‘Kids Go to the People With Power’

There’s absolutely no research evidence that any socio-economic, racial or gender group is immune from developing violent behavior. Unsupervised adolescents with access to guns and under the influence of mind-altering or behavior-uninhibiting substances, is a recipe for disaster regardless of the package in which it comes.

Historically, kids go to the people with power around them. They see the people who are making money, who have status, who have access to the things interesting and intriguing to an adolescent and that’s who they gravitate toward.

If you put that in the context of being an adolescent who’s trying to form identity and trying on different parts of identity that they’re seeing around them, then they’re going to engage in risky behavior and ultimately that will be reinforcing because it gives them power.

[The best protection] is better supervision and parents not assuming that if their kids are out, they’re OK.

Parents need to know who they’re with, who those people are, where they’re going and when they’re going to be back. Although this isn’t an absolute safeguard, it’s really important. The other important thing is to have open communication--early on--about peer pressure, making decisions, acknowledging the thrill of the fun, the thrill and the attraction of people who do dangerous things and about the consequences.

Parents forget to acknowledge that and so kids just hear “no’. They don’t hear that they’re going to be attracted to these things and need to have a set of coping mechanisms for dealing with that natural attraction.