
All Children Should Be Delinquents - jmgrosen
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/opinion/sunday/all-children-should-be-delinquents.html
======
e40
I believe it's the guilt of those things we did as children that makes us such
restrictive parents. We realize that the things we did were dangerous and we
don't want that for our kids.

Also, back then was a different time. You could do stuff like that, get
caught, and not pay a huge price. Now, that's not true, in the US, at least.
The climate is one of zero tolerance for stuff mentioned in the article.
Example: some kids in the middle school my son goes to played a prank in the
computer lab: they swapped a bunch of keys of some of the keyboards. The
result? They were banned _for life_ from using computers in the school
district (yes, this would follow them to high school). A complete over
reaction, but the norm for punishment in the US.

~~~
copperx
I spent my teenage years in a third-world country. I would be convicted of the
following if I had spent those years in the US:

1) Trespassing private property

2) Theft

3) Willful and malicious destruction of property

4) Arson

5) Indecent exposure

6) Consensual rape (my girlfriend was 2 years younger than me)

7) Driving under the influence

I consider myself a highly moral individual, and some people consider me the
most level-headed and patient person around.

I would argue that being a vandal in your teenage years may have a positive
impact on the rest of the life of some people. You have to be smart about it
and try not to hurt you or anyone else too much in the process.

~~~
rtpg
> You have to be smart about it and try not to hurt you or anyone else too
> much in the process.

So theft, destruction of property, driving under the influence, and arson are
victimless crimes?

Maybe I'm a stickler for rule of law but when you start fucking with other
people's stuff, that's not cool (understatement). Especially if it's just
because you're bored.

~~~
x1798DE
Although I'm sympathetic to your general view, driving under the influence is
in fact a victimless crime. If the crime were "causing damage or injury as a
result of driving under the influence", then it would have a victim, but
getting drunk then driving somewhere and not hurting anyone is still a crime,
but has no victim.

You could say you're increasing the risk for everyone else, but the same can
be said for use of PCP or meth or some drug that correlates with higher rates
of violent crimes, and those are acknowledged to be victimless crimes.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its a sliding scale. What's the chance of this 'victimless crime' turning into
a real one? And that ranges from property damage to manslaughter to killing
whole families.

There's a risk/reward analysis at work here, an driving under the influence
has had a very, very bad track record.

~~~
x1798DE
Well it just is a victimless crime is all. Clearly the author of the parent
post didn't hurt anyone, so it had no victim.

It's probably not worth it to get into it, but I think I'd prefer a situation
where you don't get punished for "pre-crime" like driving under the influence,
but you get punished extra harshly for anything that causes damage as a result
of something like that. So crash into a pole when sober, pay a fine. Crash
into a pole when drunk, fine plus 3 months in jail. That sort of thing.
Similarly you can imagine a lot of the outrage about jaywalking would go away
if jaywalking were legal everywhere, but causing an accident or traffic jam
while jaywalking would carry a hefty fine. This allows people to make local
risk assessment decisions for which they are taking responsibility (it's 2 AM
and there are no cars around - is it worth it to cross now knowing that if I
do end up causing an accident or traffic jam it'll cost me $500?). Not saying
it's a perfect system, but it seems like a start in addressing the legitimate
concerns people have about victimless crimes.

~~~
rtpg
Crash into a pedestrian, and you go to jail for 3 extra months?

I am biased because I lost a parent to this, but unlike, say, smoking weed in
your house, driving under the influence has a near 100% chance of endangering
people around you. Just like how people need a license to drive a car,it's not
unreasonable to ask you to not be so selfish as to endanger those around you
just because you got wasted and want to drive home in your 3 ton machine.

~~~
x1798DE
I was using crashing into a pole because it's something where you can see
where you could plausibly have a huge disparity in sentencing outcomes in
relative terms (there are always going to be thorny issues when you kill
someone because even if you weren't driving drunk they're going to be picking
apart all the different fault and negligence aspects anyway). For killing a
pedestrian, you'd presumably make it so that killing someone while driving
under the influence is presumptively negligent homicide as opposed to
something like vehicular manslaughter.

Additionally, it's disingenuous to say there's a "near 100% chance of
endangering people around you". That's saying that there's a 100% chance that
you've increased the risk by some amount. There's nothing even close to a 100%
chance that you will actually do any _damage_ to people around you, or crash.
According to [1] there are 112 million self-reported episodes of impaired
driving, and 1.4 million arrests, but 10,000 deaths. Obviously these are not
hard numbers, but my guess is that driving under the influence likely triples
or quadruples an existing (small) risk that you would kill or harm someone.
That's not a trivial thing, but it would still mean that in the vast majority
of cases, if you drive under the influence, everyone gets home safe.

And in any case, _I 'm not in favor of people driving under the influence_.
Similarly I don't think people should drive while tired (it's a similar rate
of impairment), but the simple fact is that these crimes _by themselves_ don't
have victims, they are just occasionally the cause of actions which _do_ have
victims. You can certainly make the case that drunk driving should be against
the law for any number of reasons, but that's a separate issue as to whether
that crime actually has a victim.

1\.
[http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impai...](http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impaired-
drv_factsheet.html)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Don't trivialize those 10,000 deaths. That's one in 11,000 drunk-driving
episodes. Deaths, not some euphemistic small risk. Easily worth trying to
mitigate. Absolutely makes it worth classifying out of the 'victimless crime'
category.

~~~
x1798DE
For one thing I'm not trivializing them, I'm saying that saying that "100% of
the time you are endangering people" is disingenuous considering there's only
a 0.01% that anyone actually dies if you drive under the influence. There's
not a whole lot to offer in the "benefits" column of drunk driving, so it's
probably not reasonable even for fairly small increases of risk anyway.

And no, it does not make it worth classifying "out of the victimless crime"
category, because victimless is not a matter of degree, it's a question of
whether or not there is an aggrieved party. Any time there's an accident as a
result of drunk driving, then it's got a victim. Otherwise there are only
"potential" victims.

Again, I think it's a behavior that needs to be discouraged, because it forces
people not capturing any of the benefit (the drinking, the convenience of
being able to take your own car afterwards) to assume some of the risk (the
chance that a drunk driver will harm them or their property). I'm just saying
that driving drunk _by itself_ doesn't inherently have a victim.

------
krrishd
As a student who's followed the rules and essentially played by the book for
pretty much my whole life, part of me regrets not doing stuff that defies
norm, but another part of me is scared to think what I would look like if I
got caught up in the 'wrong' things and never got interested in something
useful.

I'd say this article is not necessarily the biggest advocate for delinquency,
rather, it advocates for self-discovery in children, which is rare in modern
parenting and educational systems. Sometimes this 'self-discovery' can lead to
incidents of delinquency, but I think it's best to do dumb stuff young so you
learn bad from good based on experience.

~~~
PavlovsCat
This may not exactly be delinquency, but as kids I and a friend _loved_ to
explore construction sites on weekends. We never did anything dangerous
really, it was just highly fascinating. But as we grew older, people who saw
us started threatening to call the police, assuming we might be stealing
something :( So in hindsight, I do wish we had used that "window of
opportunity" even more. I have no idea how I would feel about my own children,
should I have those; but we personally weren't reckless, stupid or malicious
about it, just very curious and creative. The things you can get away with as
a child, used well, can be a beautiful thing ^^ Not that we did anything great
or learned anything useful, but it sure beat watching TV.

~~~
rdtsc
> but as kids I and a friend loved to explore construction sites on weekends.

Hehe that reminds me I did that with my dad, once. Looking back it was very
dangerous but it was great fun. It was a new site for a 9 story residential
building right next to ours. Once we thought we'd get caught by the guard, as
we heard steps, so we hid, and it turns out it was some other people also
exploring the site.

Another thing we did was climb a parachute training tower, and also hopped on
a slow moving cargo train to hitch a 3 km ride towards my grandparents' house.

Aside from that (which if anyone knows me would totally uncharacteristic of
me, but I guess it was more my dad than me), I was a pretty awkward nerd that
liked tinkering with electronics (and later computers) and had only a few
friends.

~~~
keithpeter
Do you think it might be that your father was trying to toughen you up a bit?
Get you out and playing with the other teenagers?

Parents of nerds sometimes get worried like that. Which is also a 'self-
determination' type issue just as much as raucous behaviour.

~~~
rdtsc
> Do you think it might be that your father was trying to toughen you up a
> bit?

Who knows, it is possible. It was a fun thing to do, I look at it as more of a
"hey let's do a crazy thing together" and one of the things I remember fondly.

> Parents of nerds sometimes get worried like that.

He was also a bit if nerd, and I think how I said "people would be surprised
to hear I did those things" they would not a lot less surprised to find out my
dad did those with me as well.

------
qdog
Seems to be a meme that "back in my day kids just played and that was good!"
Yeah, sure I played with Lawn Darts that were basically 12" long pieces of
flying death, but I'm pretty sure I was lucky not to get injured. I try and
get my son off the computer to do things, but I feel all these articles are
more anecdotal than factual. I let my son fire of fireworks and what have you,
but having had to rush the neighbor's kid "who doesn't get much supervision"
to the hospital, I can say there is no invulnerability shield around children.
They should play and have some risks, but as I was recounting just yesterday
how I engulfed my childhood best friend in a giant fireball from a a gasoline
fire, I was thinking maybe there are some things kids don't need to be
doing...

~~~
A_COMPUTER
You're right, you were lucky. Kids who do stuff sometimes die. Life is a
deeply, profoundly unfair thing, in ways that cannot be fixed. If you want to
have a life worth living, you have to do stuff, but that entails risk that
something terrible might happen. I was tempted to say "but that doesn't mean
you should take stupid risks like playing with gasoline" but then I realized
even that was wrong. We took away chemistry sets and only later did somebody
ask a bunch of scientists what got them interested in science, and it seems
like quite a few of them say things like "burning/blowing stuff up."

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.html)

"Vint Cerf – who became one of the architects of the Internet – spent months
blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets. Growing up in
Colorado, David Packard – the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard – concocted
new recipes for gunpowder. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about his
adolescent love affair with “stinks and bangs” in Uncle Tungsten: Memories of
a Chemical Boyhood. “There’s no question that stinks and bangs and crystals
and colors are what drew kids – particularly boys – to science,” says Roald
Hoffmann of Cornell University, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1981.
“Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been legislated out.”"

Maybe you don't get these great people if you remove their freedom to explore
in their formative years. But that freedom also meant a bunch of kids blew
their hands off or worse, and if your kid dies in a gasoline accident, it's
your fault as a parent and nobody says "well he just wanted his kid to be
Nobel Prize material, valiant effort." It's unfair, but reality doesn't care.
All you can possibly change is the societal attitude, not the actual fact that
freedom means some unsupervised kids always are gonna die and it might be
yours.

------
mjfl
I was very bookish as a child, and rarely did anything quite as exciting as
the author describes, so I have a hard time relating. I also wonder if the
author would look down on me for that, as the more "adventurous" kids did when
I was a child.

~~~
kstenerud
It's about the FREEDOM to do it. Whether you actually do it or not is
irrelevant.

------
tokenadult
In some ways, the most startling thing about this essay is the work
affiliation of its author: "John Beckman is an English professor at the United
States Naval Academy and the author of 'American Fun: Four Centuries of Joyous
Revolt.'" On my own part, as a parent of four children, I encourage my
children to be defiant in applying higher principles to analyzing whether or
not to follow arbitrary rules. My oldest son coined the phrase "conform to
nonconformity" when he was stifled by some of the silly customs at JHU-CTY
camp. But for the most part, although young people try random misbehavior all
over the world, there is a lot more personal development to be had from self-
discipline in pursuit of curiosity and independence than from mindless thrill-
seeking.

~~~
visakanv
Relevant: One of my favorite pg quotes, from
[http://www.paulgraham.com/word.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/word.html):

"Like real world resourcefulness, conversational resourcefulness often means
doing things you don't want to. Chasing down all the implications of what's
said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortable conclusions. The best word to
describe the failure to do so is probably "denial," though that seems a bit
too narrow. A better way to describe the situation would be to say that the
unsuccessful founders had the sort of conservatism that comes from weakness.
They traversed idea space as gingerly as a very old person traverses the
physical world."

Since reading that, I've loved the idea of traversing idea space the way you
might look for easter eggs in video games- click all the things, flip over all
the stones!

------
callmeed
I am the "free range" parent and my wife is more of a helicopter parent–which
is weird because my wife got in way more trouble as a teen.

When I was a kid, I took my BB guns places I shouldn't have, I never owned a
bike helmet, and trampolines didn't have safety nets. Other than some things
like that, I let my kids (ages 6, 8, 9) do as they please during their free
time. My over-arching rules for them are "have fun, be kind to each other, and
be safe". I'm sure I'll have to set more specific boundaries as they get old
but for now it's fun to watch them just be fun, wild, dirty, creative kids.

(on a side note, I'm not sure "delinquency" is the term Id use)

~~~
menssen
I think it's reasonable to replace "which is weird because" with "which makes
sense because" in this remark.

The version of your rules that I grew up with was "trust God and do Good".
Religious angst aside, I don't think there's a minimum age for being able to
tell the difference between serious, considered principles and ridiculous,
unfounded assertions like "If you don't wear a helmet, you will get hit by a
car and die."

------
chrisbennet
"A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for."

------
netcan
As a child, I had all sort of dangerous adventures. As a 5 year olds (I don't
really remember this one), we built a bonfire and got caught. As nine year
olds we snuck out and went canoeing on "borrowed" canoes. At 12 we played
around a farm with petrol. We climbed barn rafters hunting pigeons.

At 15-16 I smoked a lot of grass. We misused it and smoked much more than I
would now. I had deeply tripy experiences dozens of times. Some of them scary.
I don't think grass is bad, but I think it's tricky for kids, especially as it
is basically open criminal activity. It create a distance between them and the
police/teachers/parents.

I wouldn't take any of those experiences back. I find I like people who had
such experiences as kids and that when I meet 19-20 year olds without them, I
kind of think it's impoverished.

OTOH, I can't imagine standing by and letting 15 year olds smoke large
quantities of grass or 9 year olds go canoeing by moonlight unsupervised.

All those things take casualties.

Catch 22.

------
KMag
At the tail end, this goes tragically wrong. The author mentions cocaine,
alcohol, and a loaded handgun.

One of my kindergarten friends got drunk one night and started playing with a
handgun when he was 14. He'll be in prison until he's 45, without help from
any cocaine. [1]

I think getting into a bit of mischief is a proper part of growing up, but I
think the author advocates a bit too much.

[1] [http://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/court-of-
appeals/1996/...](http://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/court-of-
appeals/1996/c6952405.html)

------
lifeisstillgood
As a parent of two young kids, I agree - as long as the delinquency does not
actually injure them or others badly, and they stay away from red-heads with
loaded fucking guns!

Which is the whole problem - the reason we say "dont do that it will hurt" is
that it probably will hurt. Yes kids need to learn their own limits, and I
want that to happen. I just would prefer not to have the lesson end in A&E.

I think mobile technology will enable a longer "lead" \- but then who wants to
be on a lead.

I think ultimately - I am my dad :-)

~~~
saraid216
Um. ...red-heads...? Do you mean hotheads, perhaps?

~~~
e28eta
I believe it's a reference to the article

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Yeah - kid who was presumably abused by parents, sold drugs, beat up other
kids, had access to firearms. Kind of glossed over a backstory in the article
I felt.

------
keithpeter
_" There was one notorious kid with invisible parents who, when he was an
eighth grader, already wore the blond bristles of a beard."_

Wonder what happened to him? Sounds like he was on a trajectory leading to
problems.

~~~
doctorstupid
If his path did lead to downfall, I'd say it was because he didn't fit into
society's structure. In times past he might have become a great leader or
warrior.

~~~
rtpg
>In times past he might have become a great leader or warrior.

Is it a bad thing that warlord is no longer a thing we put onto our resumes?

~~~
doctorstupid
I believe so. However, warlords don't write resumes, because they work for
nobody.

------
PM_Tech
The article fails to realise that in most of the anecdotes retold; today the
state would intervene at the behest of a neighbour and "I read it in the New
York Times" will not really prevent the investigation into why you allowed
your child to play with knives, live for 3 days at the top of a slag heap of
rubble or hold a loaded handgun.

Also - teenage mortality has reduced drastically[1]. It's hard to argue that
could be a bad thing.

It is probably because we don't let them (wherever possible) carry out
activities that might kill themselves.

I am a parent of 3; I will happily take my children mountain climbing, skiing,
snowboarding, trekking, wild swimming. In a few years we plan to trek to
Everest Base Camp and they are coming with me to the Andes.

We engage in _controlled risk._ If they break a limb skiing then they break a
limb skiing. They pushed beyond their abilities in some way. I don't need to
give them wrappers of cocaine from a criminal and a handgun to be a better
parent.

There is also a very real risk of the "Tom Sawyer" bias. Each generation
thinks their generation took greater risks and had more vivid adventures than
the one previous. The cognitive dissonance curiously avoids the higher levels
of child abuse, abduction, injury, poisoning, asphyxiation, malnutrition and
disease. My father used to have great adventures playing as a child in
asbestos riddled houses. You can talk to his friends about it sometimes...well
the few that have not died before 60.

Oh look here is a group of kids that used lethal asbestos as chalk. [2] They
really learned a valuable lesson about ad-hoc citizenry there.

[1][http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/gezondheid-
welzijn/publi...](http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/gezondheid-
welzijn/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2013/2013-3782-wm.htm)
[2][http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
tyne-24942338](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-24942338)

~~~
harywilke
When did swimming become "wild swimming"? Is this just the first time I'm
seeing this phrase?

~~~
randallsquared
Probably to differentiate from swimming-pool swimming?

------
mschuster91
If the US were not that culturally focused on suing each other until death for
stuff like spilling yourself with hot coffee and then suing McD for damages,
kids in the US could be kids again.

~~~
rb2e
The woman in Liebeck v. McDonald's [1] suffered third degree burns to 6% of
her body and had to have skin grafts. The coffee was served around 180-190F
(82-88C).

On the face of it, it may sound like a frivolous law suit but if you look into
the details, it was far from it.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restauran...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants)

~~~
PM_Tech
Did she think it was ice-coffee? Had she ordered an ice-frappe and been
delivered hot coffee which is typically made with freshly boiled water?

~~~
DanBC
McDonalds had been warned about servig their coffee so hot; they had
previously settled suits from hot coffee; they were serving coffee hotter than
their rivals.

Try making a coffee today and taking the temperature of that coffee ten
minutes after making it. I doubt it'd be hot enough to cause full thickness
burns.

~~~
emn13
Where'd you get the 10 minute number from?

Also, if you put a lid on coffee (which you'd do when you want it to stay warm
as when it's not necessarily for immediate consumption), it can stay hot quite
a while.

Personally, I don't believe most people would have gotten third degree burns
in a similar situation. Unfortunately, she was old (79), light (therefore
likely frail; 47kg), and wore cotton (absorbent) sweatpants, and she must have
kept them on for at least 12 seconds according to the evidence her own lawyers
presented. Frankly, that's just a bunch of bad luck piled up. Most people
would have stood up when the coffee spilled toward them, not sat in it for
that long, and most people would have taken off at least partially the hot
pants, thereby distributing the heat better, some people probably would have
their pants off entirely by that point. (Wikipedia claims scalding rarely
results in third-degree burns, let alone third degree burns on 6% of your
body's surface area with a lot more second degree burn area).

Even at boiling point you need a number of circumstances to get this kind of
injury. It takes quite a while, and needs to affect a large surface area, and
needs to somehow be retained near the skin. That's just not all that likely to
happen; and when it does, being old and light make recovery slower and less
likely. She simply had the worst circumstances on all fronts.

~~~
DanBC
10 minutes is a pure guess at the time it takes to serve the coffee, pay for
it, walk out of the restaurant, get in a car, be driven as a passenger, pull
up some place and adjust the coffee.

> Even at boiling point you need a number of circumstances to get this kind of
> injury. It takes quite a while, and needs to affect a large surface area,
> and needs to somehow be retained near the skin.

2% of non-fatal household scald injuries in > 65 year olds needed tranfer to
specialist hospitals for specialist treatment. If that's what you mean by rare
then I guess we agree, but it's not what I'd call rare.

[http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5836a1.htm?mobile...](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5836a1.htm?mobile=nocontent)
(apologies for mobile link)

The CDC used to have tables for the length of time it took to achieve partial
thickness or full thickness burns at various water temperatures.

At just 60 C it takes only five seconds to get a serious scald. At the
temperature of 80 C burns are almost instant and probably require surgery.

Here's a nice chart with plenty of sourcing so we can check it for accuracy.

[http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_wa...](http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_water_burn_scalding_graph.html)

