Welcome back friends and neighbors for the second installment of my parenting series. I hope the last chapter was informative and enlightening, and at least moderately witty. Tonight's lesson deals with those large, odorous organisms known as Adolescents, or in slang terms, "teens".

Chapter Two- Adolescence and The New Horizon

By now, should you have kept a studious eye upon your mutating subject, you will have noticed drastic and oftentimes shocking physical and emotional transformations taking place. This is not to say that such metamorphoses are beneficial to yourself or to society, but that this weakened, hormonally charged phase can provide ripe opportunities for conditioning.

Pavlovian training methods are often utilized in such cases, but I find such principles to be weak and ineffectual. Instead, we shall apply a shocking new theory as yet unheard of in the world of parenting: the Catch and Release ploy.

Step 1: Should your teenage dirtbag become irritable and willful, it is advised that you put an immediate stop to such behavior, as the wooly lump will only increase in size and musculature from this point on.

With any common household instrument, say a pair of barbecue thongs perhaps, grasp the offending lip and twist until your wrist is perpendicular to the floor, then incline the head to a forty-five degree angle. Now begin a slow march around the room, making absolutely certain to guide your stock directly into the path of low-lying furniture and jutting cabinetry. This ensures that the lesson will be at least slightly absorbed by the porous matter that substitutes for an adolescent brain.

If your heathen has a certain cosmetic piercing, and in it resides a circular metal object, this process will be made ever-so-much easier. On you, that is. One particular student of mine advocated the application of mild to moderate electrical currents to such jewelry, so you may indeed consider that option.

Step 2- Sexual development is key to the rearing and social adjustment of any normal being. However, in this case we will not address such ludicrous concepts as "development", since that may very well prove disastrous to the delicate balance of nature. Instead we shall focus primarily on the repression and denial of adolescent sexual desire.

Should you notice a slight protrusion originating in the pelvic region of your male child, you must immediately douse it with scalding-hot oil. This unhealthy growth can lead to a good many bothersome symptoms such as prolonged restroom occupance, leering at other female members of the species, and the secretion of a highly toxic substance known among feral adolescents as "spunk".

Again, and I cannot stress this enough, should you notice such a growth, do not hesitate to dump any boiling liquids or oils into the potentially contagious lap of your hairy embarrassment.

If you notice said condition and yet presume to possess a female of the species, I urge you to at least have a veterinarian perform a basic physical examination. It could be that, while smartly avoiding close contact, you may have misinterpreted the gender of your beast.

Step 3- Grooming is an important issue among any and all of God's creatures. The notable exception being of course the male subhuman adolescent, and the female being a slightly better choice between the two, I would suggest trading your ape to a slightly more gullible family in exchange for their "daughter" or pet ferret.

If you find that no one will make such an exchange, keep things simple when dealing with grooming techniques. The most assured method is to simply beat the mutant until his hair refuses to grow. Or you may attempt to scorch the curly mess with a butane torch, but this has often led to foul-smelling smoke inhalation deaths among parents burdened with enormous, hairy offspring. Stick to what you have already learned from me: "beat 'em now, beat 'em later". You can't lose with a mantra like that.

Step 4- Since your rancid pile of love-dumpling has reached a point in his or her life where it is now feasible to begin menial labor, I suggest starting small. Of course I don't mean small weights, but small concepts, since the brain during adolescence resembles Renee Zellweger's hind-quarters after being run over by a football team. In other words, dimpled and extraordinarily spongy.

Physical training begins with tractor tires, or just tractors if you want to speed things along, being strapped on about the neck and then forcefully tugged for great distances. Applying Step One has been rumored to increase productivity ten-fold among the overweight and asthmatic demographics, but has been surprisingly ineffective when used in conjunction with attention disorder medication. That concludes the lesson for the evening, ladies and gentlemen, and be sure to catch my third and final installment called Emptying The Nest: Optimum Height For Optimum Results. Until then, I remain

Kenneth W. Schroeder, Esq.

(Please note: Mr. Schroeder is not an actual child psychologist, nor is he a therapist by any normal standards. In fact, Mr. Schroeder is a recent parolee who was allowed back into the normal world after teaching a Texas Correctional officer how to properly bludgeon his and others' infants.)