TEENS, SUMMER AND RITES OF PASSAGE

NEW FREEDOMS, JOYS AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN STORE FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN.

High school is winding down, and those of us with teenagers in our homes are excited about not waking up in the dark but anxious about teens with too much time on their hands.

Summer is a land full of milestones - small and large, good and bad - for teens and parents. My next-door neighbor told me her preteen son was not signing up for the library reading program this year. The look of sorrow on her face reminded me how I felt when my kids no longer wanted to enroll in arts and crafts camps.

This marks the time when they're too old to attend camps and too young to get jobs in them. That's when we cajole them into taking a course or two in science or writing and get them to volunteer at nursing homes or community centers.

We're lucky if we have a pool nearby and have flextime to make sure they're not getting into trouble.

If your teen is an athlete, summer is a time to get ready to open the wallet. Teens travel to tournaments and team camps, and usually don't have jobs lucrative enough to help pay the expense. The practice and game time limits the number of hours they can work anyway.

We love watching our teens' games, but when did we all stop going to the corner lot to have local tournaments?

Another milestone is finding a job. My oldest daughter was a good baby sitter, and she has made that skill into lucrative employment for the past six years. Baby-sitting is a good starter job because it is flexible, and teens can be young when they begin.

The next level of job is usually a lifeguard, camp counselor, grocery store or fast-food employee. After that, teens can work at malls. My 17-year-old has put in 10 applications, without hearing a word.

This is another teenage summer passage: It is not always easy to find a job. It is not fun to be penniless in the summer when there is free time to hang with the gang. This is one of those milestones that is a lesson for the teen and a "that's life's reality" comment from parents.

Although we aren't in the thick of it this summer, we have spent previous summers helping our teenagers get driver's licenses. This is a tougher rite on parents because we worry about our children on the road, and we know that this is the end of an era of shared car time.

As much as I complained about being a "soccer mom," I certainly miss the conversations I had with my kids on the way to practices, events and meetings. On a recent night, my son and I went out to dinner, just to catch up in the midst of busy lives.

Summer milestones bring new freedoms, joys and responsibilities. For every event that takes place, something is replaced.

A good friend of mine once said that for every letting go, there is a grieving for something lost - even if that something lost is wonderful.

The wonderful rites of summer passage for teenagers are memorable and, as with everything in life, inevitable.