Parent In Control

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2 OCT 1995

Bodenhamer, a former probation officer who is director of the Back in Control Center in Portland, Ore., believes we are confronting ``the worst behaved generation of children in American history.'' For parents who need to retake charge of their children, he suggests a three-point focus based on ``rule-based discipline, supervision and emotional attachment.'' Offering sound, practical advice on dealing with provocative and manipulative verbal challenges raised by teenagers and early adolescents, he presents a convincing case for giving highly detailed ``job descriptions'' to teens (if McDonald's has a 600-page operations manual for its employees, parents shouldn't shy from explaining precisely how to take out the garbage). Bodenhamer directly faces such incendiary issues as sex, substance abuse and peer pressure (including that from gangs). Frequently, however, he sounds a reactionary note, as when he rails against the American Civil Liberties Union as the nation's ``most persistent enemy of adult authority'' and cites ``an inherited link between impulsive and immature unwed teenager parents and the impulsive and immature children to whom they give birth.'' While there is valuable help here, much of it sounds like the stuff of talk radio.