MUCH ADO ABOUT TEEN-AGE REBELLION

It's the most cynical argument put forth by those who believe in letting
young people do more or less what they please.

"The fastest way to get a teen-ager to do something is to tell him he
shouldn't," they declare, as if that were as axiomatic as "Drinking Drano
is dangerous."

A recent study arouses skepticism about the view that youngsters inherently
gravitate toward the things they are told to avoid.

A professor at Dartmouth Medical School studied hundreds of
4th-through-11th-graders and found evidence that the cynics may be wrong.

Teen-agers whose parents disapprove of smoking appear to be far less likely
to smoke themselves. The value of that parental disapproval is strong even
if the parents smoke, though we don't for a moment suggest that parents
take a "Do as we say and not as we do" approach to things like smoking,
drinking or using drugs.

Dr. James Sargent, author of the study, points out what advocates of
involved parents have said for decades:

"We overrate the rebelliousness of teen-agers. ... (Parents) have an overly
heightened concern about coming down hard on their kids about things like
smoking because they think it's just going to make them more rebellious."