To think that most children are not feral and abusive?

[pointythings]

I was just at the Barnardo's survey that seemed to suggest that 49% of us think that all children are feral, violent and abusive. Who on earth did they ask?

The absolutely vast majority of the kids I see around me are absolutely fine, no different from the kind of children I grew up with, and we have some really deprived families in my area.

Who are these people who hate children so much?

Of course its bollocks, but its done by a charity/lobby group. As with all surveys its necessary to look at who commissoned it and what they get out of it.

Cory I think you are right about the knee jerk reaction. Just a shame people have forgotton about the groups of young people (and older people of course!) we went out to help rebuild communities harmed by the riots.

Weren't most the rioters adults anyway? As is above the age of 18?

Hate the demonisation of childre, especially teens.

BTW, cory, statistically most street crime is committed by young balck males, not most crime.

Yes, you're right about the crime, Spanish, that was careless of me. But I could just imagine some ghastly shopkeeper using those statistics to extrapolate about the whole group. The difference being that most people would see at once how unacceptable that was.

My well behaved and honest dd is not allowed in the local stationer's if two of her friends (also honest and well behaved) already happen to be in there buying their school stationery- and nobody sees that as in the least discriminatory. There is no limit on over-18s- because as we all know over-18s never indulge in shop-lifting

S' alright, cory. Just a little bugbear of mine .

FWIW, I agree with you about the shop signs. They have them in a few of the newsagents where I live was well.

I heard this yesterday and was shocked.

In the last few weeks ive had random acts of kindness from teenagers, one gave up his seat for ds1 on the tube (despite being with 2 fit girlies he obviously didnt care about looking 'cool'). And a few times have had teenagers hold the door open for me when ive got the buggy.

A terrible sweeping generlalisation

Two local youngsters saved a penioner's life recently when his scooter had got stuck on the railway tracks and the train was approaching; according to the paper the street was full of adults in cars who did nothing.

tbh i don't trust this survey at all. The answers to surveys depend on how you ask them and where i.e. if you survey peopel just after the riots and ask:

1. Do you think some children can be violent A- obviously yes.
2. Do you think some children can be abusive A - yes
3. Do you think some children are feral? A - yes
4. Do you think all children are abusive, violent or feral - and I could understand why so many would say yes.

With surveys you really can "lead" people to give you the answer you want.

I think they are the same as they have always been and the majority are lovely and the minority have dreadful home circumstances.
I think that the frustrations come from people's irritation with parents.It annoys me intensely when we get compared to Mediterranean countries because the attitude is different and they really do think 'it takes a village to raise a DC' and they have well behaved DCs because it just doesn't take the parent to interact.
In UK parents want you to love their DC, smile on indulgently, whatever the behaviour, and not interact. Only in UK do you get the dreadful 'my DC my rules' or yesterday (it really made me grit my teeth) 'your baby, your rules, hun'! And no- it is not 'your DC your rules' out of your own house-it is the rules of the library, the cafe or where ever you happen to be.
In Spain or Greece etc you would never get the 'I hate dirty strangers touching my baby-it would be a completely alien concept.
I wouldn't dare help a struggling mother in the supermarket, she would probably assume I was being judgemental or interfering and give me abuse. If my teenage DS was to offer help with a buggy on stairs he would probably be looked on with suspicion as if he was trying to grab a handbag!
Until parents change their attitude, get their DCs under control and go with 'it takes a village.........' you won't get the general public being child friendly.

We should ban all the my, my,my.

Can someone please tell me when all this cash for having children is going to start rolling?! I'm 33 wks preg and we've had to totally rearrange and rethink our finances to have this baby....

I really disliked listening to the reports on this survey yesterday. It's like anything isn't it, you can manipulate figures/opinions to say anything these days.

In my opinion kids are pretty much like any other sector of society, some are good and some are bad.

I have two much older ds's (22 & 20) and wonder if it's peoples perception, hearing about the bad ones on the news (the riots although most of those were over 18, stabbings & gangs) and maybe also seeing them going around in groups. If you're not used to being around teenagers I think it would be intimidating. Personally, it doesn't intimidate me because of my boys. I know that some kids can look scary and they're tall and a bit grungey, but the majority of them are just lovely!

I think lesley has put her finger on it, surveys often lead you in particular direction- and often without intending to.

Have just completed a survey at work where the question was about the Positive Impact of certain changes to the workplace, along a scale of 1 to 5, ranging between High and Low Positive Impact. The people conducting the survey seemed genuinely surprised and apologetic when I pointed out that there was nowhere on the survey to record a Negative Impact. It seems most people completing the survey hadn't even noticed that the way the question was phrased meant you had to assume that any impact would be for the better.

Actually, my dh and his 3 brothers were bloody awful as teenagers. All 4 of them got into trouble with the police for pretty minor stuff. But they'd had the most appalling upbringing: their mother was a bit flaky when they were very young, constantly changing "dads" and she changed their surnames each time too and then she was very seriously ill with cancer and they were told she'd die.

Maybe we should spend more time and money supporting disfunctional families and less time and money on pointless surveys!

I agree with Lesley-if the questions were put in a different way you would get a different result.

What's that saying? 'Lies, damn lies and statistics' I think...
The media always will put the worst possible spin on things like this, 49% of people may well think that children are feral etc, but 51% don't. Similarly 25% might say that there's no hope for a certain group of children but 75% don't think that.
Some people have bad experiences with teens, I never have though, we must have the nicest group of 'scary' teenagers ever here!

I wonder if albertcamus teaches in the same town in which I grew up

Are serious surveys really referring to children as 'feral'?

Do remember that it's not only the questions in a survey which can be leading, but also the demographic who are surveyed which can squew the results and, indeed, the media's interpretation of the results.

Bizarre - does anyone know exactly what the wording of the survey was that elicited this unbalanced response?

All the kids I know are polite (well obv except for DD at home sometimes!).

Groups of be-hooded lads reveal their true nature if you walk around with a sausage dog - 'Ahh, cute' from them just like everyone else!

I think people have forgotten what it was like to be that age. Teenagers have always been loud and a bit unaware of how their behavioiur affects others, it doesn't mean you need to be intimidated by them.

I often find that my experiences don't match these surveys at all, or even the prevailing view of children on MN. I go out to normal places, restaurants, cafes, in the street, supermarket, and I rarely see horrid children completely misbehaving, more just the odd toddler having a tantrum (like they do). Pretty much all the children I meet, I like, I smile at, they sometimes play peekaboo and I just don't have a negative attitude towards children at all, I really like them being in places. I have always had lots of help with buggies (well, perhaps not always) and feel people were generally positive and nice with my own children when they were little, they got lots of 'ahh, they are cute' and people smiling at them.

But then, I didn't mind older ladies chatting to my children on the bus!

I think it is nonsense too - the survey wasn't trying to get a balanced picture of what people think of children, it was to ask them specifically if they think they are becoming more violent/feral.

You can read the full details here - it's all in a pdf.
www.icmresearch.com/almost-half-of-britons-think-children-are-violent

I don't think the any of the news agencies or barnardos come out of this kind of thing well. New agencies as they should actually investigate what they are reporting, not just lazily repeating the press release & barnardos for commissioning such a skewed survey.

Correcting my earlier post - I must have misheard on the radio as it is apparently 10% who think the badly-behaved over-10 yos are beyond help, not 25%. So that's all right then

No they aren't. Stupid stupid people

The question was 'When you think about children who behave in an inappropriate/disruptive/badly or anti-social way, at what age do you think it is too late to help change them for the better? '

This very much leads people to think of an age when it is too late. Even so, the lowest percentage who said 'never too late' was men with 37%, the average 'never too late' percentage was 44%. So even given a leading question aimed at people coming up with an age when it is too late to help people to change for the better nearly half the population answered 'never too late'.

I'm guessing a question like 'Do you think we should help people change their anti-social behaviour for the better at the following ages?' 10/20/30 etc would get most people answering that people should be helped to change & this would imply that they thought it could be done.

The way questions are asked skews the answers... I always think of the bit I was taought in Latin, questions expecting the answer Yes.

(cf independence and Euro referendums........)

I agree these surveys can be very misleading, it depends on who they asked, and how exactly the question was phrased, we can't deduce much without knowing the methodology. I'm sure there are some social science types on here who know all about how and how not to do this kind of thing. Using emotive, ill-defined words like 'feral' seems a bit dodgy to me to start with!

I'd love to know more about this 'children as a source of income' thing. As far as I can tell having a child is going to cost us an absolute fortune - not that it isn't worth it to have a family, but even so! Where can I go to get these massive cash handouts, that sounds like it could be useful...

Just to say as someone who works for a charity that often puts out press releases - most newspapers have cut back a lot on journalists. So most are more than happy to cut and paste from a well written press release. So I'm not at all surprised that they didn't look properly at the survey and how it was asked.