Stelting hoax - Parents, your kids' pants are on fire
- From: "Kris Baker" <kris.baker@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:17:25 GMT
I wish the Wichita Eagle was *our* local paper; no way would someone get
away with a Jon Stewart hoax.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/local/14340273.htm
Parents, your teens' pants are on fire
As fears that 16-year-old Kelsey Stelting had been kidnapped were replaced
by shock that she'd concocted the whole story, I got the sense we should
have seen it coming.
Wednesday, Kelsey's mother, Kelly Cox, told the media that "Kelsey is the
type of kid who tells me where she's going to be and what she's doing."
The type of kid who lies?
The lesson here is that, while Kelsey may have told a whopper, teenagers lie
more than you might think.
About whether they do drugs.
About whether they're sexually active.
About whether they're in a gang.
And if you're reading this and saying to yourself, "Oh no, not my little
Johnny," I'm here to tell you, "I'm sorry, but yes, your Johnny, too."
If you don't believe me, believe two mental health professionals who work
with teenagers.
And if you don't believe them, think back to the things you did as a
teenager that your folks still don't know about.
They don't call it adolescent rebellion for nothing, said Richard H. Moore,
an adult and child psychologist.
Moore, who says children make up about a third of his practice, teaches
parents to question their kids and not to feel guilty when the kids scream,
"You don't trust me."
"I tell them to say, 'I trust you as a 15-year-old to try to get away with
as much as I'll allow you to get away with,' " Moore said. "That's the kind
of vigilance that parents need to have."
When your teen says he or she is spending the night at a friend's house and
that the friend's parents are there, say OK, I want to talk to the parents.
If you don't, Moore said, you're setting yourself up for a potential
disappointment -- and setting your son or daughter up to get into trouble
because you aren't setting a boundary.
"It's the same kind of vigilance you need when you're doing arms
negotiations," Moore said. "If Russia says that they don't have it, I want
an inspector over there making sure. Kids need that kind of rein tugging."
Teen secrecy and risk-taking is part of growing up, said Richard Archer,
vice president for child and adolescent services at Prairie View.
"We don't have a rite of passage anymore, so they develop their own," he
said. "Getting in a car and driving as fast as they can, having unprotected
sex. They're trying to create their own identity... and these are private
rituals that the community may not be aware of."
That's how teenagers establish some kind of separation from their families,
he said.
Moore agreed. In fact, he said he'd be worried about a teen who wasn't
pushing the envelope all of the time. That teen won't have carved out his
own identity and likely will still be living at home at age 35.
That would have made for a great excuse for me and my friends when we were
Kelsey's age: "Mom, I realize I broke curfew, that I was drunk and that the
car steering wheel is missing, but I was out trying to form a separate
identity for myself."
So while Kelsey may have told a whopper, lying just isn't that unusual.
Most kids lie. I did. You did.
What type of kid wouldn't?
A safe bet would be one whose lips aren't moving.
--
Kris
In an effort to half the spread of the bird flu,
George Bush has bombed the Canary Islands
.
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