Even Tougher Love

By SANDY BANKS

Jan. 29, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

You can’t get your navel pierced without a note from your mother . . . who just might ask you for a urine sample on your way out the door.

Your school makes you wear uniforms--no more cool baggy pants or cute baby-Ts. And cutting class might land you in jail.

The police order you off the streets by 10 p.m., but when you plop down in front of the TV at home, you discover your dad has locked you out of MTV.

So how’s a kid supposed to have fun these days, when their parents--those very folks who once touted “Free love” and “Power to the people”--are embracing Big Brother, putting the kibosh on youthful adventure.

“I think it’s a kind of desperation” that has led to the current spate of restrictive legislation, said Van Nuys psychologist Peter Fisk. “I see a lot of parents who just don’t feel they have control over the upbringing of their kids, so they may be willing to say, ‘I’m going to have the government step in.’ ”

Consider, if you will:

* An Antelope Valley state assemblyman has introduced legislation that would make it illegal to pierce a minor without the written permission of a parent or guardian. No more, “Hey Ma, surprise! Check out my nose ring.”

* Parents will soon be able to purchase over-the-counter drug-testing kits, enabling them to check their children for illegal drug use. The FDA approved the first kits last week.

* Federal efforts are underway to keep cigarettes out of teenagers’ hands by banning their sale in vending machines and cracking down on store sales to minors.

* Parents and lawmakers are pushing the television industry to adopt a rating system and accept use of the so-called V-chip, which would allow parents to auto matically block out programs they find objectionable.

* Schools are also turning the screws, bringing back dress codes tossed out 25 years ago, when today’s parents were teens. Some have gone further, requiring student uniforms. And locker raids, random searches, undercover drug stings and dope-sniffing dogs are now a fact of campus life.

* Cities are enforcing curfew and truancy laws like never before, locking up kids who are on the street during school hours or after 10 p.m.

What’s happening here?

Are parents so alarmed and confounded by the dangers facing teenagers that they’re prudently enlisting all the help they can get to keep their children safe?

Or are they throwing up their hands at a generation rendered out of control by parental neglect, then asking the state to step in and discipline them instead?

“I think there are far greater risks out there today than there have ever been,” says Encino psychologist Veronica Thomas, who counsels families in distress. “Some of this is just a recognition of that.

“But there is also the risk of trying to over-control adolescence, which will create either a zombie or an overly rebellious kid who’s likely to get into more trouble.”

In fact, some say adolescence has always been--and should be--a time of testing limits: of blue Mohawks and pierced nostrils, of late-night parties and sneaked smokes. It’s the nature of teenagers to try to find a way around the rules, whatever those rules are.

“I can’t speak for the kinds of fears and concerns that parents may have, but I think as a practical matter, it’s impossible to shelter young people from the extremes of the culture. They’re going to be automatically attracted to that, whether parents say they should or they shouldn’t,” said Jess Bravin, a UC Berkeley law student from West Los Angeles, who represents University of California students on the Board of Regents.

Children subjected to drug tests by their parents and searches by their teachers are likely to feel angry and betrayed, rather than valued and protected--attitudes that do little to foster either closeness or respect.

Taft High senior Jenna Brager said being asked by her parents to take a drug test would be “like your parents looking through your stuff when you’re gone.”

And Thomas, the therapist, recalls when her daughter was searched by officials at Chatsworth High as part of the school’s practice of conducting random checks for drugs and weapons. “She knew it was for her protection, so she cooperated,” Thomas said. “But it made her really angry because it was such a violation of her privacy.”

That is why “these kind of cumbersome legal mechanisms that parents adopt to control young people [are] doomed to fail,” Bravin said. “It’s really a question of hearts and minds, not searches and curfews, chips and handcuffs.”

But preparing children’s hearts and minds is a process that must begin early in childhood, experts say, and the rhythm of life today--with parents working long hours and children busy with after-school activities, computer games and television--leaves little room for heart-to-heart talks.

Studies show that parents spend less time with their children than a generation ago--not enough, many counselors say, to build the kind of relationship that gives parents confidence in their ability to enforce reasonable limits. And children, swinging between too many planned activities and too few, are having trouble learning to balance freedom with responsibility.

“Parents are not around as much and they’re so stressed out that they’re not as tuned in as they need to be. So kids are unsupervised, not just physically, but emotionally,” said Thomas. “That means kids have a lot more power today,” because they don’t grow up under their parents’ thumbs.

The current trend toward legislating youthful behavior seems, in part, an effort to tip the balance of power back toward parents and authority figures.

For many parents, that trend is a mixed blessing with its own set of challenges.

“I can see the value in having these kind of laws,” said Kimberly Kelly, a Northridge mother of two daughters, ages 11 and 7. “The technology has presented us with tools that we didn’t have before, and that’s good.

“But I would hate to find myself in the position where I would actually consider buying a drug test to use on my daughter because I couldn’t trust her. I can’t help feeling that if you’re at that point, it’s already too late. . . . You’ve already failed.”

Failed, at least, to achieve what you once vowed you’d have with your children--a relationship built on love, trust and respect, in which you are a mentor and friend, role model and confidant.

But the truth is, there is no foolproof recipe for growing kids into well-adjusted adults; no set of rules can protect from failure or guarantee success. Raising children, says therapist Thomas, is “the most difficult thing you can do in life,” and it often requires equal measures of firmness and flexibility and yields both heartache and joy.

While we’ve become accustomed to shortcuts and quick fixes, there is no equivalent to the automatic bread machine for making people.

We may be able to produce bread these days without the hard work of kneading and shaping and waiting for it to rise. But the job of raising children cannot be rushed or relinquished.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Reining in Our Youth

* Body-piercing restrictions

* Drug tests

* School uniforms

* Curfew enforcement

* Truancy sweeps

* V-chips

* Drug-sniffing dogs