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We've already taken sanctions toward this end.

Every night at ten o'clock Stephen must unplug the phone extension in his room and deliver it to us. This particular sanction was enacted when, getting up to let the puppy out one night about 5:00 A.M., I heard Stephen talking and laughing.

Not only had he been on the phone all night, but when we received our first phone bill, it was clear Stephen was running up huge long-distance charges.

We took control by putting a long-distance block on the line, demanding that Stephen unplug the phone in his room and deliver it to us every night at ten. Then we grounded Stephen for two weeks during which the three of us drove around the New England countryside, Stan and I ogling the scenery, Stephen in the backseat, his eyes closed, his Walkman leaking a hiss and rumble as he listened to rap.

But soon we would learn that we had overlooked a few details regarding the phone. As they came to our attention, we corrected them too.

We'd overlooked the fact that Stephen could—and did—borrow a substitute phone. Returning the official phone to us each night, he went back to his room, rooted out the contraband phone from its hiding place and plugged it in.

And though we had put a block against outgoing longdistance calls—except when using a special numerical code that Stan and I, like spies, memorized and repeated back to each other in our locked car, promising never, ever to write the code down or breathe word of it, or dial it in Stephen's presence—we'd failed to block long-distance calls coming in.

“That's a different kind of block,” the AT&T operator explained to us. “It's not included with a direct-dial block. They're two different blocks, each with a separate fee that will appear on your phone bill.”

“If I were to choose one,” she continued, warming up to us when we didn't argue with her about the two fees, “I'd choose the collect-call block. Collect calls are more expensive than direct-dial, you know. Much more expensive.”

“We know,” we answered, Stan on the downstairs extension, I on the upstairs. “We'll take both.”

“So much for the honor system,” said Stan over the dead line, quoting the method of choice suggested to us by Stephen's former therapist.

“Ha!” I punctuated as we hung up and met in the kitchen for celebratory drinks.

But tonight we've lost our humor as we stand in the kitchen racking our brains for a course of action, “That will get this kid in line,” I say.

“And keep him there.” Stan finishes my sentence.

In light of the last few years, the recent phone scam, and the events of this night, we feel that we have every right to forgo Dr. Mike's advice of putting Stephen on the honor system.

At this moment we both debunk all the child psychology nonsense we've been feeding on: the Erikson, even the Bettleheim, as we remember grueling, interminable therapy sessions we've sat through—a mute, sullen teenager on one hand and a pompous Dr. So-and-so on the other. We remember our hope following these sessions, how each time that hope set us up for disappointment.

“I read a piece in the Times the other day,” Stan interrupts our silence. “It was about a father whose teenage daughter kept sneaking out to do drugs. Then she'd come home sick or out of it. She wouldn't go to school. One night she overdosed and he rushed her to the hospital.

“The hospital staff and the police gave her a choice of rehabilitation or jail. She chose the former. While she was away the father prowled the streets at night looking for the dealer.”

“Did he get him?” I ask.

“No luck,” Stan continues. “But before the girl came home from the hospital he installed more locks, nailed her window shut, and put up bars.”

“There you go.”

“Wait—her first night home from rehab she wanted to go out. Said she was going and no one could stop her. The father got out some chains and a padlock he'd recently purchased and had been keeping in his closet. He chained the girl to the stove.”

“How?” I ask. “Where did he chain her?”

“Her ankles, I think.”

“Like hobbling