Dialogue: Teens need limits and some peace

By SANDY BURGHAM

I was vaguely interested in the Pioneer House television show which took a normal family from Palmerston North back 100 years for a couple of months.

It was not so much the programme content. In fact, in one episode the producers seemed to think (ironically) that the whole show could be devoted to mum cooking tripe.

What was more fascinating was how refreshingly nice and normal this nuclear family was. This made it more escapist entertainment than reality TV. Are the Feyens from Palmerston North so functional that they are dysfunctional?

Certainly their wonderful togetherness, natural respect for each other and each other's space is almost an oddity these days. Oh, if we could all be guaranteed teens like that.

In parallel, we are experiencing another wave of hysteria over our nation's teenagers, with a lot of shock-horror media coverage about their attitudes and behaviour. And I will put my hand up and say that I, too, have jumped on the bandwagon, having recently been part of a team which studied the little critters in their natural habitat.

So what's new? people have asked. Everyone knows teens are having sex, binge drinking, drink-driving, smoking and taking drugs. So what?

Well, not only is there little sign that their experimentation is waning, but they are exploring even further extremes and experimenting even younger. And, most importantly, there is the issue that many seem to gloss over - the role of parents in all of this.

When talking with the parents of the naughty little sods, I am always amazed at two prevailing attitudes.

First, while parents readily admit that things are more extreme these days, there is an overall naivety when it comes to their own children.

How coincidental that most parents seem to see things through a veil of denial, choosing to believe that their own son or daughter is luckily the one exception to the rule.

Even if this is the case, they perhaps could consider that if their teen isn't doing the bad stuff, her best friend is, so she invariably still has to deal with the consequences of not partaking yet.

And just because the lines of communication appear to be open, it doesn't mean that parents really know what's going on or, indeed, know how to relate.

Secondly many parents are themselves still suffering from arrested development and prefer to be seen as a friend first and a parent second. They are not quite ready to be hated by their children just yet. This would simply fuel the notion they are, indeed, the "olds."

I admit to being troubled by the parents who supply teens with alcohol and sometimes drugs under the poor reasoning that teens are going to do it anyway. Having groovy, law-breaking parents might be good in the short term but in the long term must surely lead to disappointed teens. Parents are there to parent, not to party with.

In despairing of teen behaviour, we may well consider that most of us almost overnight turned from being good, compliant kids who accepted our parents' word as final, into mood-swinging, monosyllabic lodgers whose parents just didn't understand.

Indeed, some things never change and certainly the whole idea of being a teenager is being able to experiment and push the limits. The difference is that these days the limits and boundaries don't seem to exist. They can freely download porn from the internet; they can steal drugs from mum or dad or at least count on being given booze supplies from them.

You only have to pass as an 18-year-old to get into a club where drugs seem to be more prolific than alcohol. And these days you don't even need the inconvenience of having sex in cars because mum and dad are usually out. (Perhaps its time to put parents under house arrest).

Place this sort of freedom against a fast and furious backdrop of marketing and media clutter, where everyone is talking to teens at the same time, wanting to suck up their money, their time and energy - it's no wonder they are spinning out.

Meanwhile at home their rooms are cluttered with material goods, gadgets and technological equipment - easy-access items that would once have been luxury - all of this leading to stimulation overkill which leaves little time and room for thought, creativity and originality.

What they may need is a home that simply provides ground rules, guidelines and, above all else, sanctuary from the madness. That is what was interesting about the Feyens 100 years ago. Despite an overload of chores, they still seemed to find some white space in their lives to talk, think and just be.