"Teen-Agers"

By
Richard Bemm

WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TRYING to do?", questioned the police officer. "You teens are all the same — always causing trouble and messing things up. Why don't you grow up?"

Does this sound familiar either as a conversation you have heard before or thoughts you have had concerning the teenagers of today? Why does this age group have a reputation for being disorderly and impossible to manage?

First of all, this attitude is not new. Every generation has had similar ill thoughts toward teenagers and a similar lack of success in dealing with them. The feeling generated by adults seems to be that there is no solution and that they may as well live with the problem and hope they are not affected. Yet they are affected because these youths are our future leaders. Therefore, it is time we begin to listen and understand what is being related to us.

It is rather ironic that before a young person reaches high school age, he is led and instructed by parents and society without much preparation for handling situations on his own. Yet when he becomes fifteen or sixteen, he is expected to accept certain adult responsibilities, when in fact, there has not been an adequate amount of training. With this confusing set of rules, how can the players be expected to be anything more than confused themselves?

Where do community leaders fit in then? Park and Recreation agencies more than any other organization are supposedly equipped with a staff whose main interest is people. They deal with them every day; providing them with a gamut of programs ranging from those for preschoolers to senior citizens. But these programs do not attract the teens who "hang around" the shopping center or McDonalds without a place to go or to "do their thing". We are "copping out" if we neglect to involve them by saying, they don't want to participate or that we provide them with plenty of activities but they are not interested. It may be true that they are not interested in organized recreation, but we cannot stop there. Now is the time to get out from behind the desks and hit the hang-out spots; discover this age group and their needs. This has to be done on their home ground. You cannot build a fully equipped center and expect to program teens through it. This may work for a period and it may be successful for some districts, but many park districts have found that the success is not permanent. So the answer seems to be in reaching out with an honest interest and concern.

Find out from your teens what the going thing is. Help them learn to help themselves by getting involved. They do not want handouts, they want to prove themselves capable of handling responsibility. They need the opportunity and guidance the professional staff can give them, and it looks as though the recreator had better make the move because other community organizations are not.

So, recreators use your knowledge in understanding people and their basic human needs and apply it to the teen-agers who deserve our time and interest.

Richard Bemm is Superintendent of Recreation for the Dundee Township Park District.

Illinois Parks and Recreation 16 January/February, 1972