If a child is a killer, are the parents to blame?

If you take out the hardcore people [the abusive parents], the well-intentioned people who read parenting books probably err on the side of blurring their authority and not being strong enough. My favorite example is the young parents who consistently turn statements into questions by adding "OK?" "It's time for dinner, OK?" Well, which is it, time for dinner or not?

Partly to soften their demands and because they don't want to seem too authoritarian, parents do this all the time. What they don't realize is that they're undermining their own authority and in the long run they're going to need that authority. When a child is 3 or 4 or 5, you can say, "We're going on the plane now, OK?" "We're going to Grandma's now, OK?" But when they're 14, and you say, "Be home by 9 o'clock," and you don't say, "OK?" the kids say, "Hey, who are you to tell me what to do?"

Some psychologists -- such as Lynn Ponton, author of "The Sex Lives of Teenagers" -- argue that the "teen crisis" is largely a figment of these easygoing parents' imagination. Is it possible that today's boomer parents obsessively reflect on their own risk taking, exaggerate it and project their own fears onto their children?

I look to things like the Achenbach study [which attempts to establish the percentage of American children who have psychological problems that warrant professional help]. That study doesn't ask parents questions that are as subjective and broad as "Is your child crazy," or "Does he need counseling?" It poses a very specific list of "does he/she do this? questions. There are 112 or 113 items. And using the same checklist over a period of 15 years, you come up with 10 percent of the group having enough problems to qualify for professional help in 1974. By 1989, it's 20 percent.

But isn't it possible that the rise in the number of children needing professional help can be attributed to a heightened willingness -- on the part of parents and children -- to talk about difficult emotional issues? We live in a much more confessional culture.

Actually, it's very hard to attribute the rise to a greater awareness or sensitivity because the study is very behavior specific. It asks questions like: Does your child have stomachaches? Is your child cruel to animals?

And even if it establishes that a minority of children need serious help, it's a minority of troubled kids that is big enough to be of financial, moral and political concern. And the opportunities for troubled kids to do dangerous things has increased a lot, particularly with guns and drugs in the mix.

What's the best way to help these children who are violent? If you could remove one of these socially "toxic" forces, what should it be?

I'd remove the guns, just to make things physically safer. Set Dylan [Klebold] and Eric [Harris] in Canada and they're still troubled, but the likelihood that they would have pulled off the massacre drops by a lot. I think the psychological and physical availability of guns is a very dangerous element when you add these other things -- like violent television and large schools, for instance. So finding some way to keep guns away from children would certainly be at the top of my list, making the troubled kids safer -- for everyone.

In terms of solutions, you note that an obvious aid to troubled youth would be smaller schools. What other policy ideas do you recommend?

Well, less TV is one suggestion. More involvement in structured activities is better than hanging out. Being involved in spiritually promoting activities and institutions is better than being in a purely materialistic institutional setting. Acceptance is clearly better than rejection. So I think you can come up with a whole set of things that work, that keep at least some children from becoming violent and antisocial.

Many of these approaches work best when applied to young children, but what about wilderness boot camps as a possible solution? These are extremely expensive and have come under fire for allegedly extreme treatment recently. Where else can beleaguered parents find help?

Certainly, my book stresses that parents have a first go at this at the early childhood preventive level, understanding that you can adapt to the child you have and avoid getting off track. Then there's another go at it in the elementary years, when you see the emergence of the things that are troubling. Then in adolescence, you're facing it more as a crisis. And as you rightly point out, boarding schools and wilderness camps are very expensive. But some people take out second mortgages on their houses, or totally reorganize their finances, so it isn't only affluent parents who are making use of these programs. And there are programs that are subsidized by the government, or by private organizations, so certainly one thing you can do is explore the options for getting your child a change of venue -- to stop the downward spiral.

There are also some cognitive programs that can be practiced in a child's home, and many communities have an agency that provides therapy for kids who have conduct disorder, or who are on their way to conduct disorder. So there are opportunities out there.

On a personal level, you advise parents to be sympathetic, but also to lay down boundaries. How can parents find the balance between these two contradictory forces?

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