Falling In

 

The Mall in Columbia made an official announcement this week that they will be instituting new entry restrictions for teens at the 52 year old property. 

The Mall in Columbia announced Thursday that youth must be chaperoned by adults after reports of unruly behavior at the shopping center. The "parental guidance required" rule will take effect on March 31. Any visitors under 18 will need to be accompanied by a parent or supervising adult who is at least 21 years old after 4 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, the mall said. During those hours, officers will be present to check the IDs of young visitors. 

If I were the kind of person who had the patience to identify, document, and sort social media responses to this news I think there would be some interesting things to learn. I can tell you a significant chunk of them lean racist. I worry that the implementation of this new policy will lean the same way.

Then we have an interesting divergence of opinion among adults who grew up hanging out at the mall themselves. There are some who remember those years fondly and don’t think that experience should be taken away from current teens. Then there are those who remember how incredibly well-behaved they and their friends were at the mall and look at today’s young people and say, “Throw ‘em out!”

As for me, I keep thinking about this quote from the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. - - Desmond Tutu

If teens are getting into trouble at the Mall, or any place locally, for that matter, simply reacting to a crisis is not enough. I’m thrilled with the summer programs for young people announced by country government. I’m not thrilled with the new policy at the Mall. But both are reactions. 

I am inclined to agree with those who are advocating for more local teen centers where kids can gather and hang out and be who they are. There has to be a careful balance between safe places and fun activities with the need for kids of this age to exercise independence and make their own choices. And it has to be easy for kids to get there, and affordable.

Developmentally they are going to be doing inexplicably goofball sorts of things. That’s a given. Ask teachers who teach this age level. They could tell you some stories. (But they won’t, because that would be unprofessional.)

How do we go upstream and find out where teens are falling in the river? If we don’t do that we will always be in a position of reacting. 

What’s happening at the mall seems to me to have a lot to do with boundaries. There are certain behavioral lines that have been crossed which made patrons, business owners, and mall management feel unsafe. 

How are we teaching boundaries? If some kids just don’t “get it” how can we do a better job? Also, are those the same kids who are likely to be at risk for other self-harming behavior? It’s easy to say “let’s just get rid of the problem.” But just because you are less likely to see it at the Mall doesn’t mean it will go away. It will just go somewhere else. 

If what we see at the Mall is a symptom of a larger problem, then the solution has to be deeper than symptomatic treatment. And it certainly makes no sense to single out all people of a certain age group as a way of addressing it. It flies in the face of everything we know about using logical consequences to respond to behavior.

If we want to make a lasting difference with our kids, it will take some long term investment in their lives and support for them as they develop. 

How to fix the folks making racist assumptions on Facebook? That’s another story altogether.

Post Script: I can’t get over the feeling that the behaviors deemed as unacceptable would be not be described as dangerous if the kids were white.