By Patrick Boyle
© The Washington Post
July 13, 2001

It's Friday night and my 14-year-old daughter is missing again. "She's sleeping at Maria's," my wife says. Or at Hillary's, or at the home of a friend whose face I can't picture. On another night my daughter's image appears to me in a blur by the front door, and it speaks: "I'm going to the movies! Bye, love ya!"

Our teenager's growing independence prompts two reactions: First, we leap and click our heels. Then we get off the floor and think, "Hmmmm." We try to remember being teenagers. Our relationships with our parents were based on simple rules:

We wanted them to leave us alone a lot. They were happy to.

The more time we spent without adults watching us, the more fun we had. A lot of it was pretty risky. Especially in the summer - like now.

Now that classes and school-sponsored events have ended, she'll spend the next few months doing more without adults watching than ever before. Should we worry? Some perspective: Every day, 6,000 kids under 18 smoke their first cigarette (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids); by the age of 18, nearly 90 percent of U.S. kids have tried alcohol and about 40 percent have tried marijuana (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services); 39 percent of kids have had sexual intercourse by ninth grade, 65 percent by 12th grade (also HHS). Hide the numbers on teen car accidents and crime.

A survey last year by the National Crime Prevention Council found that among children left home alone after school, about 20 percent are in elementary school, about 30 percent are in junior high, and about half are in high school.

Just look at when teens are most likely to commit crimes or get pregnant: 3-6 p.m., when they're unsupervised after school. Look at one of the lessons emerging from welfare reform: A study last year by Northwestern University found that when parents in good welfare-to-work programs got jobs, their elementary school children got better grades and misbehaved less.

For teens, the results were the opposite: When parents went to work, smoking, drinking and school misbehavior rose, while their health and academic performance declined. The difference, say researchers: adult supervision.

Prof. Greg Duncan, who headed the study, notes that young children whose parents work are closely supervised by adults in school, day care or recreation programs. Not so with teens. He warns that teens need "adult connections" just as younger kids do. But if your teen hasn't screamed, "You're ruining my life!" lately, just say you're getting her a baby sitter for after school or that she'll spend her summer in day care. Unless she's been caught getting stoned or spraying graffiti on the post office, putting her under round-the-clock supervision makes no sense and says "I don't trust you" in neon.

We trust our daughter; she's responsible, does well in school and has good friends. But that was true of me, and if my mother heard today everything I did as a teenager, she'd try to take away my car keys. With growing chunks of my teenager's social life taking place beyond our sight, there's more that we don't know about her. Maybe we could ask her hair: Some parents buy kits to test their kids' locks for drug use. Some search their children's rooms for cigarettes, condoms and joints.

Telling our teens to phone home when they're out, or giving them cell phones so we can call them, makes us feel better, but that really doesn't tells us where they are. Satellites could solve that problem. The worldwide Global Positioning System that tracks aircraft, boats and cars also can track people. I wonder if my daughter would stay asleep while I plant the computer chip in her head? The best way to keep our teens out of trouble, as a juvenile court judge from Florida told me, is to "keep 'em busy."

Following this advice is easy -- with my 4-year-old. My 14-year-old, on the other hand, does not want us to arrange play groups for her, nor does she jump at the chance to go to an aquarium to see the pretty fish. Just try finding organized activities in the summer for teens. There are summer camps for a few weeks, but, unlike young children, your typical teen is not thrilled by daily crafts sessions, and if a good friend isn't at the same camp she'll think you've shipped her to Alcatraz. The few organized sports that dare to challenge the summer heat tend to be "select" teams, where coaches take only the top players. Alyssa did line up some volunteer work, and someday soon a summer job will partly fill her days. For now, those days are filled primarily by a social life that her parents envy.

Hours after the school let out, our teen left for five days in Ocean City with a friend and her family (whom we know). When she returned, we talked about the fun she had there. Staying connected -- knowing her friends, touching base with her friends' parents, chatting with genuine interest about her life beyond our doors -- is the best way we know how to help our teenager drift safely and slowly away from us.

Does it work? I'll know in about a decade.