KIDS HAVEN'T CHANGED, PARENTS HAVE

Once again, kids have astounded us with their ingenuity. It seems
they are now able to thwart the law and go online to purchase
cigarettes. The federal government is asking the U.S. Postal Service
to discontinue delivering boxes of cigarettes to minors.

So, what's up with kids these days? It seems that there are daily
crises reported: childhood obesity at near-epidemic proportions,
binge-drinking, date-rape drugs, the list could go on and on.

"It's tougher to raise kids than it used to be," observed the parent
of two teenagers. "They have challenges we didn't have when we were
growing up. Drugs, sex, Internet dangers. They're constantly on the
run. If it's not soccer and dance lessons, it's school sporting
events. They're hardly ever home."

"Teens are different than we were at that age," agreed another
parent. "They seem a lot more mature than we were, more knowledgeable
about things. They're more secretive, too. They can e-mail or text
message all kinds of things we don't know about."

This whole conversation got me to thinking about how, sociologically,
there have been huge changes in the past 30 or 40 years.

When I was growing up, there was no Internet. There was the telephone
and television. We couldn't keep secrets from our parents.

Of course we could. And did. Tiny bits of paper, passed back and
forth in school, served the same function as text messaging.

No, we didn't have methamphetamine. Or cocaine. Those challenges just
weren't there for us.

No, we just had pot, LSD and speed. And that was the light stuff.

Teen sex was common, but at least we didn't have to worry about
getting a deadly virus such as AIDS. We just got pregnant. Even
though being an unmarried teenage mom wasn't a death sentence, it was
still a sentence.

Children still go through the same developmental stages that humans
have always gone through. They're born totally dependent on their
parents and as they grow, their dependency and needs diminish. A
normal adolescent begins to move away from his parents emotionally.
They develop close relationships with others and in many ways, those
friends become more important than their own family.

They wrestle with temptation. Sometimes they lose. They have
tremendous stresses in their lives. Different stress than we had
growing up. Different, not more.

Pardon the "good old days" mentality, but it sure seems that kids
aren't being held accountable for their mistakes. Parents yelling at,
striking, and yes, even killing coaches has become tragically
commonplace. Teachers are often prohibited from disciplining
students, no matter how badly it's needed. "In my day," (sorry about
that) if kids got in trouble at school, they got in additional
trouble at home. While I'm not a strong proponent of double jeopardy,
it certainly didn't cause any lasting emotional damage. The teacher
would have had to commit an egregious error before parents confronted
the administration. In fact, more often than not, if a child
complained about a school injustice the response would have been
"Life isn't fair sometimes."

Indeed it isn't. Kids find that out in short order when they head off
for college. In a longitudinal study reported by The Child
Development Institute, high school graduates left home totally
unprepared for the realities of independence. Their high expectations
crashed headlong into real life. Within nine to 18 months following
graduation, depression, low self-esteem and anxiety were correlated
with stress and transition problems.

So often in our small rural schools you see top students and athletes
becoming near God-like as they get to their senior year in high
school - the popular homecoming queen, the star basketball player.
What happens when they leave high school the "brightest and best," as
the song goes, to being just another name on the freshmen roster?

We do a disservice to our children when we don't prepare them for the
realities of life, when we don't make them responsible for their own
behavior. The U.S. Postal Service is not a parent. The parents have
ultimate responsibility to know what their kid is doing online, what
is in the packages the child gets in the mail. It's a tough job, no
question. And it takes a lot of time.

As one parent stated: "I only see my kids about two hours a night. I
don't want to spent the entire time disciplining them." Perhaps not,
but what will be the long-term results of their lack of attention?

So, perhaps it's not really the kids who have changed, it's the parents.

Gretchen Mayer, Mansfield, works at the American News and is a member
of the American News Editorial Board. Her column appears occasionally
on the Viewpoints Page.