Should teenagers be allowed to dabble with the Craft?

When I started with the Craft when I was about 13/14 I had no idea about how to maturely deal with the ethics of the Craft and what kinds of ramifications could come from my actions.  I started out with some very average books which were not (I believe) taking the ethics of the Craft seriously at all, especially when they actively encouraged you to work spells for love and did nothing to prevent you from doing something against someone's will.  It was much later into my working that I considered doing divinations in order to see where a spell could take me - and as a teenager, you rush into spellworking so quickly, you would never consider setting about using divination to see where your spell could lead you.  Nor did any of those books in my early years teach me about the difference between low magick (i.e: spells to get you what you want, which is often what these books were about) and high magick which helps you to truly develop as a practitioner.

I started thinking about this recently and wondered what everyone's opinions were.  A friend of mine has a long line of Witches in her family and her mother actively discouraged her from experimenting with the Craft as a teenager because teenagers still had to mature into their responsibilities.  I'd have hated it if someone had told me not to do what I found most fascinating, but then I picked up and put down the Craft until I felt truly able to handle it and also see how it could take me out of some bad times as a mature person on a genuine spiritual journey.  I guess if I were the mother to a child who wanted to experiment with the Craft I would have to guide them very carefully myself...  If they told me everything - and would they?  Teenagers can hold burden to so many secrets in their day-to-day living - how could this be managed?

Of course in watching the film The Craft, it's plain to see how magick can get out of hand in the hands of teenagers: they yearn and lust for things which they don't need and just about knock it out of each other's hands to get what they want or what their ego wants.

I would say - as brief as this writing is - that I would not take back the awkward attempts and mistakes of my teenager Crafting years.  They taught me a great deal about my parameters on so many levels and have eventually lead me to a place of balance which I'm proud of.

I would like to know what everyone else thinks - the forum is very much open...

)O( Elspeth