THE problems that lie at the back of what your front page described as "teenage trouble" (Evening News, April 4) are only partially addressed inside by your opinion column.

It is true that when parents expend most of their physical and emotional energy on earning a living, it intensifies pressures on family life. What is left is often drained off by the stress of driving to and from work.

This is hardly exhilarating company for teenagers who, in any case, prefer the company of their contemporaries. Contrary to popular belief, teenagers are social animals who do not care to shut themselves away alone in their bedrooms playing computer games or watching television, especially when they reach puberty.

It is easy, and will win politicians plenty of votes, to go around complaining about parents leaving their children to "run wild".

Among all the comments in your article and in your opinion column, there is not a word from anybody about what the problems and needs of the teenagers are.

Demolishing the gazebo will not make the youngsters vanish or remove the reason why they go there in the first place. Nor will it conceal the fact that the worthies on the parish council were teenagers once and no doubt made nuisances of themselves from time to time.

If parents are rightly expected to know where their children are and what they are doing, the solution is for the parish to provide somewhere for them to go and something wholesome and absorbing for them to do.

Futile ritual

Instead of indulging their grievances in the popular and futile ritual of criticising teenagers and their parents, they should put their thinking caps on.

They could start by visiting the youngsters at the gazebo and inviting them to a meeting to hear their views and those of their parents, and take it from there.

Teenagers are not dogs you can whistle in with a few taps on a feeding bowl and tie up on a lead.

They are our future and tomorrow's parents, not to mention the providers of our pensions when we are old codgers.

If we want them to look after us, we could do worse than to set them a good example by looking after them.

PETER NIELSEN,

(A 59-year-old former teenager from Worcester).