Parents and kids

[Gary Sisco]

So ... most of regulars here know that I've gone out of my way to have not been a parent. I just wasn't ever interested and each passing year I'm less interested still. Nuff parents take offense too because I'm honest with kids and I don't consider it my role to be a cop about their behavior or to be dishonest about mine. I try to share experience that they can learn from (or not) and be an adult in their life that isn't an authority figure. I think that's important for kids, esp teenagers, to have. I know it was for me, as I was blessed with having adult musician/hipster friends who schooled me *but also* took me seriously as a human and treated me like one. Not like a "kid" in other words.

So, anyways, we recently hired a new rider, who's very good and hardworking, but also very young (and very driven). She finished high school in three years so she could devote herself full-time to horses and really wants to ride -- all the way to the Olympics. Like Bronwyn, horses are life for her (as music is for me). She's 16 and a newly emancipated minor. Her folks turned her loose and sent her our way, which was her way, after having checked with the parents of five or six kids we've mentored through the years.

Anyways, she's a hottie. We also have a 16 y.o. nephew in town who of course is interested in hotties. Thankfully, she's the more responsible of the two. She wants to ride and doesn't want to fuck up an opportunity over teenage shit like drinking til you puke and so forth.

Which brings us to the past two nights. Night before last, she returned home here in the evening, sober (with our car), after having gone out with him and his friends to do whatever kids do. Which is of course what they've always done. Much later, he rolled his jeep. (My reaction: You broke rule number one, didn't you? Rule number one, as we've schooled him is: If you're going to smoke the herbs and drink, smoke first, don't drink first -- the latter practice is dangerously and unpredictably disorienting. His reaction: Well, yeah, actually, I did......) Last night, she went with him and his friends to do whatever. Turned out to be a house party where the guys got shitfaced. She split when the first kid hurled. (Way to impress the new hottie.... "Hey, do you remember me?" "Um...yeah....") And came home at a reasonable time, again sober.

Turns out our nephew never made it home and his father (B's brother) didn't know where he'd been. So, he calls here, looking. Bronwyn says, Go ask the girl where she last saw Alex. I'm like, I don't want to be involved with this stuff. I'm not a parent. It's not my job. But, alas, since Bronwyn's handicapped, I often need to do things I'd rather not because she can't do them herself, so I had to go wake the kid up and ask where the boy was, last.

Turned out they'd had a, to me, entirely reasonable, self-enclosed in the house (no driving involved), beer session. Hey, they're teenagers. That's what they do. Get used to it.

Anyways, I made it clear to both adults, Bronwyn and her brother, and also to the girl, that I'm not in charge of these things and don't want to be involved in the policing of them. I didn't like the policing when I was a kid and still don't and never wanted anything to do with parenting and still don't. To me, an uncle is an adult you don't have to view that way; it frees you up to have an adult friend to talk to (or not).

Parents get way annoyed with me sometimes over these issues, but my take is that you can't expect kids to do or be anything other than what kids are and what they do. I did the same, Bronwyn did the same, her brother did the same, and so forth and so on. I came up in one of the wildest crews on the planet, and I'm not a hypocrite about it in my old age.

My other thing I can't adjust to, though, is this: Kid's 16. At 16, I'd already been on my own for a year and had lived on the street and wherever I could in Boston and NYC, both, before migrating to Albuquerque and a new-left/countercultural commune. (There was a colony of about 30 VT people who'd done the same migration; some are still there.) I'd already hitchiked the perimeter of the continental US, and crosscountry several times. My father having tossed my ass out, age 15, something I'm forever grateful to him for doing, I might add. My life would have been entirely different if he hadn't and for the most part I've liked my life as it's been, thanks. I've done pretty much what I wanted to do, all along.

And I've had friends my nephew's age, in Nicaragua, who were already established combat vets, leading patrols and so forth.

From my vantage, 16 is grown enough to take care of your own affairs. I'm not much for the constant adult surveillance that seems to be the norm today. I don't think kids can properly grow up that way. They certainly can't get street-smarts that way and won't magically get them at any arbitrary age in future, either. Like learning the consequences of Rule Number One, for example.

Which kind of puts me in a quandary when it comes to situations like this, because I just don't get worked up about the things that work up parents.

Kid's grounded, now. I was the one forced by circumstance to detect his last known location and report it to his dad. Which places me in the position of having to abandon my own take on things for someone else's, against my will.

Bummer for me but bummer for the dad, too, of course, not knowing where the kid is. He's since apologized for having put me in that situation, knowing the way I think about these things. Inevitably there will be more, however. A new hottie in town and all that.

Takes from folks here?

[Tom Storer]

Since you're in favor of recognizing the eternal and unchangeable truth of "what kids have always done"... one of the things that kids have always done is deal with the fact that if they're living in their parents' house and looking to them for food, clothing and so forth, they're going to have to put up with their parents calling at least a certain number of the shots. If the shit your nephew gets from his parents over irresponsible stuff like this leads him to take more care, maybe it will prevent him from killing himself and who knows who else while driving drunk and stoned. Maybe. In any case it's one way of "schooling" a 16-year-old, and nothing more than a passing irritation for him, no doubt.

As for your revealing where he'd been, think of it this way: the kid was missing. His parents are responsible for him and had no way of knowing if he was just out having fun or if he was lying in a ditch bleeding. You weren't ratting on him for staying out drinking, you were helping his parents locate him to ascertain that he was OK, which is their legal responsibility since he's a minor.

Imagine if he hadn't shown up again... ever. Or if somebody found his body in a dumpster a week later. And you had declined to help locate him the night he was first missing. You'd feel mighty sheepish.

[larrycohen]

Just my opinion, but I think 16 is a little young for someone to be completely on their own. Things might turn out okay, as they apparently did with you, but I think most would do better under their parents guidance a little longer than that. There's no exact dividing line. My two daughters are both in their 20's, and I can't point to the time we stopped telling them when to come home, or how late to be out, unless it's when they went away to college. But I don't think they'd be better off if they were left to fend for themselves at 16.
Also, when you're living with family, they're obviously going to wonder what happened to you. Maybe you had to track him down, but he should have expected that, and could have prevented it with a 2 minute phone call. A call saying I'm gonna sleep over somewhere isn't a lot to ask.

[Lenny D.Guitarist]

Mr. Sisco,
'Tis a far different world now than when you were a kid. To wit, I'd bet massive quantities of anything that your hitchhiking escapades would meet with a whole host of unwanted "challenges" in 2006. The sociopaths would be all over a teenaged-hitchhiker like a gendarme on a doughnut. Also, despite your reluctance to get involved with parental things, there are times in life when you gotta grab the bull by the orbs. You acquitted yourself satisfactorily, Mr. Sisco.

[sonic1]

Gary I understand your sentiment. This isn't 4 year olds, this is teenagers. And as I see it, and remember it, the kids who had the tight reigns were the ones that did the most fucked up things. The kids with the more liberal parents were pretty much the goody-two-shoes or at least responsible.

Some parents might have problems with this, but you just need to explain your boundaries. That is their way of dealing with teenagers, not yours.

[clinthopson]

I'm sad that a cool guy like Cisco hasn't reproduced himself.

[patricia]

Although Sonic1 is on the right track, you really can't make a blanket statement about any individual teenager.
I'm sure that even Gary would agree with me when I say that while how a person is raised is very indicative of the kind of adult they will become, some kids will even need tough rules when they grow up.
They don't seem to have a sensible head on their shoulders.
Those are the people for whom laws which seem like only common sense are made.
But, it is true that being a parent is not about controlling your kids forever. I have mostly modelled my own raising of my children on the way I was raised, as most of us do.
Luckily, my parents were of the belief that their job as parents was to ready my three brothers and me for the larger world.
So, hard-wiring personal responsibility and consideration for others was paramount for them, as it has been for me, as a parent.
My youngest daughter, who is twenty-one, lives with her dad. At first he did attempt to police her comings and goings, especially her choice of friends, quite aggressively.
She was very upset about that, since she is an adult.
I actually had to call a family conference to air out the problem.
Turns out that his real objection was that she was away for a day or so at a time and didn't call.
He was worried about her safety. Of course, if it were up to him, she would have sex only after he is dead. He's her DAD.
So, we agreed that she would let him know if she intended to be away overnight and that she would call him to tell him where she was. Period.
I think that that is the most important thing that a parent wants to know.
They want to know that their son or daughter is safe.
I think that a parent is always a parent though and if they could they would continue to parent forever.
It's hard to break the habit of being a parent of a child, even when they are finally at the point which should be the successful result of that parenting, independance.
I see the job of parenting as being successful if they don't need us to police their every move.
But, calling home to say where you are, if you still live there, is only common courtesy.
My mother was still reminding me to bring a sweater when it was chilly, when I was in my thirties.

[clinthopson]

We raised our kids to be independent and be responsible for their actions. Naturally, the teen years were a bit of a trial plus bits and pieces of the 20's. But all in all they've turned out pretty well and have given us a lot to qvell about.

You really enjoy the kids when they're in their 30's and 40s.

[patricia]

I agree Clint. I still remember discovering how cool my dad was when I was in my mid-thirties. We were sitting and talking to each other, laughing.
I could suddenly see what my mother had seen in him that so attracted her.

Then, suddenly, he said that he was so glad that we could finally be friends.
When I was growing up, he said, he couldn't be my friend because his most important job was being my father.

Now I see what he meant. My daughters are so much fun to be around now. They are bright, funny, a joy and much more responsible than I remember being at their ages. So, I guess whatever I did worked.

[GoodSpeak]

Just remember the last section of the brain to develop is the part which deals with reasoning powers.

Sixteen is a very young age....trust me. I live with one and I teach 190 of them every year.

Some can, most struggle.



FWIW...

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by patricia

When I was growing up, he said, he couldn't be my friend because his most important job was being my father.

This wisdom is lost on a lot of parents *cough* my sister in-law *cough*, and the results aren't usually pretty.

[GoodSpeak]

Just wait until you have a teenager, Hate.




Then we see

[bobetterblues]

Sisco,

I think you tend to only see the world through your own eyes. Not everyone thinks or has had the experiences you do, and different people, have different paths they need to take. ie, different kids should be treated in different ways.

For every 16 kid like yourself that left home early and gained infinite wisdom and became an enlightened, pure individual, living on a farm in Vermont, there are many kids that died of drug overdoses, ended up in jail, or had miserable lives they should have never had or wanted because they weren't ready, or didn't have the tools to make it. Just because you did, doesn't give you the right to be self riteous with other peoples children.

Furthermore, I think we all have a duty to put our individual beliefs aside now and again, to help another person out. In this case the parent needed your help, and you gave it to them.

In my opinion, putting aside your finely tuned individuality and helping another human being out is more important than sticking to a rigid view of the world through your own eyes.

There is way more love in helping out a parent in need, and showing two young kids that you care about their safety, than there is in stepping back and hiding in your beliefs and philosophy. You connected with the father, and the two kids that night. That's love my man.

Also, the root of love is *compassion and understanding* which should tell you that people are different and walk different paths than you do or did.

[GoodSpeak]

IMHO, that is the most insightful thing you have ever written, Bo'.




You are awesome

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by GoodSpeak

Just wait until you have a teenager, Hate.




Then we see

The teenage years are ancient history: My girls are 28 & 26 and are doing pretty well. And I, of course, am loving the empty nest. I'll be out in Santa Cruz next week visiting the younger one, who sent me a nice Ahlgren 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon for Father's day, which I'm just finishing up now.

I was going to commend you earlier for pointing out that many children at 16 are ill-equipped to handle things. In fact I'd say that each child has to be dealt with on their own set of abilities, since age in some cases is a very poor indicator.

[edit]I agree: Great post, bo.

[GoodSpeak]

I stand corrected, Hate.



My bad.

[Captain Hate]

No bad; your intentions were good.

[GoodSpeak]

Fair enough.

Thanks, Man.

[bobetterblues]

I found this earlier and it made me think about our Sisco situation:

This is from a chapter about the inner workings of the human brain and how it applies to quantum physics theory:

"It seems mind boggling that an observer would have any power in the world at all. In a certain sense, the observer has no power. In another sense, the observer has a tremendous amount of power. In the sense of no power, we would say, observations that are carried out, in a way that they were previously carried, over and over again, in a repetitive sense.

So it gets to a point where we don't see the role of our observations anymore, because they become habitual. It's kind of like being an addict to something. You lose the power of observation. When you regain the power of observation, you can see that by your choices, you can actually alter, restrain, or change what you see "out there."

This is more about how the individual gets into "ruts" with the reality as he/or she sees it. It's in the context of the affects observation has on the individual, but the observations also affect the individuals surroundings. Later it went on to talk about how the actual emotions and endorphins that get released get addictive too, so much so that they body craves the feeling.

I'm not sure how this relates to Sisco directly, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

I think it spiked my brain a little because I got the sense that maybe Gary doesn't realize how powerful his thoughts and influence really is on himself and his surroundings. His post seemed *detached* from the people involved, but ya see, he can never be as detached as it seems he would like to be from these kind of situations, even if he doesn't take action. That may be presumptous though.....

One thing I really believe is that the only constant in this world is that everything is always changing, no matter how hard we fight against it.

[Gary Sisco]

Hi, all. Thanks for the varied and interesting responses. These are issues I struggle with, of course, if only for having moved back to the old homeville coming on eight years ago, so have nephews and so forth here -- where I wasn't for more than twenty years -- who are all well into teens now, all at least old enough to drive legally. Plus not having been a parent or wanted to.

I don't think the country has changed all that much far's traveling on one's own goes. I met up with more than my share of psychos and sociopaths in my hitchhiking days as kid -- and there were more than a few sharks that swam in the counterculture, believe it -- including one I had to cut because he tried to rape me and wouldn't stop. (That was a night I've never forgotten. Skinny little hippie gets picked up in Texas by a retired Navy commander who tries to rape him. Hippie cuts retired officer. Finds himself on the side of the road at night, the sinking sensation dawning on him that no one is going to believe the hippy over the Navy officer in that historical period. Oh, please, please someone pick me up and get me out of here!!! Someone did, thank goodness. I got a ride took me into Oklahoma. In those days, crossing a state line meant something, also pre-computer. Thank goodness... But one of the many psycho events. People are wrong if they think things were gentle out there in America, then. Far from it. Very far from it. Beatings were routine events.)

Also, my father threw me out so it wasn't exactly a planned emancipation on my part, though I'm glad of it in the end and have been for many years. Was then, actually. I hated high school and hated living in small-town Vermont as a kid and actually until after I'd been in and out of the service. Living on the streets in Boston and NYC was no gentle thing, either, at 15 in those days, even with the counterculture to provide a landing place. Of sorts. It was pretty rough out there. And lots of sexual predators, esp, about in those situations as well. You really learned to be careful and to read and pay attention to vibes -- or else. It could and did get brutal. It wasn't any soft period to look back on from today.

My quandary is the line between basic responsibility, as pointed out above, to the kid's father, also B's brother, and not wanting to be or be viewed as yet another cop by the kid, for reasons of my own. People don't confide honestly with cops and being in that position unalterably changes the nature of relationships, in both directions.

Also, I just don't think it's my affair and I've told everyone concerned repeatedly that I don't want it to be, so I feel like I get put in positions where I have to always adjust to everyone else's comfort levels but my own are simultaneously seen as less important or even wholly so, because a kid's involved. But I'm not the parent and don't want the job or anything to do with it. I think people are way too tight with kids these days and don't feel like it's fair for me to be called on when people know about what I think about these things. I understand everyone has to be flexible in their views but I do wonder why it's almost always me in the end, if that's the case, who has to do the flexing. Seems to me like it ought to work both ways and my comfort level be as important as anyone else's but that's just simply not the case. There comes a time, therefore, where I finally have to just declare to everyone, flatly, kids and 'rents both, that I'm not in that picture, don't want to be, and, being a free man who makes his own decisions, always has, I'm not going to be. I made it clear yesterday that I was waking the girl up to ferret out the info against my will and considered it the final imposition of other people's wills on mine in these issues, because Bronwyn wasn't able to do it herself.

Kids need to grow up and gaining street smarts is part of growing up. You don't get them automatically on your 18th or 21st birthday. Lot of people never get them and a lot of them suffer for it, some bigtime. Learning how to deal with your parents -- and them with you as you mature, just as important -- is also a part of growing up, if it's going to happen. There comes a time, and it comes on gradually over years, when kids become independent beings, other humans also free and with their own lives to live (and control -- or not -- plenty of adults out there who's lives are not under control, let's face it).

Another factor for me is that, quite apart from parenting, I have enough responsibility and then some, being the sole provider of care and assistance for another human 24/7, plus the farm and so forth, an aging mom in town, and yacka yacka. I get to feeling loaded up to overflowing many times and just don't have the wherewithal or desire to add any more to it. Before this, I made life and death decisions while running the shelter for ten years. Before that, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Responsibility is not something I'm unfamiliar with. Far from it. If anything, I feel a real need to have a lot less of it on me, tell the truth.

For me, it's an issue of freedom. I don't think I look at the world through my own lens anymore than anyone else does; I just have a different lens from others -- *as they do from me,* which is one of the things I feel like often gets ignored if even thought about because my views are minority views. It's not like everyone else doesn't have theirs, however. They do. The difference is that I try very hard not to impose mine on other people, though I also try as hard as I can to live my views on my own terms. Freedom to me is not a concept. It's something I feel or don't. And I'm not feeling it when I'm required to act against my own views and in ways that belong to someone else's, which is very often the case. People do forget that people with majoritarian views *still have views that shape their own lens.*

It's a quandary and one that I don't think has any simple answers. I am and feel responsible to others but I don't always feel the same thing coming back, esp in terms of respecting my views and comfort level. I can't for the life of me understand why lots of other people's comfort levels are more relevant or important than mine.

I use this word "comfort" because it seems like it comes up all the time and increasingly. I'm always hearing that someone "isn't comfortable" with this or that. But the truth is, I'm often "not comfortable" my own self, dammit. Also, among thousands of others, it's become yet an American euphimism which really means "I don't want to do this and don't want you to be in a position of making me do it, either, and therefore you must change your expectations." Which is of course where I am, precisely, in this kind of situation, but, having what some consider outlandish views, this is often simply forgotten or ignored.

As for the girl, our rider, her parents made the decision to emancipate her, not me. Someone that talented and that driven (completing high school in three instead of four years isn't a joke, academically, for a kid, esp a kid who wants to ride in the bigtime, which is a time and energy commitment on top of school in equine sports as much as any other. Many, many young people live contrary-to-ordinary lives when they are serious athletes -- or musicians -- or actors -- or what have you -- with eyes on the prize. In her case, the Olympic riding team). One of our goals creating our farm was precisely to try to make those kinds of desires a real possibility for a deserving youngster without the resources necessary to do it on their own. Creating opportunity for someone who wants to really run with it.

Sometimes I think this society goes so extreme with its views ("zero tolerance" for example, which to me means zero judgment and a refusal to think and understand things in their own right and context, on top of being a kind of brainless authoritarianism that imposes itself on all) that it makes my lens look openminded and flexible, indeed, and the way it deals with teenagers -- to me, young adults -- is one of those examples. My nephew is less than two years younger than two of my friends were when killed in Vietnam. Today, he's considered by most to be still be a child. In those days, a 16 y.o. was considered soon-to-be infantry, which is as far from childhood as anything gets. I can't see where there's any huge difference between someone 16.5 y.o. and one 18. Nothing magic happens on one's 18th b-day. It's just another turning of the planet.

And nothing will change, I guess is one of my points, if the change isn't allowed to happen. The change being growing up and learning about not only experience and events *but also their consequences.* No consequences, no learning, and hence no growing up. There's a chance, and in many ways I think its here in the US, of people never growing up at all. I certainly encounter my share of babies on into their thirties these days. I often wonder how they've even survived even to feed themselves, they seem to know and understand so little about the world around them. (Which has never been a "safe" place and isn't still and likely won't be, I'd wager.) Growing up is something one does him or herself. No one else can do it for you, though they can and sometimes do prevent it for you.

It's an issue for me. Everyone is inter-responsible in my view but everyone is also a free agent who decides what that means for oneself and then acts on it. If a free being. The free part is more important to me than the safe part. A *lot* more important. I've never felt as exhiliratingly free as I have when far from safe *of my own accord, by my own decisions.* Indeed, freedom requires risk and risk taking (we acknowledge this in music and art all the time, by the way).

Lot to think about it in all of this.

[Gary Sisco]

Universal values?

Here's some parenting to give you something to think about:

http://today.reuters.com/tv/videoCha...63f956ef01f628

[sonic1]

Gary,

I am understanding more and more why I like you so much. You and I had a very very very similar growing up experience.

At any rate, aside from all the preachiness about what you owe society or bowing to the needs of people's parents, you need to (and do) maintain your boundaries. So be clear with the parents about what you are willing to do and what you are not. Then they can take it from there, and assume their own responsibilities instead of extending those responsibilities to you.

If you find you are willing to give more, or be more parental-like, fine. But as I understand you, you believe in playing a different role in this kid's life, and you should be true to that. In fact, this kid might really need a character such as yourself to be influenced by. Someone to say, "your life is your responsibility" instead of falling into this role where the kid expects you to impose parental guidance. This is the age when these kids are starting to take more responsibility for themselves. And kids need more of this IMO. I think all these do-gooders actually do more harm in prolonging the handover of personal responsibility, and I long for the days when communities (of all different types of characters) raised children, and not all of them were parental and authoritarian. We, more and more, lack the conditions where kids can be exposed to a community of different people, what with the transitory nature of a lot of families (moving around a lot), isolationism of suburban life, prevalence of nucleic familial isolationism, etc. If the kid is going to fuck up, the kid will fuck up and you cannot stop it. But in my opinion 16 is old enough to take responsibility for yourself. I say this as a parent too, because I intend on making sure my kids are not isolated and dependant on parental control to behave themselves. They need to burn their hands to learn fire burns. If you protect them obsessively they learn not to get in trouble, and the true lessons about self-preservation and personal responsibility gets lost.

[Tom Storer]

Gary, it sounds to me like at least some of the impositions that your nephew's parents lay on you are the normal obligations of family. My kid is missing, you can find out where he was last--you do it, period. There are other levels of "policing" that you can justifiably ignore. If you don't want to inform on the kid for minor behavioral infractions that you feel are none of your business, that's fine, but if there are things that involve potential danger that's another matter. You can say kids should learn to be smart on their own and face the consequences of their own foolishness--true enough, but if for example a kid at your house is drunk or stoned, you don't let him drive away in your car. In any car, for that matter. That's one of the consequences of his foolishness that he has to face.

I can't see where there's any huge difference between someone 16.5 y.o. and one 18. Nothing magic happens on one's 18th b-day.

The difference is 18 months of living--at that age, that can be a huge difference. Kids change so much from one year to another. In my mind there's no question that kids gain significantly in maturity from age 16 to age 18 (not that most of them are terribly mature at 18, but all is relative).

The fact that kids at 16 have been and still are, in different historical circumstances, required to live independently and fight in wars is no reason to think that it is easy or desirable for them to do so. Surely your own experience taught you that. You describe a difficult, precarious world of predators and violence, tenuously made possible by pockets of good will and support and always one happenstance away from disaster. True, many teenagers today are spoiled and infantilized. But your own adolescence was far from typical and I would go so far as to say that even though you've decided to be glad about being banished from your family at age 15, it was in fact a terrible thing to happen to you. What did your mother think about your father throwing you out? Disregard the question if it's too personal, but I'm curious.

[sonic1]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

Gary, it sounds to me like at least some of the impositions that your nephew's parents lay on you are the normal obligations of family. My kid is missing, you can find out where he was last--you do it, period. There are other levels of "policing" that you can justifiably ignore. If you don't want to inform on the kid for minor behavioral infractions that you feel are none of your business, that's fine, but if there are things that involve potential danger that's another matter. You can say kids should learn to be smart on their own and face the consequences of their own foolishness--true enough, but if for example a kid at your house is drunk or stoned, you don't let him drive away in your car. In any car, for that matter. That's one of the consequences of his foolishness that he has to face.



The difference is 18 months of living--at that age, that can be a huge difference. Kids change so much from one year to another. In my mind there's no question that kids gain significantly in maturity from age 16 to age 18 (not that most of them are terribly mature at 18, but all is relative).

The fact that kids at 16 have been and still are, in different historical circumstances, required to live independently and fight in wars is no reason to think that it is easy or desirable for them to do so. Surely your own experience taught you that. You describe a difficult, precarious world of predators and violence, tenuously made possible by pockets of good will and support and always one happenstance away from disaster. True, many teenagers today are spoiled and infantilized. But your own adolescence was far from typical and I would go so far as to say that even though you've decided to be glad about being banished from your family at age 15, it was in fact a terrible thing to happen to you. What did your mother think about your father throwing you out? Disregard the question if it's too personal, but I'm curious.

I do agree that if the kid is missing, there is a problem, and it is somewhat urgent. But you know more about whether the parent is being more of a chicken-little or if there is truly an urgent situation that needs to be acted upon.

The difference between 16.5 and 18 are so variable between kids, and so dependant on the individual, that there is no way to make a dependable blanket statement about it.

[Gary Sisco]

Tom -- If it was too personal, I'd not have opened the subject up. My mom had nothing to say about it that I know about, and since I know more today than I knew then about the runnings, I'd guess she didn't have much to say. It was my old man's house in those days. His rules. He was a Korea vet and a bigwig in the American Legion and he just wasn't having an antiwar commie in his house, embarassing him and such. That was all there was to it.

I don't think it was something terrible that happened to me. Rather, I think high school (while it lasted) was something terrible that happened to me, as was having to live in my father's house in the circumstances before he threw me out. Both places I caught hell itself, and not just figuratively, for being the way I was in the time I was. I was beaten by teachers, local cops, local rednecks (kids and adult), and whupped on by the old man as well (less by that age). I was glad as hell to get my ass out on the side of the road with my thumb hanging out, heading off for whatever my life was going to be. Indeed, I couldn't wait.

Was all of it pleasant? Far from it. Fact is, a lot of life isn't pleasant but the world is no more dangerous a place now than it was then or than it will be in future. It's a rough place. It was just as rough in the past. In some cases, rougher. That's one of my points. No one's born with the skills necessary to take on that big world out there. It takes experience to build up the many different kinds of smarts required, and there's not but one way to get them: experience. People have illusions of safety and illusions of protection. All illusions, though. No one's immune to the harshness of the world.

*Or to the beauty* of which there is also much, because of rule number two: there is always a flip side.

Some things have changed for the better, at least in the US -- we sometimes forget that most of the world is very unlike the US -- kids in most places are not coddled into their 30s, let's face it -- so far as being a kid goes. Kids don't get whupped on by teachers anymore, for example. They face criminal charges if so. Not at all the case in those days. Once, three dragged me into an empty classroom and started pushing me from one to the other, all of them taking turns giving me a rap on the head, until I finally resisted and my best friend also intervened, swinging a one-piece desk. It was us who were thrown out of school, though. One of the teachers died still working there, another still works there today, and the third finally got fired for having sex with a student. Note he was fired; not *charged.* When we were suspended over the incident, it caused such consternation in the student body that they held a spontaneous sit-in -- the only such event, despite the times -- in the school lobby to protest. The one time the students of every kind united over something. Rednecks, jocks, straights, freaks, they drew the line and protested against the teachers for the use of violence on another kid. Self-protection if nothing else.

I'd not be the person I am today without having had the past I've had, and I have no complaints about the way I've lived my life. I don't have any real regrets. If I died today, I'd be satisfied looking back on it. I'd not feel like Oh I wish I could have done this or that but didn't. I've done pretty much what I've wanted to do and on my own terms (even the stupid things I've done, which have also been many, as is the case with all of us; smoking Camels for 23 years wasn't overly bright, for certain). I've had to spend very little of my time doing things that I had to do of necessity that I really didn't want to do. Some of course. Everyone has some. Many people have a lifetime of it, though, so I'm thankful I haven't. You don't get more than one. I'd be suicidal if somehow now I could know what I know and still be in the working the drudge til a mythical retirement in old age, for example. I know old age is something some people get to enjoy but something that many others don't get to even see. So I don't look forward to it as some kind of relief or reward. Rather I see it as another experience, one of the last. The last, actually.

Sonic's last, I think has caught what I'm trying to say more than anyone's so far. It's not that I don't feel morally obliged to people, including the kids. Rather, it's that I do but not in the ways some of them expect. I think a lot of adults are shirking, actually, by not being someone more like me and less like a cop or authority figure with kids, and not just family.

One of the things Sonic says is also one of my things that I lament: the disappearance in the US of clan structure, for example (what people today call "extended family"). The nuclear family as its conceived today is a very limited thing that places too much strain on parents and hence on their kids. In times past, more adults had real sway in kids' lives than is the case in a nuclear family situation. I'm glad I came up when there was still such family structures and also when there was still real neighborhoods in some places at least. My family until the old man moved it to VT from New York included maybe thirty adults (and many more kids), far from all of whom were any kind of authority figure but all of whom figured in different ways in your life. I always conceived of my father's only brother, and still do (he's still living) as more of a special friend than as an "adult" (he was hardly an adult by today's standards when I was born, actually, having been a late teen.) And as it turns out, his own biologically kids abandoned him when they sided with their mom in a bitter divorce, so he looks to his us, his present wife tells me, as both his kids, his oldest surviving friends, *and* what's left of his family. My brother takes him on fishing excursions several times a year. I'm more tied down but I take him and his wife out now and then for dinner or something, so we can keep in touch and maintain that relationship. But he's never been anything of any kind of authority figure in my life. He never voiced any judgment on the way I chose to live. Once his former wife picked me up hitchiking when I was passing through that part of New York on my youthful peregrinations. I stayed with them for a few days and they just treated me like another guy. They were more interested in hearing my songs than in telling me how I'd never make a living with music and how it's time to settle down and get a trade and so forth. I remember all of those kinds of things with real appreciation, now. It's not like a "freak" kid like me was an accustomed thing in their bluecollar world of the time. There's a reason why we were called freaks, let's face it. We were, in their world.

There are unrelated adults, including some still in the old neighborhood, about whom I feel the same. I visit them when I'm in those parts and they visit me when they come up here to see my mom.

I'd rather be a non-judgmental uncle like mine who can share experience or not as the kid sees fit but who is there, always, if the kid wants. My nephews know for example that they always call me if they find themselves in a scrape or with kids who are too drunk to drive or what have you. It doesn't mean they're going to. It means they know they can if they want to. Freedom lies in being able to make the choice. It's not freedom if your choices are restricted by outside forces to the ones deemed "safe" and sensible for you in advance.

There isn't any one way of doing these things of course. We all have to find our own ways.

[bobetterblues]

Well, I do think that kids are maturing at a slower rate nowadays. If the 30's are the new 20's, then the teen years are the new single digits........and watching MTV for an hour will probably solidify that opinion in your brain.

[Gary Sisco]

I disagree with Tom re the 18 question. My friends were 18 when they were killed in Vietnam. They were younger of course when they entered the service. Eighteen months is eighteen months. They were 17 on enlistment, had their basics, and their advanced training, and their time in-country before being killed. By today's standards -- in the US -- not everywhere, by far -- they were children. By those days standards they were men and soldiers. The average age of all of the several million Americans who served there was 19. That includes the ages of all the lifers and grayhairs. So we see that there were many, many young people, to arrive at an average of only 19.

I consider them young adults and think it does them a disservice to treat them otherwise.

[bobetterblues]

We could probably send 14 year olds off to war too, and they would be as mature as an 18 year old to hold a rifle and kill people, but that doesn't make it right.

The arbitrary age is the problem in and of itself. There were a lot of immature kids raping village girls in Vietnam, and killing innocent people, as there are now in Iraq.

So much for the hard knocks life teaching kids on that one.....

Bottom line is that every kid has a different path.

I had a very similar upbringing to Sonic and Gary, and my parents were very lenient, basically because they couldn't control me. But they never stopped loving me, and that, far and away was more important than anything.

You can have all the street smarts in the world, all the experience, all the responsibility, but if your heart is empty at a young age you have nothing.

[Gary Sisco]

The other factor is the girl who works for us. I'm her employer and workmate, not her father or surrogate father in absence, either. Indeed, one of the very first things we told her mother was that we aren't parents and aren't going to act like parents, either. She's familiar with our histories, checked with other parents who know us well, and so forth, and made her own decisions about whether we were trustworthy or whether her daughter would be in a good place from which to launch herself.

I was thinking just now that if Tom or anyone his age who flew on an airplane in those days understands that the entire navigational system being used then was operated 24/7 by teens and people in their very early 20s. All airplanes, all ships, civilian or military. I know because I was one of them and because there were only about 300 people in the world who did that job. So it was possible to know a huge lot of them personally. Someone 24 would have been on the far older side of the scale. I was in charge of the system that covered the whole NW Pacific with people working under my instruction when only 21, being considered at the time a highly trained and field-experienced petty officer.

I don't recall any consternation about millions of peoples' lives being in every way in people's hands who were only teenagers or very early 20s, at the time.

[Gary Sisco]

Bo -- I don't disagree. Like I said above, I had a Nicaraguan friend who at 16 was a very experienced combat leader. He was far from alone. The average age of the country's whole population when I was there, '84 and '85, was 16. He wasn't at all unusual.

Right and wrong in these questions is far from universally understood. I doubt seriously if it ever was or will be.

Would it have been right to have kept living under the Somoza dictatorship or was it better that the kids (primarily) fought successfully to overthrow it, dying -- and killing -- by the thousands?

Much of this issue is cultural of course and it's true that we are in a manysided kulturkampf in the US today. It plays itself out in millions of ways, childrearing of course being one. No one has the answers to every question. Certainly not I or I'd not have started this thread.

I don't think at all that it's a good thing that a notion of "extended youth" into the 30s has developed. I don't know why they need use euphimisms all the time actually. What they are describing is an extended childhood into what used to be hands down understood to be full adulthood. Seems like the use of euphimism alone is a sign that people aren't being totally honest with themselves.

Part of the coddling attitude today is, ironically, a product of the counterculture, which was itself an emancipated youth movement but, more importantly in context, one that, I'd say overly, romanticized childhood itself (and madness, but that's a different question). So we see how things can become conservative that didn't start out that way and vice versa. No one was more conservative than my father but his action with his kid would be considered a radical act today.