Our kids and how they behave

[Bilk]

I am absolutely livid at the moment I have come straight here from my car to my computer, after listening to Radio 5 live news. Didn't know if I should add this to the thread about behaviour of kids in certain areas of Ballymena, but I decided in my anger to dedicate thread of it's own to it.
As I said I was linstening to an interview with a police officer on the subject of the murder of Sophie Lancaster, A young girl kicked to death by a buch of thugs in England because she was dressed like a goth, that was her only crime according to this police officer. The perparators of this vile crime were eventually arrested and convicted Bad enough in itself. But the officer was going on to describe the attitude of the boys and their parents during the trial. Apparently one of the boys parents giggled and laughed when the boy was being interviewed by the police. There attitude throughout the trial he said was appalling. All the parents and of the boys and the boys themselves did not seem to take the matter seriously. Good lord what crime do your kids have to commit before you take it seriously. We wonder why we are faced with ever increasing incidents of boys, and girls for that matter, taking pleasure in kicking people to the point of death.
Now this interview was making me angry enough, but it doesn't end there. The officer was giving a very serious interview in an attempt to make parents understand the role they play in their childs behaviour. It was very interesting and I was gratified to hear a police officer speak so candidly, and frankly, stating what he believed to be the role of parents in the upbringing of their kids, and where the parents of todays kids were lacking.
The stupid anchor woman thought it fitting to interupt the officer and apologise for having to cut him off and asked him to wait. Which he said he would do, because he thought it important that parents hear what he had to say. So did I She then moved over to some wanker from British Airways to talk about some stupid problem at the new terminal 5 at Gatwick (where's the angry icon when you need it) They went on about how much it cost BA and BAA for the debacle of yesterday and had a phone in on the subject. WTF that angry icon.
How are we ever going teach our kids, and more importantly, the parents of those kids the difference between right and wrong when the BBC, and other news programes think that how many millions BA or BAA make is more important, than what this officer had to say. I think I'm getting too old, it's time I left this world.

[Louisiana Lady]

Bilk the actions of these young hoodlums and their families you described here was bad enough but I agree the actions of the news anchor woman was appalling. It seems as if excruciating details of violence are considered newsworthy because of some type of shock therapy that will hold the attention of an audience, but when it comes to concern that could perhaps get to the deep roots of many of today’s problems in our society it isn’t considered important enough to bring it to an audience. It makes one wonder, what ever happened to compassion. In the past people had to work together to survive everyday life and there was care and concern in looking out after our neighbors, but today, it seems, we have become a self-centered lot only looking out for #1. If as much media attention was given to people who want to speak out with possible solutions as there is to the thrill seekers, maybe this world could be a little better.

[earl]

It's happening everywhere Bilk me awul matey. Heard on the radio today that a 9 year old kid was caught driving a car in Limerick city. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest and was armed with a knife and a shotgun that was taller than he was. Limerick is Ireland's answer to Detroit LL. Newstalk went to Drimminagh in Dublin after those two poor Polish lads were brutally murdered by some kids. They talked to some of the local kids and they were all on about having to be armed with at least a knife. One lad boasted that he got a set of knuckle-dusters for Christmas. Sure even in Cavan, once I had a 10 year old pull a syringe on me and tried to rob me! I told him to fcuk off before I stuffed him into the back of the thing and squeezed him through the needle!

[Louisiana Lady]

There must be something in the drinking water, Earl! This week a group of 9 and 10 year old school children were arrested for a plot to kill their teacher.
They had a bag of "supplies" to carry out their plot. A heavy paperweight to be used to knock her out, handcuffs and duct tape to disable her and a large knife to kill her with. Each child had been assigned a duty in the plot from being a look-out to cleaning up after the killing.
It all began as revenge against the teacher for correcting one of the students for standing up in a chair in the class room.

[Louisiana Lady]

I just read an update on the story I posted regarding the young student's plot to kill their teacher. It seems they are being put on probation and possible expelling some of them from school for the remainder of the year for bringing weapons to school. (No charges for planning a murder !!!!!). They are considered too young to be sentenced to a youth detention center and the state they reside in does not have facilities for children that young. This means they will be back in the school next year!
What does this say to them? !!! How can they not be left with arrogant attitudes that they can get away with anything and attitudes that will remain with them the rest of their lives. What has happened to common sense?

[earl]

That's absolutely crazy LL!

[Louisiana Lady]

This is a good discussion topic, Bilk. I'd like everyone's opinion on what they think the reason's are for the changes in children's behavior over the years and what has brought about so much violence from the young and what, if anything, can be done to address the problem.

[Bilk]

Is it any wonder these kids are the way they are, and not just the kids, their parents too. A chld can do whatever he or she likes, there are no rules for them. And when the people in the news think that, how much money some multi million pound company makes, is more important than our kids kicking someone to death. Then is it any wonder they think they can do what they like. It's because they can. And their parents don't give a damn either. Until that is, it's their son or daughter on the receiving end. Kids planning to murder their teacher what next? Assassinate the president? Murder their mum and dad because they refused to buy them that bike they wanted?

[Louisiana Lady]

Actually, a few weeks ago, a 16 year old took part in the murder of her mother and 2 younger brothers, because her family insisted she break up with her boy friend. Her father was shot 5 times but crawed for help. Even taking a stand against our children can be deadly.

[Bilk]

louisianalady said:

Actually, a few weeks ago, a 16 year old took part in the murder of her mother and 2 younger brothers, because her family insisted she break up with her boy friend. Her father was shot 5 times but crawed for help. Even taking a stand against our children can be deadly.

Don't know about there LL, but if you take a stand against your children here, you will be accused of abuse. All the things my mum used to keep me in line are now illegal.

[Louisiana Lady]

It seems to be pretty much the same here Bilk even to the extent of small children threatening to call 911 if a parent says they need to be punished for something. Laws that were set in place for the protection of our children have now put power into their small hands. Loving, caring parents have lost the authority that once instilled respect in their children. I have always felt respect to be the key and the downfall of our youth is surely lack of respect for parents, teachers, and any authority. More power and lack of respect has become a deadly force in our society that is constantly fed by the breakdown of the family unit and the violence displayed in movies, video games, and music.
Before anyone jumps down my throat and assumes that by the breakdown of the family unit I mean divorce that leaves children in a one-parent home, that cannot be further from my thinking, as I was left with four little daughters to raise on my own and they are all well adjusted young women living very successful lives and they all admit they were better off in a one parent home than in the atmosphere they were exposed to in earlier years. Children need consistency in their lives and it doesn’t matter if it comes from one parent or two. I believe the break down of the family unit can happen with any family…..even a two parent family because they stop living as a unit with guidance, rules and conditions that set limits and consequences that teach respect for themselves and others.
Today’s children are exposed to more than ever before. Most of us, as children, were protected from everything. “Grownups” didn’t discuss anything around children and many of us moved happily around in our little glass dome of safety. There was no television to bring us the visual bad happening we see today. Radio was our only means of hearing from the outside world and since our imaginations were limited by only what we had been exposed to in life, we could not visualize the news. But today’s child is exposed to constant violence in one way or another in what they see. The most violence I was exposed to as a child was the Road Runner cartoon where the poor thing was constantly flattened or walked off a cliff, or a western at the Saturday movie, and even then, when the bad guy was shot, there was never any blood when fell from his horse or lay dying in his friends arms saying weakly to let him be buried with his boots on! Our movies today thrive on the gory…..each one trying to out do the last. And our children get mixed messages. Several years ago, there was a movement here not to give small boys toy guns to play with because it was thought to teach them to be violent, but at about that same time the market became flooded with video games of the highest bloody violent content and this seemed to be accepted. And has anyone ever questioned why the main subject of video games is violence? Who started this trend and why?
Children all want a sense of belonging and they are easily influenced. They have become insensitive to the realization of traumatic horrors due to overexposure and it is impeding their judgment.
With power, lack of respect, and influenced by violence what kind of citizens and leadership can we expect in the future?

[earl]

I tell ya, when I have kids, they'll either have respect, or tear-stained eyes. I will not be raising any gurriers. I hate spoiled kids, and I hate kids with no respect.

[Bilk]

I agree with an awful lot of LL's post, I was raised along with six other kids by my mother on her own. The one thing I learned was discipline. Well dare I cross the imaginary line, it was there believe me. I was no angel for the times, but for todays times I would've passed the test for a choir boy.
Things were so different, no one discussed death in front of the kids, not even a death in the family. When there was a funeral in my street I was locked in the house until it passed by. I notice crying children being dragged to funerals today. And the friends and neighbours of the dead person stand at the side of the road with their kids. My mum and her neighbours would be spinning in their graves if they heard of me doing such a thing. Neither of my boys went to a funeral in my family until they were well into their late teens. I vaguely remember (only because I was told in later years) that a pupil in my school was killed by being struck on the temple with a hockey ball. There was no stupid councilling for the rest of the kids in the school because they were not told. The boy just went away, I for one assumed to another school. Children are expected to grow up much too fast today, in fact they have no childhood. The kids of my time where protected from everything. In this age sex, violence, death and the rest, are forced down their throats day and daily whereas we were protected from the ills of the world.
Adult conversation was for adults The kids were told to leave the room if our mother had a neighbour or a relative in to visit. We were not allowed to hear what was being said, let alone to take part in the conversation.
I never visited a sick relative in hospital, my mum would've died before she'd let me go.
I guess some will say we were allowed to believe that the world was all pink and wooly and lovely. Well you are right, and when I came into the real world as an adult, it was a bit of a shock. But I much prefer that, than being lead to believe that death, and particularly kicking someone to death, is ok, just part of life.

[An Fear Dubh]

I think this debate can be developed to help us thrash out some other issues that developed in the poll that Setanta was trying to run on the date for when police and justice powers should be transferred to the northern Assembly. But here we can move away from the unionist v’s nationalist divide that most of our debates fall into.

I do not buy into the belief that all youths are anti-social. Or that they are the product of bad parenting. Yes poor parent role models and childhood experiences can have effects on personal development. Or that the answer lies in quick fix law and order solutions.

And I think Setanta's point about the media and how it reports 'news' is worth further thought.

But we need to correctly analyse the situation in relation to the issues of young people and how the types of negative and violent behaviour that youth are regularly involved in have helped create a climate of anxiety and genuine fear within our communities. And we need to be careful that this anxiety and fear is justified, as not all youth are anti-social and dangerous, some hang about streets late at night in numbers simply because they lack the money and facilities are not locally available.

I think Harry's response in the policing poll thread is fairly typical of a section of the 'unionist' community and others in the nationalist community might also hold a similar view. Harry asks (this is my take on what Harry is driving at) Why bother devolving powers if nothing will change? Is the sole purpose for republicans to scapegoat and undermine the police, a force they previously violently attacked? My answer to that is the police is only a tool not the problem or the solution, others have responded differently. So Harry asks (again this is my take) if it is the law that is wrong and not the ones tasked with upholding the law (the police) then what laws do we change as existing laws offer little protection to the victims of crime and more to the perpetrators of crime?

Setanta did briefly mention and it should be given greater emphasis that adopting 'zero tolerance' policies or other tough on crime approaches are more about media image than solving issues. I think he put it like iron fist with velvet glove, not my solution but there are merits as a very short term step forward.

We need to move away from the narrow focus that tabloid type media presents. Anti-social behaviour is a direct and accepted manifestation of the social exclusion of our young people and that this social exclusion is a clear consequence of how society is currently and deliberately structured. Other disadvantaged sections of our society also feel various levels of social exclusion. Some groupings are better able to cope and gain acceptance or support from within communities. Youths by their nature as pubescent individuals find it difficult to cross the age divide. Thus the gulf of their social exclusion is far greater and internal peer pressure is far more important to them.

From my perspective as a socialist, the police and the criminal justice system are not designed to make meaningful change to the way our society engages with each other. They are designed to control and limit society to ensure that the current unfair system of how our countries wealth is distributed is maintained. But as a realist I recognise we are a long way from changing this so we must tinker and tweak at what we can, to improve the lot of those at the bottom end of the scale in our society.

I am not sure of the exact cost (£50,000 - £80,000) per year, to keep one young person incarcerated. And some advocate longer jail terms, but in the end the youth are released unreformed and mostly more hardened criminals. This ‘iron-fist’ or ‘tough on law and order’ are not long term solutions. So given that society in the north has the opportunity for a new beginning why would we want to endorse or support policies that have proven expensive and ineffective? Especially at this time when every policy has to be justified as being value for money. [Health care and hospitals must be cost efficient, Education must be cost efficient, the Irish language bill would in the opinion of some be too costly, the Maze stadium project must be long term financially self sustaining.] But people seem to want to waste money on ineffective short term measures to gloss over the real issues of anti-social behaviour.

The greatest challenge for those of us who want meaningful change is to change the mindset. A mindset that under the relentless battering has been blinded by the tabloid type journalism to focus on the ‘need for law and order’ and other poor political policies that are designed to exclude and divide. We are deflected and blinded to the real issues that society developed.

How do we best challenge the various accepted ‘normalities’ and replace them with a social consciousness that allows our society to be enriched?

This is no easy small task and there is no quick fix. But once we accept the analysis we can be tackle the issues. With a series of short, medium and long term measures using various tools and agencies. The more agencies that are under local control the better chance we have of making meaningful change. The trap we want to avoid is that we do not set up community groups or government agencies to become the management of social inequalities. And swallow the line that the only way to deal with the anti-social youth, is to wage war against them. By all means isolate the minority hardcore criminal elements but do it in a way that does not further alienate the majority. And develop the community so that the youth and other socially excluded groups are involved and organising themselves to create conditions that break down the issues that divide society.

[Bilk]

As a socialist myself I found myself agreeing with a lot of what you have to say AFD. My problem comes when you speak of "social exclusion" and young people. If you read my post above, you will see that I was socially excluded from the adults in my family, and deliberately so. It was part of my upbringing that I did not emulate or copy those adults. I did not know what they did when they got together, because I was excluded from that get together. That is my point exactly, the worst a girl could do was to copy her mothers putting on of makeup, for which she would've got a resounding slap on the kite. We kids were not socially excluded from each other, only from the adults. We were left to make our own fun, and we usually did, none that I ever remember thought it fun to kick someone to the point of death.
You say not all kids are anti social, and you are right. But when I was young, those who were anti social were a tiny minority and were frowned upon by the rest of us kids. Today those that are not anti social dare not leave their homes alone, because they are the ones considered weird. And they, someday, will fall into the hands of a gang who will kick them to the point of death, just as Sophie Langford did.
The problem is, and it's not the only problem I understand, it is that there are no laws to deal with anti social kids, ask any cop. A police officer cannot even take a kid who's misbehaving to his/her parents because there he will suffer a torrent of abuse from those same parents.
My mothers favourite words to me where "You ever bring a police man to this door and by God you'll be sorry" belive me I never did, because I knew she meant it.
The one and only time I ever remember getting into serious trouble with the police, and believe me it was something simple, I will never forget. But then again that was what was intended. I was put in a police car, in the back seat with an officer beside me. All the while the guy in the front was berating the guy in the back with me to make sure I didn't get away. They drove me all over Belfast for I would say thirty minutes, I was terrified. Then later I was even more terrified when I realised we were back in my street, I thought they were taking me to my mother. They didn't, they opened the car door and let me out. But not before the officer had told me they were letting me off this time, but if they ever caught me again I was in serious trouble. I remembered that for the rest of my life, and since I'm relating it now it's obvious I still do. Can you imagine the outcry if that were to happen today? The cry of child abuse from the do gooders would be shouted from the rooftops.