To worry about how children behave these days

[winterwinter]

Just read a very upsetting article in my local newspaper about a group of children who set a squirrel on fire and videod it on snap chat, they were all roaring with laughter in the back ground.

Is it just me or does it seem more and more often these days children are committing these types of crime? I honestly think we have a problem these days whereby parents are afraid to discipline their children properly and don’t enforce proper moral values. I may be slated for this but whenever I go out these days children’s behaviour seems appalling- screaming and shouting, being rude to other people. I wouldn’t have dared misbehave in such a way when I was younger.

I think you are making a bit of a leap in assuming that all behaviour you disapprove of is part of the same thing. Ime there is very little connection between children being allowed to be too noisy in public (lax parenting) and actual cruelty. Some of the cruellest children I have ever come across have had immaculate manners- but clearly an undeveloped sense of empathy. Hard to say what causes it but probably not the same thing that makes a lively 4-yo jump up and down on his seat on the bus. Otoh some very lively and unrestrained children have been extremely kind.

I think what we do as we get older is notice the most badly behaved children and compare them with ourselves. And if we were not, ourselves, the most badly behaved children of our generation then the difference will seem very clearcut. And we will conclude that children of our generation (by which we mean the child we were) are different from children of the young generation (by which we mean the child we just noticed- precisely because they stood out).