Teen still has time to turn his life around

STEVE SMITH

He was a teenager only a couple of years older than me, growing up in

Los Angeles in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

The temptations and distractions then were great, but they pale in

comparison to the freedom of choice kids have today. Today, kids have

video games, the Internet and Howard Stern.

Those are just the visible choices. They don’t include all of the

ways in which the media manage to ambush parents by showing our kids

things we’d rather they did not see, and doing so without our

permission.

Back then, the boy was aimless even without such public

distractions, which meant that he hit the streets.

He started out by smoking pot. Unlike those who can now claim that

their experience with marijuana was an “experiment” (that category

includes every politician who has had to explain away their drug use

when running for office), his was full-blown usage.

Pot led to other drugs, including LSD. His grades suffered, and he

barely made it through high school. He was not even present for his

high school commencement.

The drug use led him to associate with the wrong people. One

little crime led to another, which eventually led to an arrest for

auto theft. During this period, to make a little money, he even stole

his brother’s bicycle, which was on loan from a good friend.

None of his brushes with the law led to much jail time. But each

time he got into trouble, his mother and father were there to bail

him out, both literally and figuratively.

I was reminded of the boy as I read about young Greg Haidl’s

latest bad choices.

Apparently, Haidl was driving his 2005 vehicle after having

consumed some alcohol, a clear violation of a directive by judge

Francisco Briseno. Haidl then got into an accident in his new car,

which brought police to the scene.

Through all of young Haidl’s trial and his subsequent encounters

with the law, his father, Don Haidl, has provided the money needed to

hire good attorneys to help keep his son out of jail.

Last Tuesday, all of Don Haidl’s money couldn’t keep his son out

of the pokey as the judge ruled that Greg Haidl’s freewheeling days

were over until his upcoming trial sometime next year.

No more drinking, no more driving, no more scrapes at all. Greg

Haidl is in the one place where even his father won’t have to worry

about what hi-jinks he’ll be up to next.

That teenager in Los Angeles many years ago may have benefited

from the same treatment.

But his parents used what little money they had -- and “little” is

the key word here -- to keep him out of jail, too.

In my previous comments on the case and my sanctimonious

finger-pointing at Don Haidl -- offering my version of how hard he

should be smacking down his kid -- I forgot one key element of

parenting: Greg Haidl is someone’s child, just as that L.A. teen was

someone’s child.

Anyone who is a parent will understand what I am about to offer.

Anyone who is a parent with a troubled child will nod their head as

they read it.

The fact is that parents often bail their failed kids out of jams

for no other reason than they still love them and still cling to the

hope that they will turn their lives around if only they loved them

some more.

Often, that love is misguided. Greg Haidl got a new car, a gift, I

presume, from his father, because I doubt Greg is working or making

enough money to cover the car and insurance payments.

This is not an excuse for Don Haidl’s poor parenting of his child;

it’s merely a way to try to understand his bad choices.

That boy in Los Angeles got a car, too, albeit a really used one.

His parents scraped up the money to buy it for him after he convinced

them he needed it to get a job. He never got the job and eventually

ran the car into the ground.

Both Greg Haidl and the L.A. teen needed someone to show them what

was out of bounds. Neither one got it.

In Greg Haidl’s case, Francisco Briseno is no longer just the

judge in this case, he is the parent, too, for he is finally

providing the discipline that Greg Haidl seems to have been lacking

for so many years.

There is no happy ending to the boy in Los Angeles. He held a

string of low-paying jobs and has not amounted to much. In fact, at

age 51, he’s still living with his mother. Greg Haidl hasn’t amounted

to much either, but he still has time to change that. All it’s going

to take is a different kind of parenting from what he has been

receiving.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer.

Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at

(714) 966-4664.