I cannot avoid this any longer. In my own life, and in the lives of other people I know, a parent or guardian's causal activism is, perhaps unwittingly, but definitely unwillingly, foisted upon an adolescent. News flash; adolescents, particularly adolescent boys, don't give two sh*ts about your causes. They care about other adolescents, and (these days,) computers, video games, probably girls, if that happens to be their orientation....and there is so much going on inside their bodies, that, well, I don't really wonder at a lot of the bad behavior I see in middle schools. It irritates the sh*t out of me, don't get me wrong; but if teenagers aren't allowed to get enough sleep, and if you can't bend a little on your personal integrity to give them a little leeway, a little inkling that you really DO understand, or at least CARE about their situation, well, the consequences are not on me. Although I must say this out loud, and, mom, I don't mean it in the wrong way, things like riding to Washington D.C. non-stop with a bunch of sweaty, half-in-the-bag feminists was not fun. I probably resented it, and your causes, for a long time, because I didn't feel like *I* was being paid attention to. I'm all grown-up now, and I'm sorry if this seems offensive to you, but there it is. I also have stacks of information from my Master's pursuit to say that, no, a teenager's brain is nothing like an adult's even if their bodies may trick you into thinking otherwise. Oh, and by the way; your kids are probably NOT all that bad comparatively speaking. I've subbed at Washtenaw Juvenile Correctional; I've seen the hard cases; very few of the kids I've seen outside the walls are there; if they are, they've been identified. Their problems are things like absent fathers, parents with minimal parenting skills or substance abuse issues. Yours are probably just kids. They're not anything like we were, and that's probably another problem. No matter what, the world is not the same as it's ever been before. I have seen things, and youth to hopeful for, and many that will probably be awesome people, if they were just given the chance to grow up in a semi-stable environment, with some semblance that their needs took some precedence over yours. If not.....it's gonna be a long ride all around.