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!

There are scummy kids and families like this all over the UK. There always has been, but in the last ten years it has become more noticeable.

lack of consequences for bad behaviour in schools, lots of do gooder teachers and social workers, and parents who see school as simply
child care are all factors!
It will only get worse.

Live in rural south east and worry that I’m in a bubble here, it’s so safe and peaceful. I go into London for work twice a week and once the train hits the London burbs, I start to feel on edge. School kids pile on and many of them feral. Their behaviour is shocking. Smoking, swearing, fighting, intimidating passengers.

Relieved that my little boy will grow up somewhere safe but it’s going to be a massive culture shock when he goes out into the ‘real’ world, ie London 🫣

Thanks for all your responses. I’ve lived here all of my 42 years and have seen lots of the shocking stuff that happens in a city, 7 years ago I’d have let this wash over me, but wow- when you have kids of your own it really does change your perspective. It’s true, a lot of these kids deserve our sympathy rather than our anger, I guess all we can do is guide our own children on how to deal with certain situations and people. But when my kids first start going into town with their mates I’m pretty sure I’ll be hiding in a bush somewhere watching them!

Stabbing in the next postcode, and a stabbing in mine, in the last 5 years, involving teenagers.

We also have an issue with older blokes hanging around my DD's school trying to chat to girls in the street outside. There's also a leisure centre there and they prowl. (My DD's school is single sex). Gross., DD only ever travels home from school with a group of friends.

It's not a city issue, it's everywhere. I used to get hassled in the small town at came from.

Agree with the PP that said this kind of feral behaviour has intensified since lockdown. Yes, many of these kids are deserving of sympathy but that sympathy can only go so far when they are terrorising neighbourhoods or city main streets. I also think a significant number of girls are just as bad - I'd honestly rather walk past a gang of young lads than girls to be honest!

I live in a small rural town and I'm shocked by the attitude of some kids. Usually starting from mid primary school upwards..

I feel there are two issues causing this.

1. Parents dont/wont/can't parent their children and blames every other institution for their kids behaviour
2. No fear of the Police, and legal consequences.

When social media and the news is full of stories turning the Police into an enemy and the Police having to apologise left right and centre, adults on line (and at home) calling Police Pigs, Bastards and PoPo..well can you blame the kids for not trying to avoid coming to the Police attention? It's a sport for them!

We need parents held to account for their children's behaviour, we need more punishment in schools and teachers to not be worrying they'll lose their job when little Tyler is kicking off and gets escorted from class, we need the Police to be able to take these feral kids away in handcuffs without worrying the parents will go to the papers and making the compo face, that the police wont end up being filmed every time they do their job and told they're using excessive force when actually they're trying to arrest the 13yo thug who has a knife or who just assaulted someone..

When you remove the power of authority and turn them into just another target to be vilified you turn tormenting these authorities into a sport for these kids.

I can imagine this happening, OP and I've seen similar and it's terrible when you see them get in buses in gangs that go to directly intimidate the driver. I've seen this as an unprovoked. They definitely get a rise off it and need discipline.

My local police are on first name terms with all the local scrotes and seem to.prefer to be pally with them rather than confront them ..third or fourth generation thugs , put through the court system every so often with minimal.inconvenience to plod or themselves .

its happened in our village once or twice (north wales)

its certain families that cause the trouble here.
favourite one at the moment is to deliberately ride in front of a car and stop dead and then the abuse starts.

police do nothing

Live in a city and absolutely despise it. Can’t wait to get out!

onelostsoulswimminginafishbowl · 16/10/2022 10:52
Sometimes I read stuff on mumsnet that makes me so grateful that I left the UK.

Are you seriously suggesting that this only happens in the UK?

Where do you live now?

It is not the place. It is the people. People make places.

I feel safer in London than some villages out in the sticks here. There are the night gangs driving round in their pick up trucks, before driving back to their caravan sites. Then there is the fly tipping too.

We have kids like this in our estate. The proposal that we need to increase our birth rate in England due to a falling birth rate, is scary because we are clearly failing kids already. Once we learn how to produce well rounded, non feral children then we could perhaps consider having even more of them.

I’m in London and it’s just as ok. The dc are in a nice community. No need to feel on edge at all.

If you haven't experienced any antisocial behaviour in your life at all then you are very, very lucky.

I think the thing to remember is that it is so shocking because it's so unusual. I remember several years ago going to my local Sainsburys' - all v naice and quiet and sedate in the middle of the day - and 5 teenagers turned up on scooters and proceeded to scoot around at full speed up and down the aisles, shouting loudly. They were obviously high on something and quite how they didn't injure anyone I don't know. No-one could catch them, they were completely out of control and it was awful to watch - my DC was very upset by it. It's stuck with me precisely because it's not the sort of behaviour you see so often that you become immune to it - and I do have to wonder what sort of behaviour they are witnessing at home. Well, I know exactly what they're witnessing and how they are being dragged up by parents who don't gaf.

Most disadvantaged kids like that with electric scooters are drug dealers where I am. They are recruited specifically because they are young and can recruit other young people. But until they commit and actual crime they can be arrested over nothing is done.

I very rarely see anti social behaviour. It’s usually adults by themselves though. Old white man shouting abuse at young black Sainsbury’s staff teen (poor boy really felt for him). One incident in Sainsbury’s again during height of pandemic with female shouting and swearing.

Ds saw something very sad, young child said they were too hot outside cafe and adult threw glass of water over him. Horrible

Generally though we’re lucky. Parks are people jogging, playing sport, walking dogs etc and place feels good. London not in sticks

I’ve witnessed similar behaviour a number of times and I am from a small town

We definitely see that kind of anti social behaviour here in the Crawley/Horsham area I live in. At Halloween there were feral gangs going around hurling abuse at people who'd run out of sweets or stealing things from younger children.

Also, just to add a bit of balance to people saying the North West is not great for this, I lived in a Liverpool suburb for 27 years before moving to London. The worst behaviour I ever encountered was some kids throwing an egg at my brother's bedroom window on 'Mischief Night'.

I think the general answer is that there are badly behaved kids everywhere.

Sorry you had to go through that OP :(

In fact just recently not too far from me there were a group of youths hurling fireworks at people and passing cars

This could have happened anywhere.

Distressing for you and the kids OP, but as others have said, it's unfortunately not a new thing.

About 15 years ago I had a job where I worked a lot with bus companies. In the area concerned, there were certain parts of small towns and former pit villages where the buses simply refused to serve, and even the police gave a wide bearth, for exactly the reasons that PPs have described.

I live in an relatively affluent area, but there are still acts of vandalism, by groups of kids and frequent complaints on the village pages about drivers almost knocking over teenagers in dark hoodies who ride bikes in gangs down the unlit roads.

A man was killed in our village by a group of older kids who knocked him over from behind as he was walking along minding his own business! Not a regular occurrence of course, but still scary!

Rubbish. The blame lies solely with the the parents and no-one else. My teenagers were left to their own devices while DH and I worked. But we've brought them up properly. They know how to behave. We need to stop blaming wider society for the failures of parents to parent properly.

The problem is the feral kids from 15 years ago are now feral parents with their own feral kids. And so the cycle will go on.

I hate to say it but I do think a lot of inadequate parents simply have children because they think they'll be a nice quiet doll to cuddle when they're babies, and they'll always bring in a bit of extra benefit money. I don't know what the answer is. Years ago those types of parents, who couldn't afford to have an unplanned pregnancy because benefits weren't quite the same, would often opt for adoption, and that child could then go on to have a happier life.

Agree @CurlyhairedAssassin there will also be kids from good families who behave badly for one reason or another but the vast majority of anti social a-holes are like that because they were brought up that way - plain and simple.