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ATTLEBORO - A little over two years ago, children and young adults had relatively free rein within the Attleboro Teen Center on Pine Street. Along with pickup basketball games and pool, kids occasionally could be heard cussing or dissing their pals.

Idle 19-year-olds could congregate alongside middle school pupils within the former armory's walls.

That's changed under a partnership between the Attleboro YMCA and the city's Recreation Department, says Y Outreach Director Tim Killion and city recreation Director Dennis Walsh.

Now called the Attleboro Youth Center, the facility revolves around an after-school program for local children. Sports activities are now supplemented by a computer center and classes designed to impart basic money knowledge to teenagers.

But the biggest change, Killion and Walsh say, is how kids treat the center, its staff, and each other. "We basically hold kids responsible for their actions here," said Killion, who noted that users have to fill out a good-conduct pledge and are required to sign in every day. "And the kids have responded."

Respect is an expectation, Killion says, both among users and adult supervisors.

"It's something that you have to earn," he said.

Although the center is in an inner city location where signs of poverty and blight are sometimes visible, the youth center lacks the usual scars of urban decay.

Both the exterior and interior are clean and bright and equipment and furnishings are in good repair. Walls and hallways are not marked by graffitti or names carved into woodwork, and a staff of five provides adult supervision for users.

On a typical afternoon, the atmosphere is relaxed with impromptu basketball pickup games, ping pong and a quiet gaggle of youngsters reading in the center's homework room. Several kids wait patiently for the scheduled opening of the center's furnished computer center, where they can browse a filtered Internet and play high-quality video games on large LCD screen monitors.

Killion said there was some resistance to the new rules at first. Some youths were suspended, but most conformed. In the past two years, there hasn't been a single fight at the Youth Center, officials said.

If there is a threat from gangs in the neighborhood, they're not readily visible at the Youth Center.

"I don't think I'm very naive," Walsh said of the gang isssue. "But I haven't seen it."

City officials hope that the Youth Center, along with other initiatives, add up to a preventive shield against youth crime and potential gangs, as well as offering young citizens a safe haven and positive role models. The city's school system also operates The Network, an alternative high school for at-risk teens. The program, which occupies part of the former high school building on County Street, combines instruction with intensive counseling.

Many of the students are potential or former dropouts, Director Kathy Vespia said. With work, most can look forward to graduation and careers.

The highly rated program has been studied by educators and law enforcement agencies throughout the country as a strategy for helping teens who might otherwise end up in unemployment offices or on court dockets.

Both the Youth Center and The Network share some characteristics in common, officials say: a willingness by adults to set limits, mentor and take an active interest in kids' lives.

The Youth Center's Killion says the staff's interaction goes beyond asking kids what games they prefer. Youngsters entering the program are required to have an application with essential information filled out by their parents. As a result, adults at the center become knowledgeable about participants and their families.

When youngsters need to talk, staff members take time to listen.

"Over time, you begin to learn about what they have going on in their lives," Killion said.

The need for positive adult interaction in a child's life - both inside and outside the home - is a key to helping kids develop in healthy ways, said Nancy Tellett Royce of the Search Institute.

The national research organization has compiled a list of 40 "developmental assets" that contribute to a child's healthy growth.

Because youngsters spend so much time away from the home at school, with friends or participating in sports and activities, Royce said appropriate feedback from non-parental adults is important to their development.

"It can't just be the parents," she said.

Unfortunately, she said many adults have become reluctant to take a stand or establish limits for other children because of fears they'll be seen as interfering or even threatened with legal action. Both role models and tough love are necessary.

"We assume that kids are scary and are going to push us and want us to go away, so we do," Royce said. "But what we've learned is, no, they're not scary and, yes, they're going to push us. But we can't go away. We need to push back."