a really nice kid, mr kamiya. self-deprecating, funny, cool - and by so doing shows he's letting you off the hook. you are lucky - too bad he's growing up and you'll hardly see him anymore! ordinarily i'm against writing stuff about children on the web - but you didn't really tell anything about him. his other words, "OK", "Mmm" and a grunt are all acceptable forms of teenage conversation. you didn't embarrass him. i just wanted to tell you that, mr kamiya, i didn't want to hear the preachments of the panel, so i skipped the letters - don't even write back. i'm off.

Okay, so every one agrees on the don't drive while stoned thing. Good. Nice to see people also feel free to describe Gary as a 'tool', 'fuckwit' and 'asshole', Not only for the illegal and dangerous driving, but also because he's apparently a narcisstic Liberal who want to be his son's friend. Oh and Steely Dan are lame, let's not forget that.

Yes, the driving while stoned did rather put the rest of the article in the shade, but for some reason it also seems to have opened the door to every other kind of hostlity towards this writer from questioning all his parental credentials to abusing him as a person.

WTF? Is this really only about the driving while stoned?

Whatever happened to discussing ideas and not using that as an excuse to abuse? Is the mainly Liberal and Progressive readership of Salon so used to their politics being 'Roved' that they have taken on smear and attack as legitimate debate tactics?

It takes a degree of egocentrism to write and also a degree of guts to write truthfully about oneself. It takes no courage to insult a person in order to dismiss their ideas.

Let's hope Gary hears the shrill moralistic din and becomes a better person, because that's usually how people learn, by being insulted. God knows he's the only person here to have neglected his duty of care in regard to his child.

As they say in my part of the world - play the ball, not the man.

Sitting here in India, I'm often surprised at the how conservative "freedom's land" has become from my days in college there--which is reflected in some of these letters. It wasn't long ago that my son inquired why my cigarette sometimes "pops out." My wife & I very occasionally smoke pot and we recently admitted as such to the boys with a very similar talk as Gary's. We both think that we've raised smart kids by paying particular attention to their "hypocrite antenna". It has served us well.

I'd however agree with some poster's that Gary would have done well to clarify in what state he was in when he drove, but otherwise a very good piece.

I forgot to mention, it is about time we stopped making any one who is compulsive about taking drugs feel guilty and ashamed at doing so. Research that has been taking place over the last ten years, mainly in Scandinavia shows that children whose mother had anaesthesia when they were born are five times more likely to become a drug addict when they hit adolescence.

In 1966 when I designed a square wave pulse generator to induce anaesthesia as an electronic alternative to chemical anaesthesia while giving birth, I had a suspicion that the rising incidences in drug taking were due to women routinely going into hospital after the Second World War and having chemical anaesthesia. Now the research shows this to be so. Incidently, there have never been any research on the long term dangers of anaesthesia at birth. Physicians and midwifes were, in 1857 only too delighted to have something to alleviate the agonies of childbirth. Noone has thought since to conduct long term trials until recently.

Now of course this does not mean that every child will be affected in this way. Really intensive nurturing and a relatively stress free adolescence will assist. But if a child hits a great deal of pain and stress it will key in that early imprinting. So if your kid becomes addicted try to treat him with humanity and understanding. It is not his/her fault. Imprinting is a really strong condition to fight.

Rayner

I really don't understand why parents, who have any recall about their own adolescence, don't realize that their kids will rebel! Why do you keep on repeating the same old crap that your parents passed on to you? It didn't do the slightest bit of good for heavens' sake now did it?

Perhaps it was because I was in my fifties when I had some kids, but when they could understand what words meant, I would tell them many times each day to "Misbehave, whatever you do." Ten to fifteen times a day. My wife would go spare at first but she soon realised that I was a British eccentric and eventually went along with it. Mainly because I was a good nurturer. My inlaws wanted me to be committed or the social services notified.

When both my daughters got to about five, each in turn drew themselves up to their full height and declared in ringing tones, "I am not going to do what you tell me, I am going to be good. So there!" And they were, bless them. They were so good it even got a little boring. Polite, well behaved, soon it got so that their friend's parents would ask me how we did it.

I of course could not resist telling them, "Oh, I beat them every day." My wife would just say "Oh he's joking, he's a good nurturer. He is also British and he just loves Monty Python."

The only sad thing about it was, their friends used to ask my daughters which embarrased then awfully, "Is your father for real, would he adopt me?" I used to hear these kids' parents talk about how their kids did not do drugs, or have sex etc., and my daughters would tell me horrific stories about them. That most of their friends could never tell their parents the realities about their miserable lives. It infuriated me. But what could I do, except lend a shoulder for some of them to cry on, and try to pursuade them to confide in their parents when it was obviously dangerous for them to behave in their rebellious fashion.

When my eldest daughter was about twelve, she looked at me very directly and said, "You have been manipulating us all these years, haven't you?" When I told her yes. She said to my great relief, "Well I suppose you have kept us out of harms way."

Rayner