Teen curfews

[angus]

your teen?  none of my business.

my teen?  man, I wouldn't want my boy doing half the drugs I did.  wouldn't want him in trouble with the cops the way I was.  wouldn't want him touching some of the nasty skanks I did with a ten foot pole, let alone with his member.  when he gets to be around 14 he'll definitely have a curfew.

[angus]

no curfews.  not really.  although from time to time we got lectured to about things like underage drinking and sneaking in at 4 in the morning.  my parents were what modern folks would call liberals, and I grew up thinking that Nixon and Reagan were dirty words.  Took me till well beyond the age of 30 to get over that brainwashing.  I swear to whatever gods there be I'll try my best not to make a bigot out of my child like that.  other than the lack of strictures and the philosophical bigotry, though, my parents were very decent and wholesome people, and I generally admire them.  Daddy designed offshore drilling rigs and as a result of his job we moved around the nation and around the world very often.  Mama was full-time, what with three children to raise.  she did a pretty good job of it, I think.  Anyway, she was big into the guilt mongering as a means of discipline.  it was probably more effective than curfews.  I'm still ashamed of masturbating in public, for example.  and that's not really a bad thing.  ask me to tell you the story some time when I was riding in the back of a female cop's cop car and we came upon a bum masturbating in broad daylight in the alley between massachusetts avenue and the charles river.  That was in Cambridge.  in about '97.  funny story.

[angus]

well, officially tresspassing, though no conviction ever came out of it.  the real reason was that she hated me for breaking up with her little sister.  on a plane.  on the way to Logan from Phoenix.  at the beginning of the planeride.  like a dumbass.  that chick stalked me for a long time.  at my apartment door when I got home every day for about 3 months.  she'd take a cab sometimes to the subway station (porter square) and wait for me to exit from time to time.  bring me like one sock at a time, stuff like that, instead of putting my stuff in a dumpster or burning it like a normal person would have.  crazy bitch.

that was my last run in with any police anywhere, thankyouverymuch.  well, not counting tickets and little BS like that.  well, and not counting police in tijuana either.  or the yucatan.  anyway, it was the last time I was arrested in the USA.

[angus]

anyway, we're heading downtown from near central square, actually closer to NECCO if you know where that is, and she got some call about a stolen car and wanted to swing by and check on it, and all the sudden she's like, "What the hell?!  hey you, hey man, you can't do that here.  get a room."  and the guy jumps up, pulls his skivvies back on and his pants and runs off toward that little parkland opposite the esplanade.   Now, mind you this was back when I was still a Democrat so my gut response is something like, "duh, get a room?  you insensitive bitch, he's a bum.  yeah, right, get a room.  he's a goddamned transient, how's he gonna get a room?"  that was a mistake.  She of course brought me in.  this was back in the day when that jackass, oh I forget his name, but the middlesex county DA who was chasing "The Nanny" who made national news when the baby died you remember that guy, and he's thinking of running for public office so he had a major hard-on for prosecuting everybody and their grandparents for even blowing his nose in the wrong direction.  anyway, I sat in a tank for a few hours, got to talk to the judge in the morning and pretty much explained to the magistrate that I'd just been taking a whiz in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the cop who happened by happened to know me from her sister, etc., etc., and this old guy got a big laugh out of it and let me off.  never found out what happened to the transient guy.

still, I'm lucky to be alive after some of the really stupid stuff I did, but these days I'm a boring old married guy.  and I don't want my son to suffer in any way.  Don't want him sending that little soldier into battle without a helmet, if you know what I mean.  there are so many STDs nowadays.  And I don't want him in with thugs, and really if you're buying anything illegal you pretty much have to deal with thugs.  really, it isn't worth it.  I don't want a total square like Clinton's daughter, but then I don't want an unruly spoiled kid like Bush's daughter either.  I'll cross whatever bridges there are when I get to them, but I'm pretty sure there'll be some curfews from time to time.  Not to sound like Stan Smith, but nowadays with cellphones and internet communications and global positioning and the like, there's really no reason for a parent not to know what his or her child is up to.

[angus]

fair enough.  payphones certainly existed in the 80s and I didn't use them often enough in my own misspent youth.  And I do think backlash is possible, and in fact the animated series to which I alluded, American Dad, explores just that.  Think of the stereotypical "preacher's kid"  But children do need boundaries and guidance.  I feel pretty strongly that internalized values are solid and deeply held, whereas enforced values are shallow.  And for this reason I'm generally of the opinion that the best you can do is teach with sincerety and hope some of it takes.  And never lie when they ask you what you did when you were in that situation.  I don't think we're really in disagreement here.  I don't intend to be Stan Smith.  But I do intend to modify and regulate my son's behavior to some extent.  And I think using reason, rather than force, is the best way to do that.  Still, enforced curfews are a guarantor of at least eight hours of safety each day.  And knowing he's safe at least a third of the time will help me sleep better.  Call it selfish if you want. 

[angus]

angus, just don't give him a midnight curfew on the night his girlfriend's parents are out of town and the two of them are at her house. Damn it!

lol.  that must be frustrating.  while I didn't have curfews per se, I was subjected to being "grounded" from time to time.  Once my grounding corresponded to just such an occassion.  But mama, seriously, ground me for a month beginning tomorrow morning, just not tonight!!!  I considered groundings cruel and exceedingly harsh.  I tend to be hyperactive and willful and roam quite a bit, so grounding was the worst thing that could happen.  Some children are beaten, some starved, some ignored, and some grounded.  I'm not sure which is more cruel--I was never sent to bed without supper or anything like that--but I do think the perceived severity of punishment depends as much or more on the basic personality type of the child than anything else.  For an teenage boy there's pretty much one constant goal:  finding a warm, wet hole which permits entry.  Anything interfering with that noble goal probably constitutes a harsh punishment.  I will say I was more sympathetic to that sort of activity before I became a parent.  Not that I've become Mister Roper already, but I am at a point in life where I think there are more important things a young man ought to be doing with his time.

[angus]

Yeah, I gave my mother far more grief than she deserved.  I regret that.  there were many times a telephone call from the principal would precipitatate a grounding.  For whatever reason, my teachers liked me.  For all the grief I caused them, I generally made good grades and liked school and enjoyed academics very much.  In the eleventh grade about three months into the school year my spanish teacher said I really had to stop coming to class thirty minutes late smelling like I'd had too much marijuana for breakfast.  She said she'd looked the other way long enough.  I had an algebra teacher finally call my mother after I'd cut her class almost every day for an entire semester.  Asked by my mother why she didn't report it before she said that when I was there I was polite, a quick learner, and always got the right answers when I bothered to come.  I'm not sure how I'd have ended up with today's rules.  Times have changed.  Society takes a much dimmer view about all sorts of things nowadays:  truancy, drugs, alcohol, and the like.  I'd have ended up in prison rather than having a PhD in chemical physics.  Maybe.  I am convinced children don't always respond best to draconian measures.  And I've never been a fan of "zero tolerance" policies and "three strikes" laws.  You don't turn criminals into citizens, for example, by locking them up with hardened criminals to be raped and taught how to be better criminals.  But I digress.  I never received a punishment I didn't deserve, and looking back I can see that my parents, the cops, and my teachers were probably more lenient with me than they might have been.  It all worked out okay, and nowadays I"m a respectable, taxpaying citizen.  A member of the Honors Curriculum committee at my university even.  I wouldn't think of driving drunk these days.  I don't even run red lights any more. 

[angus]

angus, did you prefer to be disciplined at school or at home?

School, no doubt.  For the reasons you state. 

I think we discussed this before.  See, for example,

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=37239.msg838867#msg838867

[angus]

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probably not.


well anyway I'm still into imposing a curfew.  I don't care if anyone else does, frankly, and don't really think it the government's place.  But I'm definitely sold on the concept of a curfew for my son when he's older.