Well, I hope you don't mind this sort of hijacking I'm about to do Lynn, but its fairly on topic and relevant to the discussion.

I've recently become close to a neighborhood family (this has been thrust upon me, I'm generally not one to get involved with other people at all... ). They have 2 girls aged 13 & 14. I carpool both of them (and their 5 year old brother) to school each day. The girls, especially the 14 yr old, have become very open with me (they have an extremely bad family life, but that's another thread and I don't know if I am ready to get into that yet) and she tells me about the things going on at her school, she's an 8th grader, her sister's in the 7th. There are blatant sex acts going on during school functions, sometimes in the literal site of teachers and chaperons, yet nothing is done to stop this. Last year, when she was 12, her 12 year old friend HAD A BABY by another 12 year old. I nearly had a heart attack when she told me this. There are drugs at school ALL THE TIME. Boys are constantly trying to get her to smoke pot with them (as far as I know this is the only drug they are using, but who knows what happens that she doesn't know about). Thankfully, to this point, the girls have both made good decisions, but they have a very bad family life that is most definitely not giving them good, healthy examples of positive choices, and I fear greatly for the track the girls may turn down. These kids are 7th & 8th graders and LOTS of them are having sex, lots of them are doing drugs and drinking. And there seems to be a trend that their parents are encouraging this for a large part, mostly because they do some of the same things. (I don't particularly care if an adult drinks or smokes pot, but I have a problem with them doing with the childrens' knowledge -- the pot -- and with them allowing the children access to such things). We are not talking about 17 or 18 year olds here, these are freaking BABIES. They aren't even in high school yet. I blame the lackadaisical attitude of the teachers for letting the stuff happen at school and I most definitely blame the parents for not caring, nor providing a better example for their kids. Things are getting worse. I'm just 34 and in the short time since I've graduated, things in schools and with young adults have gotten to a scary level. I'm a realistic person, I know kids are going to have sex, I know they are going to experiment with drinking and probably pot (hopefully nothing worse), but at such a young age? My son is heading for 4th grade and each year I get more and more scared. I cannot fathom sending him to this middle school, yet my husband has a good job that will be hard to find anywhere else (besides, he LOVES the university and would be greatly pained to leave it). We live in a small town, about 15k and this sh** is happening here.