Earlier today I got an interesting e-mail from a friend, the mother of a 12-year old girl: "I had a crazy experience last night watching all the teenagers that hang in front of PS 321 throwing up, being picked up in ambulances, and generally misbehaving. It really did me in. A friend and I were chatting about what we could do. I’m even thinking about organizing some kind of neighborhood meeting. I don’t know – it just really got to me."
My husband and I were eating dinner at Miracle Grill around the same time so we caught the very tail end of the incident my friend is talking about. We asked someone what happened and he said, "Some kids had too much to drink." That really got to me too. It got me good and scared for all of our children.
I know that a lot of parents are concerned about their tweens and teens. There do seem to be a lot of kids smoking, drinking and doing god knows what right out there on Seventh Avenue. Many of us are especially nervous because we did similar stuff when we were in high school and we’re scared out of our wits to go through it with our own children.
My friend’s idea: to have a community meeting seems like a good plan. In my mind, it’s not a clean up the neighborhood kind of meeting but a way to figure out how to really address the issues these kids are facing. I think the teens and tweens should be part of the meeting along with their parents and it should feel like a brainstorming session and not a reprimand. Maybe there’s some way we can prevent our kids from going down a road that leads to throwing up, being picked up in ambulances, and generally misbehaving.
What do YOU think?
Yours from Brooklyn,
OTBKB
A community center is a great idea – you are so right. It’s true these kids have nowhere to go. This is an idea worth mulling over – it would be great to have a community meeting about it – with the kids.
I think this kind of stuff happens more than it should because there aren’t enough places for these kids to hang out, to call their own. I know this sounds ridiculous in a place like NYC, but the truth is that many establishments — coffe houses, etc, discourage big groups of kids from entering, hanging out, etc. I think a good community center with movies, a cafe, a place for garage bands to perform, goings-on, and space to just hang — away from parents and other pesky authority figures — would go a long way toward preventing the kind of excess you saw in the 321 playground the other night. How about the building on the corner of 2nd Street and 7th Ave.? Or the abandoned house next to Carvel?