Now I Know Why Tigers Eat Their Young Surviving a New Generation of Teenagers

Chapter 1: The Chicken Little Syndrome After more than 25 years in the business, I have to confess that I've never overcome my secret urge to be famous. I've finally realized that my only chance of standing next to the greats in the Psychology Hall of Fame is to discover something. So, just as Freud gave us the Oedipus complex and Jung introduced us to the collective unconscious, I've uncovered a new disorder -- the Chicken Little Syndrome. At the core of CLS (which is how it will be referred to after I become famous) is something I've labeled "sociological hypochondriasis." I picked this term because it meets the criteria for scientific respectability -- it's totally incomprehensible and has more than five syllables per word. Like the physical hypochondriac for whom a mere twinge is sufficient cause to summon friends and loved ones to his bedside, the sociological hypochondriac looks at what is happening in society and immediately sees signs of decay and imminent disaster. Those stricken with this disorder have an absolute field day when it comes to teenagers. They look at young people's behavior and are convinced they have found proof positive that the sky is about to fall. Many of those afflicted with CLS have a severe case of the GOD complex (Good Old Days complex). They're easy to detect because of their addiction to Little House on the Prairie reruns. They've come to believe that there really was a wonderful era when children always referred to adults as "sir" or "ma'am" and when their worst crimes were pilfering cookies, after which they were so guiltridden they confessed and insisted on being taken out to the woodshed for a licking. My interest in CLS has turned me into a history fan. This amazes me as I'd always thought of my high school history teacher as nothing more than living proof that the capacity to be boring and irrelevant was a marketable skill. As a result of the exhaustive research I've undertaken over the past two days, I've found evidence that the belief that the upcoming generation will propel the rest of us into oblivion existed in antiquity. Over 2,000 years ago Socrates took a few moments out of the daily grind of figuring out the meaning of life to comment on the young people of his day: "Children today are tyrants: they contradict their parents, gobble their food, and terrorize their teachers." In the 18th century it was ministers who took on the task of assassinating the character of the younger generation. There's an account of a minister who warned parents that, "as innocent as children seem to be, they are young vipers. They are infinitely more hateful than vipers and are in a most miserable condition." If that wasn't enough to make the point, he wanted to ensure that children would eventually be given feedback regarding their miserable condition. He emphasized that they are "naturally senseless and stupid" and asked, "Why should we conceal the truth from them?" One short description of children from that era is a particular favorite of mine. The person who referred to children as "curly, dimpled lunatics" may have been overstating his case, but I suspect he was a parent who was just having a particularly bad day and was viewing a childless marriage as a golden but missed opportunity. No historical account would be complete without a quote from that noted expert on teenagers -- my mother. It was not long after I had entered my teens when she looked me squarely in the eye and said, "Peter, there are many paths to hell, but why did you have to choose all of them?" It's Time for an Autobiography One of the best ways to combat CLS is to remember one's own past. Many parents, however, seem to suffer from retrograde amnesia. This is a fancy term for loss of memory. It's often used to describe what can happen to a person's memory after an accident or trauma. Having a child can, of course, be either or both. Retrograde simplMarshall, Peter is the author of 'Now I Know Why Tigers Eat Their Young Surviving a New Generation of Teenagers', published 2007 under ISBN 9781552858592 and ISBN 1552858596.