"The kid has to know that no matter how ashamed you might be about any mistakes they make, you still actually *love* them, and are willing to let them make some mistakes so that they can grow from it, and are willing to help them to learn how to pick up from their mistakes."

Bingo. If the relationship isn't based on love to begin with, nothing will work. Not guilty or shame, not being understanding and "giving them space" (I'm sorry, but as the parent of teens, that saying just plain sounds like hippy dippy shit to me).

Everyone operates with a sense of boundaries in life, and those boundaries are based upon our desire to maintain the relationships that matter to us. If a parent doesn't really give a shit about their kids, they will demonstrate that fact over and over by trying to guilt and shame to control them, or by ignoring them and calling it "being understanding and giving them space". Neither will work if love isn't at the center.

I love and truly care about certain people in my life. If I ever did something to even slightly embarrass them in front of their community, I would feel really, really bad about it. So why do we not expect that our children feel the same as we do about that? Why should we dismiss the use of guilt and shame as deterrents, especially when it protects kids from their own stupidity and poor decision making ability when they freely choose to engage in high risk behaviors?

I want my kids to survive the teen years as strong, healthy human beings who are loving and compassionate. Like I said, I work in an urban high school and see the extremely negative results all the time of "understanding" parents who "give their kids space" and expect them to figure out what we ourselves have yet to get sorted out about life. I'm not advocating routine use of guilt and shame to control kids' behavior. I'm saying you don't exclude limited, reasonable uses of guilt, shame and yes, fear to explain the reasons why someone might want to think twice before doing something idiotic they very well may regret in the long haul. For those things, shame, guilt, and fear are fine as deterrents, not a control mechanism.

Or are we all going to suggest that kids shouldn't be ashamed for starting smoking? Or afraid of the health consequences to themselves and the people who breath their second hand smoke as a result of their smoking?

Give me a break. I have much less problem with a kid missing school because there are other ways of getting a high school education, that only effects them in the long run. But if they just drop out, never finish, and then can't support the children they bear because they have no education? In which case, they bloody well ought to be ashamed of themselves for not bothering to do the work of getting an education, and making their children suffer for it.

Sometimes I think my generation of parents has just plain lost their minds. If they ever had them to begin with that is.