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Teen Advocacy

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation. -- Pearl S. Buck

Many years ago I started collecting my personal observations of how children and teens are treated in a file called Child Advocacy. Today I decided I needed to start a page more specifically for teens.

I have many articles collected under the page groups of teen suicide and cutting/self-injury, but there are also many articles about the laws regarding teens which don't fit exactly under either group.

Newest Item http://www.youthrights.org/issues/voting-age/top-ten-reasons-to-lower-the-voting-age/

The Case Against Adolescence - Robert Epstein

Stop Calling Teenagers Childen | Stop Calling Teens "Kids"

Teen Prison

Teens, Internet and Emotional Neglect

Teens, Rights, Needs, Laws and the Internet

Teenagers Being Forced to Live with Their Legal Parents

A Father's Abuse of Power

Teen Depression and the Internet - Confusing Cause and Effect

Legal Ways of Hurting Children and Teens

Why Don’t Students Like School? / School is Prison - Peter Gray, Boston College

Grace Llewellyn

Mario (Ecuador) --- Daniela Argentina

Is Home A Safe Place

Why Social Workers Don't Do More To Help Teens

Well, That Shouldn't Matter - A mother disregards her teen daughter's feelings

Petition to Lower Age of Legal Adulthood

CC and What She Has Been Told About Cause and Effect

Summary of a Dr. Phil Show -Shannon, sent to Mexico reform camp.

I'm Fine - It Doesn't Matter - Parents of depressed teens their lives don't matter

Age Discrimination

From the news

-- New NBA age limit of 20?

http://www.youthrights.net/index.php?title=Birthrights xx check again

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Stop Calling Teenagers Children

For a long time it has bothered me that so many people refer to teenagers as "children." Children and teenagers are very different, for example they have very different needs. Teenagers have much more need for freedom and much less for protection and security than children. Today I decided to search Google and found these resultsSearch results for "stop calling teenagers children" - Feb 2012

5 results (0.18 seconds)

Here are four of the five results....

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Something you need to come to grips with... Children are not teenagers. You have to stop calling teenagers children

-

Also, let's stop calling teenagers children. They're not. A 16 year old has more in common with a 35 year old than he/she does with a 5 year old.

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Is there any chance we can stop calling teenagers "children"? Does it really make sense to lump 8 year olds and 17 year olds together

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And let's stop calling teenagers children because that doesn't help them actually GROW UP AND MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS!

====

Searching "not call teenagers children"

7 results

As both a reader of YA and a teenager who just got called a child (for the love of God, do not call teenagers children

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...since I do not call teenagers children

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The Guardian lists the number of Palestinian minors (I will not call teenagers children when teenagers are committing terrorist attacks)

--

Then I tried "teenagers are not children" and found

About 16,800 results (0.20 seconds)

--

Feb 2012

 
Stop Calling Teens "Kids"

Google search results

"stop calling teenagers kids" - 4 results

"stop calling teens kids" - 0 results

This is from someone who attended a conference for youth leaders.

One of the more provocative statements for me was Dr. Robert Epstein’s encouragement to stop calling teenagers “kids”. As as a scholar, teacher, and the author of Teen 2.0, Dr. Epstein is deeply concerned about how our culture minimizes the competencies and responsibilities for teenagers. He asked the 2,000 leaders gathered in San Diego to come up with a different phrase for teenagers than “kids”. He said something to the effect of (my paraphrase):  “Kids are goats before they hit puberty. After goats hit puberty, we don’t call them kids anymore; we call them goats. We need to stop calling humans who have hit puberty the term that is equated with the pre-pubescent form of a goat.”

 
Links

http://www.teenadvocatesusa.org/ - Raising awareness of private, prison-like "troubled-teen" facilities.

 
New NBA age limit of 20?

The NBA is the National Basketball Association in the USA. Here is a news clip about their plans to raise the age of playing basketball professionally, ie getting paid, to over 18. My comment about it is below.

As playing in the NBA is employment -- albeit a dream job -- eighteen year olds are deprived of their potential employment and are thus victims of age discrimination. In New York, for example, the New York State Human Rights Law prohibits employers from refusing to hire or employ an “individual eighteen years of age or older… because of such individual’s age.” The NBA, and its players’ union, are subject to compliance with all New York employment laws, as well as other state laws which prohibit discrimination based on age.

So discriminating against those under 18 is still perfectly ok....? S. Hein

 
According to the book, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, when it was still legal to own slaves in the United States, no contract with a slave was "legally binding; for, according to Southern laws, a slave, being property, can hold no property.

In other words, slaves had no property rights. Nigel Latta reminds parents that their children also have no property rights.

If they don't go [to bed], you can take things away from them. In
fact, you can take everything away. You can strip their room of every
last thing but the mattress, and not give those things back until you
see some sustained compliance.


You have to remember that your child has no form of independent
income, no form of independent transport, and no property rights. They
have only what you give them. If you are determined, you can make that
stubborn little person's life a desolate and boring place to be.

-The Politically Incorrect Parenting Book - Chapter 17
Nigel Latta