Maybe it's good to be bad...

According to reports there are more young people than ever before suffering from depression and mental illness, yet levels of drinking, drug taking and sex in the same age group are dropping. Maybe young people need to kick over the traces and bad. Maybe it's a rite of passage because if you don't do it when you're young it's storing up a whole lot of issues up for when you are older.

Maybe we put too much pressure on our children to be A* pupils when really a B will do.

I remember getting a letter form my daughter's headmaster warning of the dangers of allowing our 18 year olds to a 'good bye to school' camping weekend because 'drinking of alcohol and inappropriate sexual activity may take place'. I remember thinking 'Good grief, was this guy ever a teenager??' (Afterwards I wondered what 'appropriate' sexual activity might be.....).

Just because we are older doesn't give us the right to deny our children the freedom to be true to themselves and have some fun!