they live. My son is a different matter. With our current level of lying and manipulation and violence, I'd say that - were he older - it may be wise to know, for his own safety. You may not like it and maybe, if you had kids, you'd never consider it. It's pretty far out. I don't even want my child medicated, but after two years we may finally be forced to consider it.

On the other hand, were someone to kidnap my son, I'm fairly confident they'd return him in short order.

[Merkin]

When I was growing up, parents were all about "Do as I say, because I say it." Rules were clear, some were burdensome, some were just plain crazy, but for the most part we survived and along the way learned how to pass for civilized. Civilization, however, reflected serious intolerances, prejudices, and hateful discriminations and controls.

During my young adult years it became fashionable for parents to try to become friends with their children and to offer them an equal voice in the household, including asking their views on family issues, reasoning with them, and bargaining with them over behaviors. The motivation for this was based on various perceptions of an ideal of "freedom." Children soon learned how to play their parents to get their own way, and the resulting culture reflects increasing immaturity, self-centeredness, and lack of regard for reasonable structure.

Surely there is a middle ground.

[Cole Parker]

James wrote:

When I was growing up, parents were all about "Do as I say, because I say it." Rules were clear, some were burdensome, some were just plain crazy, but for the most part we survived and along the way learned how to pass for civilized. Civilization, however, reflected serious intolerances, prejudices, and hateful discriminations and controls.

During my young adult years it became fashionable for parents to try to become friends with their children and to offer them an equal voice in the household, including asking their views on family issues, reasoning with them, and bargaining with them over behaviors. The motivation for this was based on various perceptions of an ideal of "freedom." Children soon learned how to play their parents to get their own way, and the resulting culture reflects increasing immaturity, self-centeredness, and lack of regard for reasonable structure.

Surely there is a middle ground.

We're still looking for it, James. It's elusive because no two kids are alike, they're motivated by different things, and one size definitely doesn't fit all.

But good parents keep trying.

C