What to tell the Adolescents

When they are acting their age:

You haven't myelinated the prefrontal cortex yet.

Link.

Paris: On French Parents and their Children

We spent a fair amount of the day in the company of French parents and their children--all of them strangers to us but all the more instructive thereby as an opportunity for observation.  There were two venues--one a fairly upscale restaurant peopled by Parisian families in Sunday dinner mode.  The other was the marionette theatre in the Luxembourg Gardens.

The marionette show was programmed for children, so no surprise we'd find a lot of kids there.  The restaurant--just say it seemed as if there were some sort of rule that you couldn't enjoy a Sunday dinner with your kinfolks unless you brought along s selection of five-to-eight year olds.  Still the main point is that in each place, the kids were fine. They did kid things: they giggled; they squirmed; they ordered hot dogs and (French?) fried potatoes.  But not one of them threw a tantrum, or otherwise morphed into a public nuisance. The attitude throughout was one of easy conviviality.

All of which confirms a prejudice of mine: the French are at their most attractive when dealing with their kids.  We all know that the English bully their kids (or simply ship them out, which may be the same); the Italians are bullied by theirs (remember the punch line, "he thinks she's a virgin and she thinks he's God).  But the French seem to have figured out how to develop just the right kind of rapport to keep the kids engaged and yet not out of line.  My friend Rusty asks: they treat them like adults?  No, not exactly. They treat them like kids, but like kids who deserve to be taken seriously.  My friend Kenny used to say that all he knew about life  he learned in kindergarten, although that he learned it as a teacher, not a student.  Which is, he said, they want attention, security and reassurance.  Which amounts, perhaps, to saying that you treat them like adults who happen to be kids.

It's an odd kind of irony when you consider how beastly the French can be to each other in moments of national crisis (except, in fairness, they really don't seem to have had a moment of national crisis for quite some time).  But it's a start.  And it makes for a pleasant ambiance in which to idle away a Sunday.  

Ah, Those were the Days!

Instill the little rascals with a bit of moral fibre!:

"[M]ost of the city's newsboys took their earnings home to help support their families.  But many newsboys were orphans or runaways who lived on the streets.  Owen  Kildare was seven years old when, in 1871, his stepfather kicked him out of their Catherine Street home.  Kildare went to Park Row (where most of the city's newspapers had their offices), took up with a gang of newsboys who slept on the streets, and soon began selling newspapers himself.  During the summer, these waifs slept in City Hall Park, on courthouse steps, or in col boxes under building stairwells.  In the winter, they huddled over steam grate outside the newspaper pressrooms or in the doorways of unlocked buildings.

Despite these hardships, the newsboys relished their freedom and independence.  On a typical day, they bought their morning papers at the  crack of dawn and worked until they had exhausted their supply, usually around nine o'clock.   They would then eat breakfast at an inexpensive restaurant, and afterward go to a ferry terminal hoping to earn tips carrying passengers' packages to the hacks and omnibuses.  After their midday dinner, newsboys purchased their supply of afternoon papers and sold them into the evening.  Many then went to the working-class theaters on the Bowery or Chatham Street, after which they could often be found at midnight in a "'coffee and cake' cellar" taking their supper, smoking a cigar, or sipping a cup of coffee.

--Tyler Anbinder, Five Points 131-2 (2001) 

Children Serving Life Without Parole

Land of the Free, Redux:

Dozens of Children in US Face Life in U.S. Prisons

Link

The U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for minors in 2005 but 19 states permit "life-means-life" sentences for those under 18, according to a study by the Equal Justice Initiative

In all, 2,225 people are sentenced to die in U.S. prisons for crimes they committed as minors and 73 of them were aged 13 and 14 at the time of the crime, according to the group, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama.

Elsewhere in the world, life sentences with no chance of parole are rare for underage offenders. Human Rights Watch estimates that only 12 people outside the United States face such sentences.

…Not all those serving life-means-life sentences for crimes committed as minors are convicted killers.

Antonio Nunez was convicted of multiple counts of attempted murder and also aggravated kidnapping and sentenced to life without parole for his role in a kidnap, police chase and shootout in April, 2001, in which nobody was injured.

Nunez, aged 14 at the time of the crime, grew up in a part of Los Angeles where gang activity was common. In 2000, he was wounded and his brother killed in a gang-related shooting.