Is Your Child on Drugs?

Our recent discussions about young people who turn to violence made me consider what sort of behaviors should be considered alarming; behaviors which parents should pay attention to and perhaps seek counseling for their child when these behaviors are displayed.  It's hard to think of obvious factors other than the severe ones, like a child's tendency to hurt animals or a history of physical or sexual abuse.  When it comes down to it, a lot of normal teen behaviors, taken to an extreme degree, are negative and cause for alarm, but it can be hard for many adults to note the difference between extreme behavior and normal, average behavior.

For example, a teen listening to the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem is not necessarily cause for alarm, but if that teen started to empathize with then and proclaim a desire to burn churches, then it's time to step in.

Or another example.  Take a look at my favorite person ever, Miley Cyrus.  She's being attacked in the media for having pictures where she slightly exposes a green bra/undershirt, and others where she is laying in a boy's lap and exposing her midriff.  Many people automatically jump compare these pictures to the infamous nude/scantily clad pictures of High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, and fear that they may imply that she is sleeping with the boy in the pictures.

Miley is 15.  15 year olds have boyfriends and girlfriends.  They are developmentally and hormonally inclined to be sexually and physically attracted to those people.  It might be cause for concern if a 15 year old girl was sleeping with someone or taking nude pictures of herself.  However, pulling up one's shirt to bare their midriff is quite different from stripping and posing nude in front of a camera.  And as far as allegations that her sitting in the boy's lap is tantamount to her being sexually active with him, I can only say that having sex with someone and coming in flirtatious physical contact with them is far from similar.  To quote Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fuction, it "ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport."  But this sort of conclusion jumping is not uncommon amongst adults who are examining the behaviors of young people.  

Adults will often overinterpret a few perfectly normal teen behaviors and from there assume that the young person is at risk.  There's a fine line between normal teen behavior and scary seek-help behavior.

And that made me remember a feature by one of my favorite comic writers, Lore Sjoberg:
Is Your Child on Drugs?


All that said, I still think I'd rather have a parent be too attentive and worry over small insignificant things than have a parent be completely absent and pay no attention to possible signs that their child might be at risk for negative behavior and violence, though there is plenty of middle ground between the two extremes.


On a different note, while looking for Sjoberg's old work, I came across some of his new work, a vlog project on YouTube called Alt Text, and I thought some of them were relevant to our class discussions:

Regarding the state of online communication, social networking sites, especially Twitter.

Also, some of his previous comic writing work involved taking a bunch of items in a certain category and giving them an A, B, C, D, F rating.  He's apparantly revived his Ratings in his vlog. 
This one is a rating of First Level Dungeons and Dragons Spells