Parents of teens weigh in on safe haven law

Yes, you have to clean your room. No, you can't go to the party. Yes, you have to ride the school bus. GET UP!

Patricia Lorenz knows how hard it can be raising teens, and she knows it four times over.

"They fray the apron strings by being obnoxious little twerps," said Lorenz, whose brood is now grown, out of the house and doing great. "But that's their job. I don't ever remember wishing I could drop them off somewhere."

In Nebraska, that's exactly what's happening under a safe haven law that has stressed-out parents abandoning children as old as 17 without fear of prosecution. While the intent of such laws is to allow desperate mothers safe options for unwanted newborns, safe haven in Nebraska has gone awfully wrong, or is it terribly right?

Raising teen-agers — still kids in some ways, but old enough and big enough to think themselves full-in-control adults — can be a frustrating experience far different from any other, parents say. And unlike the baby years, where there are new parents' gatherings, and relatives eager to come over and help out, the teen parenting years can feel isolating and scary.

Some experts say the parents of teens who have turned their kids over to the state probably made a tough choice.

"In some ways what they're doing is an incredibly noble thing to do," said Betty Londergan, author of the new book "The Agony and the Agony: Raising a Teenager Without Losing Your Mind."

"You can get so sideways with your kids and to actually reach out for help is an incredibly valiant thing to do, as opposed to hitting them, or worse," she said.

Londergan, with a 17-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, and her husband, Larry Schall, moved to Atlanta from Swarthmore, Pa., three years ago. That made it difficult for Schall to spend regular quality time with his three kids from his first marriage. His son, then in ninth grade, grew increasing defiant and difficult to control.

After the teen disappeared for nearly two weeks, and faced other problems, the family spent thousands of dollars and months in agony for the teen to live for two months in a therapeutic wilderness program, followed by an alternative boarding school earlier this year. Schall says his child, now 17, is in a far better place.

"I know I am in a very small group of parents that could even consider doing this kind of intervention," Schall said. "And now (the teen's) college savings are gone. I would do the same today as I did a year ago. The experience has been transformative for all of us."

Those parents and others around the country have been closely following the saga in Nebraska. The state, the last in the nation to enact a safe haven law, didn't specify an age limit for child abandonments, making it the broadest measure on record and opening the floodgates for children as old as 17.

'I can't do it anymore'
Since the law went into effect in July, 30 children have been dropped off at state-licensed hospitals. Many are teens and nearly all are older than 10, with some from as far away as Georgia, Michigan and Iowa.

Several parents or guardians to leave children in Nebraska reported out-of-control behavior. The parent of at least one said she was trying to "scare" her son. Unemployed widower Gary Staton had, simply, reached the end.

He left nine of his 10 children, ranging from a year old to 17, at an Omaha hospital in September. Staton told Omaha's KETV: "I didn't think I could do it alone. I fell apart."

"Those people are saying, 'I've done the best I can and I can't do it anymore,'" said Dr. Jason Stein, a family therapist in Los Angeles. "That is a very telling piece of the story. It goes to the humility of being a parent. It's easy to judge and chastise these people, but they're actually making a very proactive decision, albeit not necessarily the best one."

Londergan and Schall, both 54, along with other parents of adolescents, empathize with the relentless pressure and frustration that come with the territory. The stress, they said, can be an isolating experience unique to the age.

Lorenz, 63, remembers it well. She divorced her husband after three kids and seven years of a troubled marriage. She remarried and had a fourth child, only to divorce again. Never earning more than $28,000 a year, she struggled alone, living in Wisconsin far from relatives