225BatonRouge.com

Posted on June 24 at 1:49 a.m.

As a parent of a 17 and 21 year old, this article should serve as a kick in the pants to the movers and shakers of Baton Rouge. We ARE boring to most of these young adults! We encourage our children to become socially adept, but provide limited arenas in which to practice that skill unless they pay for the priviledge. We offer school sporting events which require an entry fee, we offer movies which require an entry fee, we offer music venues that require an entry fee, we offer cottillion balls that require an entry fee, we offer but we don't give them a place to freely gather.
We smile at the pictures of a 3 year old playing in the fountains at the Shaw center, but no one writes about our teens being requested to leave the area. A family sitting upon the steps of the Capital are interviewed, while a group of teens racing up and down the steps are told they could be arrested for loitering. The aging song of "signs, signs, every where a sign" is even more true with this generation. They have very few places they can go without spending money and those few places tend to grow old rapidly.
While our home may be a gathering area, it is just not a preferred gathering place for teens. They want to be "out" and "with" their many friends, meeting new friends and enjoying life. We are pushing them further and further away from the safety zone with the lack of entertainment venues and tolerance for their youth.

On Teenage wasteland