The New York Times reports on the problem of moving our kids from teens to adults and the need to do something by 7th grade, but not too much.
Eric Nagourney writes (excerpt):
Children with the most distant [parent] relationships [in 7th grade] were most likely to use drugs, steal, vandalize property and have sex [in high school]. “It was the undermonitoring that was leading to more problem behavior,” Dr. Davis-Kean said.
But those children who said in seventh grade that they were not given enough independence and responsibility and that their parents were too intrusive also tended to have problems later.