BBC NEWS | UK | British adults ‘fear youngsters’
Out of all of this report, the thing that is just sad enough to make me weep is the blunt fact that we are a (collectively) a nation of people who don’t wish to spend quality time with our children.
What happened? Ways of entertaining kids without parental input? Commercialising babyhood to the point where they an accessory and a cute add-on to buy things for but people don’t think about the child beyond the baby? Kids who can be farmed out to every free daycare going? Perhaps it would be better if daycare went back to being something you had to graft to afford, rather than just being on-tap respite care from ordinary parenthood.
When i think of the kids i know and love, the fields full fo tents with adults who love my children and who know i love theirs, the joy at seeing little girls beginning to morph into young women and the benefit to me of having kids who treat me as a friend and talk to me, talk to my kids, stay with me, hug me and know i will be there for them as i know their parents would be there for mine, i could cry for knowing that we have something uncommon.
It shouldn’t be uncommon for children to be growing up like that, it shouldn’t be uncommon for kids to have supported access to fantastic ways to spend their time, it shouldn’t be that the best way to spend time is hanging out in a bus shelter.
We’ve gone so very badly wrong in this country and yet while we sit here doing what children need and giving it freely, we stand in danger of having that right curtailed. It is a mystifying fact that we live in a country where politicians can read a report like this and try to address it with more control orders and more laws, while equally trying to force more kids into the same narrow tube of destruction.
Yes it is very sad reading, but unfortunetly thats how life is for a lot of children/teenagers.
Shock horror could it be that the gov doesnt actually care about children/people at all?? Perhaps they have a higher agenda in getting children farmed out into daycare..
But i think the big problem is not that we need to structure kids time more, but more that we’ve developed a culture where it isn’t cool to be interested in anything meaningful. I loved my drama club as a teen, no one forced me, it was just available and an eye-opener for the little well-resourced private school girl i was too. It was an underfunded community run project and i got so much valuable stuff from it that really enriched my life.
it shouldn’t be cooler to be vandalising a bus shelter than to do stuff like that; it’s madness.
So, how come they conclude that teenagers ‘need’ structured activities like drama and sport?? I think that part of the problem with life as a teenager is the overwhelming tendency of older people to keep telling you what you need. I think we need to let people grow up and not keep on forcing them into the ‘pupil’/’kid’ role some six or seven years after they went through puberty. We don’t let teenagers have any real choices or control in this society and then wonder why they seem full of resentment. Oh yeh, and I agree with what you say about spending time with children. It’s much easier to be scared of people that you never take the time to know.
And then, otoh, i’ve been spending sometime on forums recently where there are teenagers and young people whno found themselves in the most desperate situations when they were only 4 years older than Fran is now. Most of them had no guidence, no parental care, no one to turn to. As an adult woman, my heart just screams for them and screams at the people who should have been leading and watching; parents, not government, obviously. You wonder what the next generation down is going to be like, 2 or 3 steps removed from any idea of cohesive family love and life, however a family is constructed.
We drove back through leicester last night and i got completely unnerved by a group of kids as they came past the car, mainly because for the past couple of minujtes they’d run backwards and forwards over the crossing we were waiting at. It just all seemed so mental and unpredictable, and yet it is pathetic to be scared by it really.
This is a really good post, I know I’ll come back to this later.
Just my opinion here, but a lot of parents don’t really want to be involved with their kids, they loose interest and want to get on with their own lives. But then its very hard to parent when there is’nt family around or a community.
i have to say, there is no way i would intervene with a group of 14 year olds vandalising. I would quite literally fear for my safety. If i saw them attacking someone else, I would, though still equallly fearful.
I find the disaffected tean gangs terrifying. More so than a group of drunken footie supporters TBH.
but yes, we are failing children as a society.
I think its so much more of a peer led youth culture than it was even when we were teens – kids taking their values from other kids with little adult direction or involvement. You’re right, children should be growing up spending time with their parents and their parents’ friends as loving adults who take an interest. I’ve been reading Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and I think he makes alot of good points along these lines.
It is very sad. I think many children have not had childhoods as such – they reach their teens and they’re not one thing or another. We often see teens at the playground and you can see their desire to play on the equipment. They try but they are too big – they take over the swings quite often and then the smaller children can’t get on there. It would be nice to see more playground equipment aimed at older children/teens and adults and that can handle their size and weight. Too often they damage things by just being too large in proportion. I reckon it would get rid of some of the ‘hormones’ by exercising them and allowing them to climb, jump, hang off and drop etc – a mini assault course would work with netting, beams and tree substitutes. I reckon if everywhere had teenage ‘play’ space that was self-regulated it could sort a lot out.