With my older child graduating from college and my younger finishing her freshman year of college, I realize I am somewhat out of the loop with regards to what kids are like these days. Computers were new to the classroom when my kids were young; now my friend Ruth has been .booted off the Internet because her eleven-year old used "the fword." We were fortunate to just miss the absolute need for designer sneakers in elementary school, and baseball hats were still mainly worn for athletic events. It seems that children are now born with these as appendages.

My best friend, Thana, teaches second grade in the suburban New Jersey town where I raised my children, a community much like the North Shore. In a recent visit, I asked her how kids had changed in the ten years since she returned to the classroom. She had two observations, both of which disturbed me.

First, she said children are much more violent. Remember, she's talking about seven- and eight-year old Not surprisingly, Thana feels the media (particularly television and movies) is the biggest influence here.

The second assertion is somewhat harder to explain. Children expect to have a choice in everything. When Thana says, "It's time to take our your spelling books," the children are apt to say, "Oh, do we have to?" Even though the children adore Thana, there is almost a knee-jerk lack of respect for authority, along with a culture of individualism that allows the children to feel they have the right to do whatever they want, whenever they want.

As someone who spent the "summer of love" in the San Francisco area and who joined the demonstrations as the U of Wisconsin following Kent State, I used to think the button slogan Question Authority said it all. But now if I were reduced to having one slogan, it would be the Golden Rule.

I think I'll be pulling the 20-year old curriculum Freedom and Responsibility out of storage this summer. There is far too much of the former, and not nearly enough of the latter. And this is at a time when life is so much more complex than it was even a few years ago.

What to do? Several people have spoken with me about a parenting support group. If this interests you, please let me know. And I'm open to other suggestions, resources, etc. We are the grownups. Let's be sure we take our share of responsibility.