Congratulations, fellow parents, for having survived another challenging school year, and my commiserations, too, for having thus embarked, like me, on another summer of Teen/Noise Management.

The terms "teen" and "noise," though not synonymous, do go together like the proverbial "horse and carriage." You can experience noise occasionally without finding a teen in the immediate vicinity, but the opposite is not true, for where there is a teen, there will be noise. Where there are many teens, there will be much greater noise. So reliable is this truth, in fact, that for many generations, parents knew the sudden absence of noise meant trouble was a-brewing.

That's how it used to be, anyway. All of a sudden, thanks to modern technology, managing the interaction of adolescent kids and their accompanying cacophony has become much trickier. And lately, it seems, we grumpy, quiet-craving adults have been fighting fire with fire, using noise to manage our noisy offspring.

First, consider what other adults have been doing to manage our kids. If you followed any news last week other than Ben Roethlisberger's accident, you might have read about a noise-making device of British invention, used to disperse kids where large groups of them are not wanted-- outside convenience stores, for instance. Inventor Howard Stapleton's Mosquito sound system ("It's small and annoying," he explains) emits a high-pitched, pulsing sound that can be heard by most people under the age of 20 but by almost no one older than 30. The antiloitering, antishoplifting device annoys and drives away younger people with keener ears.

In November, when the Mosquito hit the news, only one shop in Wales had tested it, with great success. Its manufacturer made the sound available to other businesses via the Internet, but by last month, as many as 100,000 savvy teens had downloaded it as a cell phone "ring tone" that's inaudible to adults, especially teachers who would restrict phone use.

Authorities elsewhere have been using time-honored, lower-tech approaches to managing noisy teens. As PG columnist Peter Leo reported last week, civic leaders in Sydney, Australia, "have ruthlessly employed the ultimate crowd dispersal weapon," the music of Barry Manilow. Councilmen voted to pipe Manilow tunes into a parking lot where a hundred or more car-revving, stereo-blasting teens were intimidating other drivers and reducing restaurant business.

Several years ago, by the way, another Australian town implemented the technique with the musical stylings of Bing Crosby. Apparently, the Muzak that kept our parents happy in elevators drives our kids nuts.

Another low-tech approach is the loudspeaker announcement. Last week, "ABC Evening News" reported that more than 100 malls nationwide had implemented curfews, banning unaccompanied teens from as early as 5 p.m. on. The technique might have started at Minnesota's Mall of America more than a decade ago, but suddenly, the idea is booming. All malls with such policies report significant drops in shoplifting and security-related confrontations, as well as healthy increases in sales.

Teen/noise management on the commercial front is proving so successful that we parents might have even more hours to manage with our adolescents at home. Although I have a small crowd of two teens and one preteen to manage, I haven't yet had to play hopelessly out-of-date music to disperse them. That's because my crowd disperses itself.

Each kid can while away many hours alone in his or her room with an array of noise-making devices. The youngest child's room holds only a Gameboy and an iPod, so sound emission is minimal. But the middle child's room has the video gaming system hooked up to a cable-free, antenna-less television set. His choices include "Dance, Dance Revolution" and various alien-hunting games, so the noise level includes either the rhythmic pounding of happy feet or the regular screams of creatures under tremendous gunfire.

The oldest child entertains himself with endless music, a portable CD player, a boom box, an antiquated stereo system and an electric guitar with amp.

All these bedrooms empty onto a family room where our lone television set with cable sits. Downstairs are the drum set and the piano, which everyone plays. So you see that my prospects for maintaining sanity this summer are quite low.

If you have, like me, decreed that your children must spend as many hours reading as they spend with screens, wresting some silence from the din becomes even more urgent. How is one kid supposed to read "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" for the seventh time if Led Zeppelin is blasting from the other side of the drywall?

The use of headphones mitigates the noise, until you need someone's attention. That's when you need to make some serious noise of your own.

Last week, my husband brought home an antique school bell that weighs about 125 pounds and rings loudly enough to summon the entire neighborhood for dinner.

If that doesn't break through the racket, I will have to give up and escape to the quiet of the mall.