Teens Hanging Out in Franklin Park

Peter Hartlaub, the wonderfully talented pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of the paper's "The Poop" Baby Blog has written today about his irritation with apparently bored teens hanging out in the early afternoon on what he assumes was a school day in Alameda's Franklin Park.

As the mother of three children (all now young adults) who frequented that park through their growing up years, I am in a position to see all sides of the issue.

Parents of young kids have it rough enough without having to fight for their child's playground equipment time with teenagers. 

On the other hand, what were these teens really hurting and couldn't this Dad have gently shooed them off the equipment, asking them to just move along? 

I agree the teen's language, as described by the Dad, was inappropriate, but couldn't the Dad have nicely asked them to tone it down?

I also wonder if these teens were actually AWOL from school or whether they attend a school that happened to have an early release time that day or if they were home-schooled? Why assume they were truant?

If I had encountered these kids and wanted them to get off the play equipment so my small child could play I would have just put on my Mommy hat and walked over and said in an authoritative but friendly tone, "Hey, guys, can you get off for awhile and let my little one play?"

That kind of request almost always works, and if it doesn't, then you always have the option of moving to another area of the park and chalking it up to one of life's unpleasant inconveniences.

But, maybe that's just me - and maybe it is because I have the advantage of having raised three teens. I know that sometimes even teens need to have adults in the "village" help them get a clue when they're out of line.

In fact, when my kids were teens we fellow parents kind of had an informal agreement if we saw one of our youngsters behaving like an idiot around town or doing something unsafe (like driving wildly, not wearing a bike helmet, being rude to the point it could get them in trouble, etc..) we would call them on their behavior in the moment. In other words, we would act like the parents we were to protect someone else's child from harm.

Chronicle readers who commented on the blog, seem to be siding with the article's author. What do you think?