Parent-Adolescent Rights

This week, we will explore family issues in various ways. I added Day 1-4 as suggested day of the week to think about issues. 1. Day 1 – 14 Parent – Adolescents’ Rights. (2) 14 Scenarios on Parent-Adolescent Rights: describe whose right that you would support and elaborate in details your reason WHY. Additionally, discuss actions/strategies that you’ll use if this scenario happens to you as a parent. Parents and Adolescent Rights. A 14-year-old boy brings his girlfriend home for dinner and then takes her up to his bedroom. Should his parents make him leave the door open? A 16-year-old girl wants to get birth control information from a family doctor. Should her parents call the doctor and tell her not to see their daughter? Should parents allow a 14-year-old girl to go to school braless (without a bra)? Should a 12-year-old be allowed to wear his hair as long as he likes? Should parents keep their 13-year-old son from reading best-selling novels that have sexual references or keep him from going to movies with nude scenes? Should parents insist that their 14-year-old son tell the principal that a male teacher made sexual advances toward him, even though the boy says that making the report would be too embarrassing? A pharmacist telephones parents to report that their 15-year-old son bought some condoms. Should the parents tell the pharmacist not to sell him any more contraceptives? Should parents let a 14-year-old girl accept a full scholarship to attend a private school run by a group that believes an oriental religion? Should parents support their 16-year-old son’s decision to convert from their protestant religion to Catholicism? A twelve-year-old steals a bike. His parents make him return the stolen bike. Do they have the right to insist that he go to the police and confess. A 16-year-old girl decides that she wants to leave school to accept a scholarship studying singing and dancing at a drama school. A 12-year-old girl wants to drop her after-school music lessons so she can join her school basketball team. Her parents say no. A 13-year-old boy keeps love poems he has written to his girlfriend locked in a drawer in his bedroom until he finds the right time to give them to her. The parents find out about the poems and discover the key to the drawer. Should they read the poems? A 15-year-old girl has had two dates with a college student. She announces that she is going to his college to see him for the weekend. Should her parents let her go? II. Day 2 – Video: The Lost Children at Rockdale County. (2) https://vimeo.com/61826706 https://archive.org/details/FrontlineChildrenOfRockdaleCounty 1) video notes; 2) what aspects of the teens’ behaviors shock you (e.g., DJ was NOT charged for stabbing), and which part was not a surprise to you? Discuss what your middle and high school lives were like compared to the teens in the video. Has it changed since the Lost Children’s video? What new issues that you observe during your adolescent years? 3) Assess and evaluate what may have contributed to the teen’s behaviors in the video or adolescent issues; what are the lessons to be learned?

4) Is there a solution to the issues raised in the video (as one of the mothers said “there is no answer, if there is one, we surely would have changed it”? What is the solution? Provide your assessment and solution. III. Day 3 – Now, imagine yourself as a parent with a teenager. Read the visualize the following scenarios to discuss what you would do as a parent. Please respond to the following Parenting scenarios by stating what you would DO as a parent in these situations and WHY. We’ll discuss parenting situations. (2.5) 1) Stereo is blasting your son’s favorite rock group and you are preparing for something important for work the following day. 2) Friends are coming for dinner and you ask your daughter to clean her room but she refuses exclaiming, “it’s my room!”. 3) Your 15 years old is arrested for underage drinking and driving. 4) You find marijuana under your 16 year old’s bed. 5) Your 13-year-old son/daughter wants to know why you won’t let him/her have tattoo or tongue ring . S/he says all his/her friends do. 6) You found out your 14-year-old daughter is pregnant. 7) Your 10th grader starts to insist that she will only wear certain expensive brands of jeans, shoes, and tops. 8) You find your teenagers sneak out at night. 9) You find out that your 6-grader has removed a couple of cans of beer from your refrigerator. 10) Your 15-year-old child said that his/her friends’ parents allow them to drink in the house and ask you for the same treatment. 11) You find out that your 11-year-old is smoking. 12) Your 12-year-old son is fascinated with fire arm, guns and asks to own one. Watch Kip Kinkel’s Case and video (2) – School Shooting … Bullies and Families http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/ 1) video notes (0.5) 2) Elaborate your thoughts on what went wrong and what can we learn from his story to prevent future tragedies (1.5) i) Parents – what could they (would you) have done differently? Comment on teaching abroad in Spain, holding Kipp back a year (due to learning difficulty, would you hold him back?), signing Kipp up for karate, sports, giving Kipp guns, disagreement about therapy, stopping antidepressant …. ii) Teachers – what could the teacher(s) have done to help? Would you show the modern version of Romeo and Juliet? iii) Therapist – discussion about guns, is it appropriate? iv) Peers – being bullied, hang out with wrong crowds (building bombs, guns), going with a friend for a week of sky trip (1st felony), romance …. what could peers have done to steer the Kip’s behaviors to the positive side, protective factors …)