Shocked by behaviour of some young kids in inner city. Scary experience.

[ObviouslyNotAMandy]

I live in a large ish city with 2 small children (5 &7). I was driving home through the city yesterday and 3 lads on scooters and bikes came round a bend on the wrong side of road and started hurling abuse at me. I was going very slowly (inner city traffic) there was no way I was doing anything wrong, it wasn’t a near miss, I got out of the way in good time, the lads even saw me coming before they launched themselves out.
I was alone in car with 2 kids in back and one of them started bashing my windows and was shouting things like “effing c*nt and I should smash your effing car in” and then rode off. My kids were terrified.
Just to be clear, there was absolutely no way I did anything wrong, just wrong place wrong time.
I thought of calling police after but city was packed and no way they’d find them.
what bothered me most is these kids can’t have been more than 11 and the thought of my kids growing up around this kind of thing, or growing up like this TERRIFIES me! How on earth do you keep your kids safe growing up in a city?!
Is it safer in smaller towns /countryside?
Has anyone else had similar incidents?
I’m feeling so rattled by the whole experience!

Never had this. Sounds so scary. What city? This is not normal.

Your kids won’t grow up like this. With the very rare exception those kids could have been identified before nursery. It’s a sad indictment of our failure to support our most difficult and vulnerable families.

keep it in perspective. It’s not very likely to happen again. Get some cctv stuff for your car. Be confident that inside your metal vehicle you are much safer than they are around you.

I’ve never had this in the city I live (London). I have seen some appalling behaviour in the villages and small towns in the north west where my Mum lives but this is very unusual. I think there are a small number of anti social or ‘feral’ families that make life hell for those who inhabit the same area. I would report to the police - they are probably aware of these yobs already.

I’ve had similar experiences - especially growing up in the Northwest, but the Midlands has a major problem with feral gangs of kids too.

Stop looking for what you did wrong. You did nothing wrong. This is just what it’s like in some areas.

These kids have grown up suffused with the consequences of being at the bottom of a hierarchy. One where you are constantly told how shit you are if you haven’t got the latest consumer must-have and aren’t posing the right way. One which worships gangstas in a dog-eat-dog culture where if you are not beating someone else up then you are being beaten up.

Yours will not be brought up in that world, because you are not part of it. I would always recommend martial arts or self-defence training for the kids though.

My first response on reading this was: We live in a large ish city and I’ve never seen this sort of thing. Neither have my teens.

My second thought was: several children/ teens have been shot/ stabbed this year. One was/is a friend of DD. Absolutely a case of wrong place, wrong time and it’s terrifying.

My third thought was: And yet, my children (and their friends) aren’t scared and go about live as normal. They don’t mix with people who behave this way.

Being a parent is terrifying, and I have no idea if it’d be any better anywhere else.

We have these types near blackfriars Bridge on scooters or electric bikes snatching phones from peoples hands. They are slightly older though, we have been warned to not have any devices in our hands when going to work.

This is a busy main road zone 2 in what should be a safe area of London.

So unfortunately this type of behaviour is becoming more common

Unfortunately there are feral kids in most towns nowadays. There are no consequences anymore for bad behaviour since any form of authority and discipline was taken by the balls and castrated. Parents being attacked by their kids because they don't get what they want instantly.

How many times have you experience this?

I've experienced this once. They were like like street urchins roaming in a pack and came out to nowhere. Weaving in and out of the stationary traffic.

I was leaving a large (deprived) town school at 3pm and these are children who were missing education.

These are not a majority and your children won't mix with them. It's always been a problem it just manifests itself differently now. I'm rural, but if I was in a city a big city gang crime would concern me and wrong place wrong time is and issue.

Most kids aren't like this. You need to calm down and remember it's an isolated incident x 😊

It's not the location - I assure you I've known kids like this in rural Ireland, villages in Hampshire and certainly the commuter belt. They come from families where scummy behaviour is either the norm, or where the parents turn a blind eye to anything their sons do.

If it's any consolation (and I'm not a lovely person so I don't cry for these guys) they tend to live shitty lives and die much younger than the rest of the population. Fights, car crashes while speeding drunk, overdoses, you name it.

Similar thing happened to me, I was very displeased and my DS told me to calm down, they're just playing chicken!
Even though there wasn't enough to do when we were kids, we had safer streets to play in. And we haven't changed anything for the next generation, so they make their own entertainment. Stupid entertainment obviously.

I don't think there's an area you can move to where this is guaranteed not to happen. I've had things like this a couple of times, not usually so threatening though, and I live in a suburban area. Had a much worse one once when I was on my driving lesson. My driving instructor was a very calm man and just didn't really react, I was ready to lose my temper but that was probably exactly what they were looking for. They move on if they don't get any entertainment from you.

I don't think it's strictly to do with the area, more to do with coming from families where their parents also behave in an aggressive, violent way and it is just their normal to be confrontational and need to look 'hard'. They can travel to a different area anyway! They've probably done it plenty of times and you were unlucky enough to come across them this time.

I live in a London suburb. That sort of thing is not uncommon in my area. Kids lifting the safety hatch on the back of buses, and riding them, shoplifting en masse, riding their electric scooters in the middle of the road, and effing and blinding at anyone who challenges them. The list goes on...

I live in a town in the Home Counties. To get to the supermarket you go up a travelator. Kids are alway riding bikes up and down it. Young as well, say late primary early secondary school. Normally in groups but one week recently there was one boy on his own. He was cycling round the top but the doors whilst we down down one of these travelator things and he decided to cycle down whilst we were on it riding into the back of my leg. I turned to look at him and asked him to stop that as it hurt. I got called all the c's under the sun an effing fat whxxe and a few bxxxhes here and there. Whilst he was riding round the bottom swearing and looking at us he nearly ran over an elderly male.

Turns out his mum was shopping and she was allowing him to cycle in the shop as well.

Feral kids everywhere. The parents either don't care where they are or what they are doing or laugh saying they are only kids. Others have lost control probably because they never had it in the first place.

It’s going to be fun when the recession really starts to bite and never let up.

Sorry about this sounds horrible - your poor kids. I really urge you to report it to the police. In all likelihood nothing will happen but there might be some CCTV and you can also ask police to increase patrols in that area. It's important to have a zero tolerance to any sort of behaviour like this. And also the police need reports of crime to demonstrate the need for more funding.

This is controversial but I think lockdown is a responsible for a lot of feral behaviour emerging. There are consequences when you deprive kids of exercise, outdoor activity, school, sport and routine - of course there won't be any respect for authority - especially from kids who are most deprived and impacted by austerity.

What you are envisioning is my fear as well, and it’s what is known as a socio-economic collapse in some circles. If we’re lucky it will “just” be turbulent.

It was a “thing” where I live a few years ago. Mass groups of teen boys on bikes scooters etc all going down the road together causing mayhem and mischief. I think the main aim was fun ( for them - not the pedestrians and drivers)
haven’t seen it for ages now, I presume they all grew up and have jobs!

This is controversial but I think lockdown is a responsible for a lot of feral behaviour emerging. There are consequences when you deprive kids of exercise, outdoor activity, school, sport and routine - of course there won't be any respect for authority - especially from kids who are most deprived and impacted by austerity.

I don’t think lockdown has anything to do with it. Britain destroyed working class lives and culture back in the 80s, and it has slowly been spreading ever since. We’re into three generations of life with no hope in a consumerist hierarchy now.

One of the reasons I no longer teach. It is a small number, but it is getting worse. The parents either don't care, or even encourage it. They disrupt the learning of others and stay in the classroom because there is no where else for them to go. Schools waste money on poorly/ no qualified behaviour managers who actually make the problem worse by making their own lives easier. Instead of handing out consequences they take them in for little chats and feed them hot chocolate, and return them to the lesson.

The behaviour managers (who have never been in front of a full class trying to deliver a lesson) blame the teachers - the lessons must be boring, it is unreasonable to tell students to stay in their seat, put their hands up, not throw things, not swear at the peers and the teachers..... The power is in the hands of these troublemakers. And they know it.

The parents see school as childcare, nothing more. They don't turn up for parents evenings. They are abusive on the phone. They are vocal and personal about staff on social media.

These children are already on this ath in the primary schools. In secondary schools many of them are large and aggressive. There is no alternative provision - PRUs have gone (too expensive), internal exclusion is gone (too difficult to staff).

Yes I see this too. My child had a knife to the throat during his commute, he’d never seen the aggressor before. Just children with weapons and no reason to care. Same thing at school. 🤷‍♀️
It’s a “nice” area, apparently.

Sometimes I read stuff on mumsnet that makes me so grateful that I left the UK.

There were kids like this when I was at school. There was a boy who used to harm me and make me do his homework. We used to have rushes at secondary school where kids would literally rush through down the staircase. It was quite frightening.

There have always been cunty kids and always will be. It might be a good time to remind your children that if they should ever encounter any they can talk to you and be open with you.

I'm sorry you had to experience something so horrible.

Pretty normal I’d think. I’d never live in a city with kids. Not even the bigger towns. I came hightailing back to the villages when I was pregnant.

This happened back at my school too. Stabbings. Or if not from our school we'd hear about it locally.