Article August 28, 2000 Issue

Terrible teens? Not so

"She ran with 'the fast crowd.'"

Robin E. Hoagland

It was a tough issue. Several friends and I were discussing the negative influence a girl was having on one of their daughters. She was said to be deceitful, unsupervised, dangerously experimental. She ran with "the fast crowd." And she was not yet twelve years old.

We recognized the difficult circumstances surrounding this child's behavior—a broken home as well as a parent with a reputed drinking problem. But my friend, a conscientious mother, was most concerned about protecting her own child. She planned to limit her daughter's contact with this girl, and we agreed that this seemed a wise course of action.

As I drove home, however, I remained troubled—as I know we all did. I knew I was missing something of vital importance.

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