<p>I do some work at an inner city school where the famiies have serious problems, and yes, it does follow that the kids bear the brunt of the fallout. The institutuion many of the kids end up is jail, not college. Anything other than community college is unrealistic for most of them, and just getting the idea of college as a possibility later on is a giant step. The parents are a big part of the problem here, and any kid who makes it out of this environment is truly special. </p>
<p>But there are a number of kids who come from families where the efforts have been to keep it straight. And some of those kids, too get into trouble. My kids have wreaked havoc on us, and it has really been difficult to keep them in line at times. And yet in some ways we are lucky, in that so far there has not been permanent damage. Every year, whereever I live, some kid has a fatal car accident or causes one. Local papers are rife with out of control parties, underage drinking, pot, you name it. One of the scariest incident I knew about that occurred a number of years ago happened when a set of parents went to Florida for a week business/pleasure jaunt leaving teenaged son with grandmom. Well, son sneaked out of the house when grandma fell asleep, had friends drive him to the airport where he found the dad’s car. With the spare keys that he had filched, he drove the thing back home. For the entire week he drove the car, usually filled with classmates. He was ony just 16, and did not yet have a license. And his classmates all knew this. It was a big fun joke, until he crashed the car. I believe two out of three of them died with the third kid in the car seriously injured. Bad enough. But upon investigating what happened, the police and school discovered that nearly 100 kids had been in that car with that driver in that week, knowing that he had no license and how the car was obtained. They had been joyriding everywhere, and actually the police were looking for the car as there had been complaints about a crazy driver with a car full of kids driving dangerously in the area. Any number of those kids could have been in the car when it crashed. Kid was in band, and every band member had taken a turn. Plus they were sneaking out on school nights doing all kinds of things. Apparently the entire spree was documented on the computer, don’t remember how, it was before xanga and live journal, I think, or many be not. But the community was quite shaken when this occurred. </p>
<p>It is a tough climb up the ladder to adulthood but a quick slide down, and it only take an instant to make that decision to end up rock bottom. And no kid or family is exempt. Any parent who is not aware of this, is in denial. Not saying every kid will take the slide, just saying he could regardless of upbringing, values, etc. And bad luck could make the mistake in judgement, the chance taken into a catastrophe.</p>