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?

I teach year 6. When talking about device use, many of them have free access to devices in their bedrooms. Who knows what they’re watching or who they’re talking to and they’re 11. I think it’s healthy to keep an open mind.

I think you would have to suspect your child is involved in this kind of thing.

And I suspect a lot of these boys are from completely chaotic home lives so I doubt their parents (most likely ‘parent’) would give a damn or care enough to check.

Or their parent / carer / grandparent is being terrorised by them.

Exactly this.

Surely every parent?Wtf op?
What kind of household do you live in?
Doesn’t seem to be normal?

My some posters are smug. I live in a rural county, plenty of work, high house prices and good schools. According to an SW friend, there is a big county lines problem now in the area. I used to work in a FE College just outside London. Boys would choose to attend rather than go to their inner city colleges, their ‘friends’ from home would get the train and hang around waiting for them. It was hard for them to extricate themselves from gangs.

I have 2 teenage boys at home (15 & 18) was just about to comment the same thing.

Yep - once they get hooked into gangs, enabling them to leave would appear to take an act of God. Essentially they are groomed. I was reflecting the other day on when I read Oliver Twist (I am going to watch it soon) and though “Plus Ça Change…•

I know my 18 year old son has a knife in his room. I was there when he bought it a year or so ago.
It is for wood whittling and general use outdoors.
He is a young leader at Scouts, currently helping to teach a load of 8-10 year olds how to 'cook', he goes religiously every week and gives his time up so other young people get the opportunities he did.
Perhaps rather than doing room inspections it is a good idea to know what your teens are doing, who they are doing it with and generally checking in making sure they don't feel the need for 'protection'.

I wasn't for a moment suggesting that everybody's sons are involved in knife violence.

A lot of youngsters are secretive insofar as their parents might think one thing when the reality is quite different. Back in the 70s, my brothers had 2 airguns stashed and an air pistol. Our parents had no idea what they got up to with their friends once they were outside of the house.

Then around 25 years ago there was the thing with BB guns. I remember reading the riot act to my teenage godsons and confiscating 2 of them after they'd destroyed a neighbour's greenhouse. Again, their parents seemed unaware, although it transpired that their mum didn't realise that a BB gun was an actual weapon that could cause damage. She thought it was a toy.

Bladed weapons are readily available on the internet, and definitely through Amazon too.

This excellent documentary is just the tip of the iceberg. Move along to 29 minutes on the video to see two little kids buying prohibited products on Amazon including knives and rat poison. There are STILL no checks.

I don't know about you @DeeplyMovingExperience, but we have several very large, sharp knives in the kitchen that are used for cooking/cutting bread - which I assume is the same for most, if not all households across the UK - do you expect people to never have knives in the home? Because that seems unrealistic

Knives aren't the (only) problem - misogynistic people are. Teach your sons (and all kids) to respect girls/women/teachers/human beings

Kids who are intent on causing harm to others, will do so by any means necessary

We need to teach them to be better

I was thinking the same thing.

I'd wager the majority of parents who'd be motivated to do this, would be the ones who are involved in their kids' lives raise them nicely and are bothered enough to do it in the first place.

Obviously I know we all have knives in our kitchens, but the evidence points towards teenagers (and older) buying knives for the purpose of carrying.

Was there not a time when most young boys would own a knife?

Without wanting to sound complacent (and I think people should be careful not to assume their sons are “not like that,”) I do think there are warning signs before you get to the point of knife violence.

There are going to be clues in the sort of company they keep, in their behaviour. Children do get co-opted into this but it doesn’t go from 0 to 70 overnight.

15 years ago in the area we live in there was a spate of knife crimes. My son was a collector of swords I.e ornamental for display. My husband removed all of them and a very vicious looking blade which may son said was for display purposes only. 2 weeks later one of his friends stabbed a young man whose oniy crime was was living in a different post code. The friend who stabbed him had only ‘ornamental swords’ like my son. Now 15 years later my son has admitted he would have been involved if we hadn’t removed his display knives. My advise is as a parent search their rooms takes 10 mins better than a young man losing their lives

I never did. but if i got a slightest suspicion they might get up to something illegal - i surely would. That said - everybody still has knives in the kitchen

Er no, because our adult son is a good and gentle person, like his dad.

Obviously there will be exceptions but in the most parts kids who commit knife crime aren't doing out of the blue like on adolescence.
And most are from troubled backgrounds, sometimes either the parents don't care or just absolutely don't have any grip on the situation and would be scared to go through their kids rooms.

It's like going through a kids phone basically. For me a child over 16 you should only be going through their phone if you have reason to be concerned. Their room is the same.
It's not OK imo to just ransack a child's room when there's absolutely no sign that's necessary.
Kids under 16 but over 13 I'd certainly check their phone every now and again but I'm not sure I'd ever search their room without cause. If I felt there was something going on I would.
But if I didn't I wouldn't.
My gran used to search my mums room and it was part of what completely ruined their relationship. My mum was doing nothing wrong but got her privacy constantly invaded.

Searching their bedrooms for weapons, OP? Like it's a prison wing?

Most parents have no idea that their child is using or selling drugs, carrying a knife or has one in their school bag of bedroom.

Most drug dealers or drug issues we deal with are from nice families who believe their child is not the type.

It is a shock when they attend an exclusion meeting and actually get to question the evidence.

We have schools in very affluent areas and others drawing from very deprived areas. We have less issues in the depraved schools with drugs, knives and gang leaders. The police are often at the local grammar for drugs. Child on child abuse is rife in many schools.

I think many parents around here should be. Kids and even adults are getting stabbed regularly. Even running about with machetes preparing to “jump” another child in Liverpool city centre. Not that long ago, a 12 year old girl was stabbed in the neck and died. Again Liverpool city centre. Here in Wirral these balaclaved teens and younger kids are “jumping” other kids and adults with knives they carry. The police can’t do a damn thing, and as they’re so underfunded there aren’t enough of them to deal with this widespread problem. Birkenhead bus station being a prime example. They do what they want. I’ve watched them jump over a wall after setting a house on fire. The flames quickly reached higher than the roof. Then they stood posing for photos in front of the fire engine which I called 999 for. They jump over fences trying to break into houses at night. Luckily me and the neighbours have CCTV and security measures that have so far stopped them getting in.
Living here is living amongst the feral. No option at all to be able to move.

I agree there are very naive parents out there who don't have a clue what their kid is up to. My ds is in a small private day school, he tells me there are kids in his year selling weed/vapes and those snuz pod things (the tobacco balls they chew). I know each of those kids, their parents basically do not parent!!

It’s the ‘not my child’ attitude that worries me.

^^ exactly. It's about thinking the unthinkable. So many parents are (quite naturally) assuming that no way would their son be involved in these scenarios. And there is a particularly special mother-and-son bond that is like a red rag to a bull with mothers defending their sons.

When I say about searching their rooms, I'm not talking about "ransacking like in prison" as a previous poster said. Youngsters hide things but they're not as smart as they think they are. Their worlds are much smaller than ours.