Searching your son's room for weapons

[DeeplyMovingExperience]

In light of yet another shocking headline about boys/young men rampaging with knives and machetes causing terrible injuries -

I guess that most of these boys/men live at home (due to their ages), so where are they keeping these terrible weapons?

Surely every parent should be searching their son's rooms or more widely their whole homes?

Surely every parent should be searching their son's rooms or more widely their whole homes?

"Every" parent won't need to, OP, since most of the responsible ones have a pretty good idea what sort of company their sons keep and where they are

Unfortunately not all parents are responsible, so even if those of these particular offenders knew they were tooling up with god knows what, it's best not to assume they'd care

Just sons rooms?

And no, I wouldn't, unless I had a very good reason

Oh I see

The parents who answer threads like this will will of course have nothing to worry about and their sons will not be into knife crime.

The parents of the many boys who do carry knives will have their heads firmly buried in the sand, they won't be opening threads like this as they won't want to be faced with thinking it's a possibility. It's a bit like the parents of the feral 4 year olds in soft play will sit the furthest away and pretend they don't see their child causing havoc as it's easier not to think it's happening than face reality.

Do you know how many girls carry knives as well? Because it's a lot.

Do you have a teen/young adult son at home OP?

I agree with PPs who have said that the ones stashing knives frequently have parents who aren't in control in the house, have multiple problems of their own, or are barely at home. That is what makes them vulnerable to the attentions of gangs in the first place.

Sometimes nice boys look after things for friends.

I'm not searching my DSs room. I know what's in there - a pile of clothes hanging up on the floor, a wet towel on his bed, all my glasses and cutlery.

I parent him. Not all of the male species are like some boy off telly.

Honestly I am not sure that all these stereotypes about failing parents and boys are true. Whenever you read up on biographies of boys who got stabbed or stabbed someone, they often do have involved parents but also parents who cant do much, dont have the cash to leaver london, get their kids away from the gangs. Yes, it's troubled kids, but it's not just because their parents (often mums) dont care. In that sense, the show is actually quite unrealistic. Most of the crime in say London isnt being carried out by white middle class boys. Now a lot of tox masculinity is consumed by those kids, but the weapons part is different. So whilst the show might be realistic in its depiction of online misogyny and how bad some schools can be, they are not all that realistic about knife crime.

I'd be interested in that stats for this if you have them? We don't hear about girls using and killing with knives - is it a huge problem?

What possesses a young teen to want to stab someone to death? I don't get it. Like why do you want to kill someone?

Apologies for the Dail Mail link - it came up high on the search...https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14367579/Girls-young-five-arrested-carrying-knives-women-caught-blades-triples.html
I think the problem amongst both boys and girls is massively under-reported anyway. "Do you carry a knife" generally gets as honest an answer as that given to doctors when they ask how much you drink! It also interests me that the presentation of the gender difference is disarming - boys carry knives to hurt people and girls for defence. Yeah, right. People who carry knives intend to use them. There are definitely many more young women - and by this is mean under 18 and some very young teens - entering the criminal justice system for violent offences and weapons related crime. The uptick is just as disturbing as that amongst boys - many of whom will rationalise carrying a knife as "defence" just as many girls do. Yes it's more boys, that is clear - but violence related incidents with girls is growing fast. What we hear about is the tip of an iceberg - what hits the news are the extremes cases, but they represent a groundswell.

I don't think many do. They carry knives for 'protection' and then things get out of hand. They're also at high risk of being stabbed by their own knife.

So much of it will be bravado that gets massively out of hand.

I don't understand why this story hasn't made more high profile headlines.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/elm-park-met-police-injured-stabbing-fight-b1218351.html

I prefer to have a monthly weapons amnesty. No questions asked. I’m obviously joking. I raised my children properly so no need to do something so daft as searching their room.

That's not the right question because most people of any age do not want to kill someone. Premeditated murder amongst all ages is a very small number of the total. Most people, including youngsters, kill because the circumstances present themselves. A fistfight or serious falling out becomes something different when one or both have a weapon or can find a weapon. It might be a rock or a piece of pipe on the ground - but if you are carrying a knife, no matter what you reason was when you put it in your pocket, that fight becomes a knife fight. Most murders did not set out to murder - they may or may not be "nice people" (believe it or not, many are really nice people), but they are people who get caught in something that spirals out of control and are largely swept away. They don't think "I will knife that person", the knife is suddenly in their hand and it's a thoughtless act of a split second. Anyone can become a killer - it is as much, if not more, about context and circumstances than intent.

No, I am absolutely not going to do that, OP.
Quite aside from the fact my boys are parented property, I saw one of them pick up a snail from the street and put it in the garden 'so no one steps on it!' the other day - I'm pretty confident he's not going to stab anyone.

If you seriously thought someone who lived in your home was hiding a weapon in their bedroom it sounds dangerous for someone untrained to do the search and the people to do it would surely be the police not a parent.

Erm, most kitchens have knives…..

Kids carry knives for protection, they live in an environment where that is common place, and feel that not carrying is worse than carrying. They also occupy spaces in which lots of them are brutalised, see violence on a regular basis and are connected to networks that wouldn't hesitate to stab someone and in which retribution is rife. Lone killers are still rare, most kids dont just randomly got out and murder someone even if they have watched a few online videos. Poverty and insecurity, together with criminal networks create a toxic environment in which violence becomes common place. Gangs have over the last decade or so have focused on using younger and younger kids because they get shorter sentences. Most parents whose kids are around knives know it but are often powerless to stop it. hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/our-research/evidence-base-youth-justice/specific-sub-groups/children-involved-in-urban-street-gangs/.

But again - misogynistic crap and toxic masculinity affects everyone and is more classless. So yes rich middle class boys are just as likely to be impacted as poor ones. MN parents shouldnt be too complacent or assume that just because they think their boys are nice, that they really are. No they might not stab someone but that doesnt mean they have a healthy attitude to women or masculinity.

If I suspected my son was into this kind of thing, I'd go hunting - but its not going to stop the problem.

Every kitchen has a knife.

Most of the children who have these horrendous weapons come from very dysfunctional homes- obviously there will be exceptions but as a general rule they’re not going to be found amongst the parents who are clicking on this thread. The murderers of Mason Rist and Max Dixon show exactly what kind of backgrounds these kinds of kids come from. Have a google. No one was going to be checking bedrooms in their cases. One of the adults involved with the kids actually drove them to the site of the murders (and got nearly 50 years for it despite never getting out of the car, which is a good deterrent for anyone thinking of doing anything like that). Another two burnt the clothes the kids were wearing that night. It’s completely insidious.

One suspects most of the boys who go around stabbing people do not have mothers on Mumsnet...

That’s so bad.