Not really to understand what people mean by 'feral children'

[bugster]

I've read lots of threads that refer to 'feral children'. Having lived outside the U.K. For 10 years, I'm not quite sure what's meant by this - it seems to be an expression that's recently come into use. My sister in law from England, who was over here a while back, refered to many of the young neighbourhood children who play outside and go in and out of each others' houses as 'feral'. I would have thought this was pretty normal behaviour for young children but 'feral children' seems to have a pretty negative connotation.

What would be your definition of 'feral children'?

wild children who dont know any rules/boundaries, who are left to do as they please

Feral to me means pretty much neglected

This could mean their parents are too busy/don't care what they get up to while they're out and couldn't care less what time they come home.

They generally don't take well to complaints about them either.

What country are you in?

It means they are running wild.

It's not high-spiritedness, it's the start of loss of control and wildly bad behaviour.

Abandoned children who have been brought up without love or attention maybe children partly reared by animals like the 'wolf children's.

left to run wild, no bedtime/up time, school attendance not enforced, unkept, unclean (not just messy - I mean sleeping in clothes and wearing them for days), fending for themselves or being looked after/fed by slightly older children not adults or teens

its not about playing outside, but playing outside till very late at night is often part of it

Dictionary definition:

feral child. ?n. a neglected child who engages in lawless or anti-social behaviour

That about sums it up - a child who is left to fend for its self, has no social boundaries, is frequently violent etc etc

It does not apply to the normalcy of playing out

It's not a term I would use but if I did it would be to describe children left to pretty much raise themselves with little parental attention.

I try not to use that phrase but there are a lot of children who have behaviours which are quite shocking. I have seen young children spitting out of buses at people, talking loudly about sex (very young), just dropping whole KFC dinners on the street. This was in Croydon.

I'm in Switzerland. We let the children play outside a lot and don't watch them every minute. From the age of about 4 or 5. But our immediate area is traffic free and we consider it pretty safe.

They do have boundaries (some more than others depending on their parents!)

bugster, presumably they have time limits, bedtimes, meal times (and are provided with meals) and are sent out to play in clean (at least to start) seasonally appropriate clothing and suncream/coats/whatever is needed

so that's not feral, that's just playing outside

I don't use it to refer to children, but I associate it with children who were raised by dogs/other animals or severely neglected to the point they barely had any human contact so don't speak or anything like that

I prefer a semi-feral parenting philosophy.

I don't think it's much to do with playing outside/not playing outside.

I agree with the others - for me, the implication with the word "feral" is more to do with having no boundaries, no discipline, allowed to get away with absolutely anything because parents don't care/can't be arsed/are too busy.

I actually describe my own kids as feral in the summer months. They play outside from coming home from school till bed time, come in only for food, drinks etc. they are frequently to be seen running wild in the neighbourhood,
in and out of friends houses, they are fed by whomevers house offers pizza that night, sometimes come in without shoes or socks. (bloody annoying as I have to go out looking for them in the dark)
All the kids in our street are the same, when it's bed time we send out a txt to all the mums on the street and whoever has them sends them home. All of us agree that it's wonderful that the kids have this sort of freedom to run wild, they play in dens, football, climb trees, ride bikes etc etc. We all take turns to feed them and we all look out for each others kids and the kids all look out for each other.
So technically they are feral but they are all polite, well mannered kids and none have asbos as far as I know!

I sat in a doctor's waiting room the other day. There was a woman there with her two youngish children, they were beyond wild. They spat, swore, jumped on furniture, ran riot, hit their mum and chucked sweets around the room and at people. The mother looked completely non-plussed and disinterested.

I would probably describe them as feral I think.

sigmund that's awful!

Some of the children I once worked with in a previous job would be described as feral.
wild, unkempt, parents spoke to them and to each other like shit.'OY you, you fuckin; shit head,.........' was a common call to their children across the street. No sense of boundaries, walking into a youth club with a rotweiler to scare the kids (scared the shit out of me tbh) Having dog shit thrown at you as you leave work at 10.00pm because you allegedly 'disrespected' them.
Urinating in the middle of a busy street without a second thought.
Beating up and killing a traveller because he was.......a traverller. No other reason. Did attend school (why the fuck should I? was the usual response when asked why they didn't go) I could go on and on but I won't because I am getting a bit upset. This type of underclass live less than two miles from my house but it may as well be a different planet. Some of their houses are partly boarded up, some have graffiti in the living room and old rag fabric pinned up acting as curtains.
This isn't one person but a mashup of three people under the age of 16 that I was working with.

The childern that are left with no food except for a bar of chocolate, with no jumpers or coats in the freezing cold, and who spend all day in the library so they can play on the Wii, because their parents chuck them out in the morning and don't let them back in or feed them until bed time. They're certainly feral children and might as well have been raised by wolves. Thereis a whole pack of them near one of the libraries I sometimes work in.

feral is wild ...

kids that have no respect for adults, property, authority and whose parents do not give a toss...

sadly there are a lot of them

feral children have no curfew or bedtime when they 'play out' and no geographical boundaries as to where they can go as nobody cares. if they break your window you'll never find out where they live or who their parents are.

non-feral children play out in an agreed area, with either a curfew or within shouting distance, with a set bedtime and other rules. they are not wild and their parents take responsibility for their behaviour and consequences of any accidents.

Interesting. There's a world of difference between the way rogersmelly describes it, which is pretty similar to the way most of the children here spend their time in the summer, and upahill. that's really shocking upahill. they actually killed a traveller? So basically serious criminals.

Apart from not being given food and appropriate clothes, I think many children used to be like those described by Tw1gl3t in the summer - encouraged to go out in the morning and not really encouraged to come back until the evening - I know it was like that for my parents. Their parents frequently didn't really have much idea where they were. But although I'm sure they often got up to mischief, they wouldn't have dreamed of being as anti-social as some of these appalling examples. I wonder why that has changed? I kind of think that if other people saw them misbehaving, in former times, they would have done something anout it, and maybe that doesn't happen these days. Maybe people are afraid of intervening or the kids just are a lot worse now. Maybe the old fashioned 'it takes a village to raise a child' approach helped. There certainly is more of that attitude here.

But then Croydon isn't exactly a village. Don't really know how things used to be in cities.

Croydon is a hell hole.

That is one of the reasons I am raising my DD on the West coast of Canada. No feral children here. They are all please and thank you and opening doors for people. Quite disconcerting TBH. We do actually have wolves though so maybe they are raising some children. Wolves actually have quite a complicated social structure and are very rule bound so not like some parents raising children in Croydon at all.

Ferel children are, imo, like wolf cubs in the wild. Outdoors all day, could do with a nice bubble bath and a cuddle, and a little malnourished. They also have little or no manners (unless you return their ball to them, which will earn you a "cheers miss!"). They are happy though

Oops, posted before reading, didnt see that wolves were allready used.