On to LittleCandle:
I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl, but you wouldn't believe them anyway, as children are never nasty and vindictive, especially if they are poor.
Are you saying that there are poor children that you know of who engage in anti-social behaviour, and instead of feeling concern for the sort of horrible home environment that causes them to act out you store up your collection of anecdotes to confirm your own prejudices? You don't improve the lot of children by recoiling from them and holding a grudge against them for exhibiting symptoms of mistreatment by adults.
You have this vast experience of life in a very privileged area and cannot believe that others are less fortunate than yourself.
If by 'fortunate' you mean lucky, then I am here to tell you that luck doesn't come into it. The area I live in is nice because people have consciously decided to make it nice. We have rolled up our sleeves and have reached out to find whatever we may have in common with each other and build on that, instead of hiding behind our fences and whatever tired old adages are associated with them.
There is a very affluent area close by and it is not nice because people there do not know their neighbours, people do not volunteer, people do not have a sense of personal responsibility for the fostering of a community spirit and do not apparently value that element of a community. The houses are expensive though. They are all sitting on virtual gold mines.
Of course, there have never been any scandals surrounding politicians or celebrities in the US.
I really can't believe you are trying to compare JS and his friends and associates in high places and the decades of institutionalised child abuse (that nobody has yet got to the bottom of) to any US political scandals. Vulnerable children in the UK were raped by a lot of powerful men for years, and nobody could stop it even though it was an open secret. Maybe the fact that it was an open secret made this thing even worse.
Meanwhile in Rochdale, vulnerable girls were raped by a gang of men for years and their complaints were dismissed by police and all the other adults who should have been in their corner. A dismissive attitude towards the voices of children society has tarred with a brush or two can be very dangerous. It can inform all sorts of really poor decisions by schools, social service agencies and police.
Children never manage to get hold of guns and shoot other children or their parents.
Weirdly enough, I am personally acquainted with an Irish family (related to an aunt of mine by marriage) in which the father returned from hunting, set his shotgun down on a table, sat down to pull off his boots, and was shot in the chest and killed by his own five year old son. Lots of British farmers have guns. Lots of Irish farmers have guns. Lots of terrorists in NI on both sides of political opinion have guns.
British children are among the most miserable in the world, with or without guns.
There isn't a section of your population who appear willing to elect a madman to be President.
Yet Britain is the country that voted Brexit despite that execrable Nigel Farage poster with the long line of Muslim immigrants. And Trump hasn't been elected yet.
From what you have said, none of your neighbour's children want to talk to you, and you already expressed your disbelief that this little girl wants to talk to me.
No, because I am at work when and if they are hopping into my garden (which is a shared garden incidentally, as I rent my home in a building that has three apartments). My fellow tenants and I (and the landlord) let them hop the fence because we know they would otherwise be waiting all day to get their ball back. I get back from work in the evening. The neighbours, their children, and my fellow residents regularly chat when we are all at home.
I expressed disbelief that the little girl is seeking your attention, which you claimed she was doing by kicking her ball over. If you haven't asked her directly why she tries to chat with you, this is only an assumption on your part. I also stated that she would knock for the next person who moved into your house if you were to sell.
You clearly have no idea about MH issues if you think a constantly ringing doorbell is not harassment.
It may feel like that, but to assume a child who is annoying you is deliberately harassing you is a massive leap. This belief reveals unhealthy boundaries - you believe someone is harassing you because that is how you have allowed yourself to experience it, but you actually have no idea what the intent of the door-knocker is. You just suspect the worst, and it all snowballs. This mindset is what I was talking about when I stated that it is not the job of children to be responsible for the equilibrium of an adult neighbour. Any belief that children are harassing you needs to be very thoroughly examined because left unchecked it can be very dangerous.
Even a person who does not have MH issues can find this irritating beyond measure.
Irritating but not harassment, and there is a big difference.
When you think 'irritating' you are taking responsibility for your own response. When you conclude it is 'harassment' then you are making the knocking child responsible for your experience of their behaviour and imputing to them motives that they may not have in order to fuel your own circular narrative. That is not fair to the child.
Children can and do learn to take the piss if they are not taught consideration of others and I am astounded that you have never come across a child like this.
I have not come across a child like this because children in my neck of the woods are empowered by the general culture and actively by their families and neighbours to solve their own practical problems. In effect, they learn not to bother adults with matters that are easy for them to fix for themselves.
They learn self confidence through competence. They also learn from the behaviour of the adults around them to be considerate - the adults tend not to be obsessed with their status, not to have a chip on their shoulder against children, not to have a pig-headed, adversarial mindset, and they are thus open to reasonable, practical solutions to issues that come up. The children are treated with consideration by the adults and they are expected to copy that behaviour and attitude.
I am not tarring all children with the same brush, but more and more children like this are around as their parents treat them like little princes and princesses who should never have to bear the burden of doing what they are told.
'More and more', eh?
Sadly, I suspect you see what you want to see, and by your chosen approach and attitude you create many of the problems you seek to prevent. You are invested in the top down version of relationships with children, how to teach them, how to treat them. It is a model that is based on fear. This is a model of adult behaviour that inevitably leads to a mental world characterised by antagonism, a stress-filled little bubble.