Children Belong in Families. Mick Pease

them up,” the local police would say, exasperated at yet another call.

      “Lock them up? Why? They’re not criminals.”

      “Then you get out after them, stop calling us out all the time!”

      I recall another time chatting in a nearby bar with some players from a squash league I joined. One asked me where I worked so I pointed across the road toward Princess Alice Drive.

      “What? With those unruly kids? What have they done to end up inside there?”

      I retorted that most of them had done nothing wrong. They were the innocent victims of inappropriate adult behavior. “They aren’t the problem, their families are!”

      No matter how much the kids stretched me, I always defended them.

      Brenda had less hassle with them. She was like a mother figure. They would push back at me, try to move the boundaries, test me out to see how far they could go. It was all to do with rejection, of course. They opposed authority figures in order to assert their own sense of individuality or self-worth. So around 3:30 p.m., come rain or shine I went for a walk to clear my head and prepare for whatever the evening held.