Helping Kids by Being There : Early intervention could rescue the millions of U.S. adolescents at risk

The Carnegie Corp.’s report on youth paints a grim picture. Focusing on 10- to 14-year-olds, the study released last week finds that nearly half of American adolescents face a significant risk of seriously damaging their life prospects by engaging in harmful behavior. Yet the study also offers parents, teachers and others a plan of action to help troubled kids.

Groups like the Children’s Defense Fund and Children Now have documented the declining economic, social and physical health of young children. The increasingly violent, self-destructive behavior of older adolescents makes newspaper headlines. Little wonder then that kids in between--preteens and young adolescents--are also at risk. The 10-year study conducted by the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development found that young adolescents engage in more risky behavior, earlier, than ever before. One-third of 13-year-olds reported they have used drugs. Both the firearms homicide rate and suicide rate among this age group more than doubled in the past decade.

Smoking, alcohol and teen pregnancy rates are rising. At the same time, educational achievement levels have remained stagnant.

The emotional and physical changes caused by puberty make early adolescence a difficult age. But the sharp increase in the time young teens now spend without adult supervision--because of the rise in single-parent households and two-paycheck families--has made them much more vulnerable.

Yet because the behavior patterns of early adolescents are not firmly set, early intervention can help. There are no magic bullets but the study emphasizes that kids need close relationships with dependable adults in school, at home and in the community. That means more personal, if not smaller, middle schools; better after-school programs, and counseling and health-care centers at or near school. Most important, that means parents themselves must reject the idea that their children neither need nor want the parental supervision they did in elementary school. They not only want it, they need it. Will we be there?