That may also have to do with being a border collie forced to live in an apartment with no sheep to herd (in the sense of having one class of struggles eliminated but another suffered in silence), but it is a very different (and very serious) issue. This is IMHO, but I think the degree to which children are protected and kept safe and supervised may be part of it, I really do.
A lot of places won’t hire anyone under the age of 16 anymore.
They certainly need to be doing things that are useful to others, whether or not they are getting paid to do them.
I really think the music is a part of what affects kids too. Not the pop stuff, but the dark more “screamo” bands. There’s a lot of talk of suicide and death, not what someone who is leaning toward depression needs to hear.
When I first read this, I thought…YES! That’s what drives me nuts about it! It’s so effeminate.
I gave him a nice clean cut this afternoon…right before Mass! 
And he can’t be that far ‘out there’ because he actually wanted his thick, coarse hair cut…short! 
But they can shovel snow, cut grass, trim bushes, babysit/be a mommy’s helper, design websites, pull weeds, walk dogs, create a product to solve a problem, make jewelry, play games with the elderly at a local senior center, volunteer for meals on wheels, play their instrument of choice at a retirement village, volunteer at their village’s cable TV channel, volunteer at a tallgrass prairie (if you are in the Midwest)…I think you get the idea.
Of course, I never said otherwise.But they can shovel snow, cut grass, trim bushes, babysit/be a mommy’s helper, design websites, pull weeds, walk dogs, create a product to solve a problem, make jewelry, play games with the elderly at a local senior center, volunteer for meals on wheels, play their instrument of choice at a retirement village, volunteer at their village’s cable TV channel, volunteer at a tallgrass prairie (if you are in the Midwest)…I think you get the idea.
There are many things that teens can do for pay or for fun/free before they are 16.
There are so many better ideas than McD’s/fast food, bagger at grocery stores, etc. where you need to be 16. Those are fine jobs, but if that’s all that an emotional teen has in their life besides school…especially a really ‘hands on’ or ‘visual’ kid…it’s not going to be pretty.
I second, third and fourth that. We had a huge struggle with this for several years. No matter what we did as parents, it elicited anger, pouting and fits of hysterics in our son. He listened to so much of that garbage (I refuse to call it music), that he convinced himself that he had things as bad as the people in the lyrics. The foul sounds he listens to now aren’t much better, but at least his attitude isn’t as bad after he listens to it.
I am the same way when it comes to music, and I suspect that most of us are. I think God made us so that we can help create the music of the angels and saints when we get to heaven, and music like Gregorian chant seems to imitate that heavenly worship, while some music seems to imitate the devil. I don’t know exactly how much the music contributed to the nightmare we lived for several years, but I know that when he stopped listening to that junk, his attitude improved 100%. He likes “happy music” now, and I would be alarmed and would intervene if the dark stuff ever came back.
How common is this cutting behavior? I thought such self-harm behaviors were really rare, and I didn’t realize that there was a youth culture that is characterized by this practice.
When my daughter’s school had a seminar for parents, the statistic reported was 1 in every 12 teens have cut themselves.
That is a valid concern but fortunately, most of them outgrow (literally) this phase.
Four suicides in the same year? That is truly disturbing.