By LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / May 19, 1999

RESERVE – Those who professionally counsel children look at the events in Littleton, Colo., as an alert that the breakdown of the American family hascome home to roost.

Myra Noustens, director of the St. Augustine’s Counseling Center inMetairie and a resident of Destrehan, cited a number of factors which, collectively, disaffected the generation of the new millennium from the Woodstock generation.

The factors reviewed by Noustens include the 1962 removal of prayer from public schools, the advent of two-income families and a heightened lack of respect for authority.

“All of this is connected,” she said.

Her principal thrust, though, is that some of today’s parents have abdicated their responsibilities to schools, churches and the countless influences on their children, from peers to the entertainment industry.

“Columbine was a case of communication gone horribly wrong,” she said.

Noustens said parents, too often, abandon their children to outside, unsupervised influences and believe they are giving their children freedom.

She said, “We’re supposed to be the adults. We’re supposed to be the smartones, and we’re not doing our jobs. It’s going to be hard for all of us to pullit back together.”She added, “Our children are a gift. We only have them for a short period oftime and we have an awful lot to teach them. If you show them love,concern and caring, you can reach them.”Noustens said children need moral guidance and instruction.

“A lot of parents think they’ll deal with it tomorrow, but being a parent has to be their number-one priority,” she said.

She cited a 1970s-era popular song, “Cat’s in the Cradle,” by Harry Chapin, and recalled its lyric: “When you coming home, Daddy? Don’t know when.

We’ll get together then. We’re gonna have a good time then.”Tommy Fernandez, a guidance counselor and former coach at Riverside Academy, said school counselors are far out of their depth in dealing with the disaffected, bitter and morally-empty youth of today.

“In my day, our parents worried about us smoking or drinking,” he said.

Fernandez said today’s children are faced with everything from mind- numbing violence in their entertainment, AIDS, the drug culture, gangs, and a host of influences unimagined by their parents.

As a coach, he said he would advise his athletes before a game to cut out smoking, alcohol “and other drugs,” and he would be surprised when players didn’t know that nicotine and alcohol are addictive drugs.

Fernandez added much of the problems of Columbine came from a breakdown, not only in communication, but also in parental discipline. Hewas astonished the parents of the gun-wielding teen-agers were not aware of the bomb-building activity going on under their own roofs.

In addition, he said, the influence of television, music, movies and computer games which glorify violence and disrespect only compound the problems.

“When they see verbal abuse on TV, they adopt that,” he observed.

A breakdown in common courtesy has also had a cumulative effect.

“The Legislature is trying to pass a law about being more polite at school,” he said. “They need to do that first at home.”Fernandez likewise felt that, as each generation of parents tries to make their children’s lives easier, that point may have gone too far. While theirparents had to deal with Vietnam and their grandparents and great- grandparents dealt with the Great Depression and World War II, children today have little clue as to how hard life can be and have no adequate defenses against it.

“Right now, everything’s supplied for them,” he said.

Riverside Academy, in recent years, has dealt with a string of bomb threats.

“Once, you really didn’t take bomb-scare calls seriously,” Fernandez said.

“Now, with today’s kids on the edge somewhere, it’s scary.”

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