The calendar reads Nov. 6 today, which may depress many of you. One step closer to less daylight, colder weather, snow and holiday shoppers, who morph into snarling terrorists for a month or so.

Me? I’m thrilled. It’s one day closer to the beginning of winter sports, a season for which I carry fervent hope for less juvenile delinquency among our student-athletes.

Seriously. Given the behavior of some of these kids this fall, you wonder if remaining games should begin with burglar alarms instead of kickoffs and faceoffs.

I mean, I’m the guy who tries to advocate for our kids as often as possible. It’s getting harder.

Thus far this autumn at schools throughout eastern Connecticut, we’ve had thievery, hazing, drinking in school parking lots and the exchange of sexually explicit photos and videos among students, many athletes included. There was a “prank” lynching complete with a confederate flag and then one young woman, during spirit week at her school when asked to come dressed as her “hero,” chose Hitler.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Thank God MY kid didn’t do that. Let me suggest that past performance doesn’t guarantee future success.

The single best piece of advice I’ve ever heard through 47 years on the mortal soil came from my mother. She said, “Never make fun of someone else’s kids, because you never know what your own are doing.”

And so I beg you all, all you parents of high school kids, athletes or not: Removeth thy craniums from the beachfront (get your heads out of the sand.) Assume nothing. Your kids aren’t as innocent as you think they are. Talk to them. Know every password. No electronic devices in their rooms. Talk as often as possible. Because the behaviors we’re seeing — at schools all over the place — suggest that our kids are either learning the wrong things at home or have too much freedom to learn the wrong things from others.

It’s not teachers, administrators, society, the “system” or anything else. If our kids are ever to feel responsibility for their actions, they need to be made responsible, lest we see why kids are prone to act stupidly: they inherit it.

I get the “kids will be kids” argument. I get that our job as adults is to wait at the out of bounds line, ready to throw the penalty flag. But there are some behaviors that defy logic, explanation and demand further review.

A “prank” lynching? That’s about as funny as a church fire. I guess, though, that when we see racial incidents at some of our schools perpetuated by adults, we have a pretty good idea who their parents must be. I don’t think I’d ever survive being a superintendent. Because a “prank” lynching to me merits expulsion. It’s not “kids being kids.” It offends every fiber of accepted behavior.

Then there’s coming to school dressed as Hitler. I sure hope the kid left home wearing something else and then changed in the parking lot. Because if you let your kid leave the house dressed as Hitler, her “hero,” your parenting license should be burned beyond recognition.

My wife (the fairest most honest person I know) and I talked about this at length the other night. She found a story on slate.com the other day detailing how teens are proliferating jokes about Sept. 11 now. Kids make fun of everything. She also wondered if that same girl came dressed as Genghis Khan, whether the reaction would have been as intense, given that time’s passage perhaps makes evil a duller ache.

But isn’t that why adults exist? To educate? Inform? You mean through 16 years of school and thousands of nights at home, nobody ever mentioned that lynchings were the most overt acts of racism this side of slavery? Or that Hitler was, you know, a bad dude?

(How long till we hear from a few of our forward thinking social commentators who swear racism is an affectation? Ten minutes?)

What really frosts my adenoids here is that while the overwhelming majority of us find this blindingly obvious, there’s clearly a segment that doesn’t. And those people vote. Or stand in front of you at the store. Or — gulp — raise children.

Sure, son. Wave that confederate flag at school! Lynch away!

Of course, honey. Go to school dressed as Hitler! All in good fun, right?

I can’t stand it.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro. Twitter: @BCgenius