To have this reaction to Netflix’s Adolescence

[Marigoldsold]

This show has really got me and I can’t stop thinking about it.

A show about a murder of a young girl by a young boy.

I have cried over it , I have a little boy myself - I have gone and cuddled him tight after it. The scene at the end , the very last one … I cried like a baby.

What shocked me is that those tears and sadness was for the boy. The murderer.

I don’t think that he didn’t do it , or that the victim deserved it ( obviously ! ) . I don’t think he shouldn’t be in prison etc .

I feel desperately sad that a little boy , who slept with a Teddy , liked drawing and had child’s wallpaper on his walls ended up doing that. That after he did it and his dad knew .. he still reached out to him for comfort. That he was a child .

I think it’s really opened my eyes . We always hear of horrible crimes and pray our child will never be that poor victim and do whatever we can to prevent that. But we never sit and think that actually it could be our child who does that and that is also something we could prevent and should be trying to .

i think it’s the fact the show focused on the murderer rather than the victim and that it wasn’t a child who had been abused and neglected , it wasn’t a child that had had a bad life , it wasn’t a child that was so called “ born evil , it wasn’t a child that had psychotic tendencies or was a ‘ psychopath ‘ .. he was a normal child.

This is how I felt too.

I think this is a part of the problem though, as a parent to both sexes. Middle class parents assuming their daughters will be good and fearing their sons will be bad. We don't celebrate the wonderful brilliant things that make boys boys, the way we do girls. We pathologise them and worry about how to make sure our sons aren't rapists, as though that's inevitable unless we can deter them away from it.

It's a heavy set of assumptions to put on growing male minds.

Of course we should be absolutely engaged parents and teaching all children respect and empathy. But I think we need to parent from a positive mindset, so our sons know we are proud of their beautiful souls the same as our daughters, and not from a place of pathologising and fear.

Have you heard of the concept of "the banality of evil"? Hannah Arendt wrote a book of that title after the Eichmann trial. It's basically the concept that most terrible things are done by fairly ordinary people who, by a combination of circumstances, become capable of carrying out appalling acts. Eichmann was an accountant. He was in charge of logistics for the Holocaust. He dealt in numbers, timetables, the 1940s equivalent of an excel spreadsheet. Really bloody dull actually. But it happened that time and place put him in a position where those logistics related to human life. It's terrifying because we want to "other" killers. They are psychos, monsters, the result of a terrible childhood. Except in most cases, they're not. Which means it could be any of us, or out kids.

In the year ending December 2023, London recorded approximately 14,577 knife-related crimes, which represents a 20% increase compared to the previous year. This figure indicates a concerning trend in knife crime within the capital………,Evening Standard
These stabbings -often younger teens - happen ALL the time - but doesn’t get into countrywide news unless extra horrible.
My Mayor wouldn’t want it to affect tourist numbers would he?

It needs investment to get to the root of it so it goes on. Justice system is soft as they are children some of them.

@NordicGiant

he stabbed someone? it’s the victim of his crime to feel sorry for

'But his parents, his teachers, his friends, his sister, his neighbours... they all thought he was normal. They didn't spot the little red flags'

I read that Stephen Graham said that in the last episode he wanted to show Eddie was not a bad man. It struck me - as he managed to portray a man who is demanding, controlling, volatile. His wife - submissive, with a clear role not to speak up, but to look after her husband as he is ruling the roost. No one tells Eddie what to do.

These are the roles modelled for the next generation. I really value SG as an actor, but it felt like here he was seeing red signs, talking about red signs, his character was acting out all the red signs - but somehow still not realising they are there.

Can you not feel sorry for both of them? They're not mutually exclusive.

Sorry to sound like an arsehole, but I keep hearing people wittering on about how much it affected them, but no one saying what they’re actually going to do about it.

It’s all very well and good talking, but are people actually hearing the message? Are they changing their kids screen time? Are they talking to their sons about influences? Are they engaging with them? Or are they going to forget all about it and buy their 11 years the latest phone and let them have unlimited access to god knows what just like they have been doing? There is no point saying it got to you unless you actually make changes and unfortunately, I don’t think many parents actually will.

(this is a general ‘you’ OP, not actually you)

I completely disagree. The episode where the therapist was in with him, he was immensely manipulative and incredibly disturbed. He absolutely has psychotic tendencies and was in no way a ‘normal child’. The way he spoke about the girl and girls in general, and the fact he stabbed her seven times isn’t an accident, or a one off fit of rage. It was pre meditated, calculated and he had no remorse- only to his dad. Not to the girl, her family or for actually murdering her.

The proportion of normal boys from nice homes who become murderers with no warning signs is miniscule, really really tiny - there are plenty of terrible things which are far more likely to happen.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14545041/andrew-tate-girlfriend-abuse-choking.html

Because this is the "man" we as society are allowing young impressionable teens to be influenced by. The boy in the show may have come from an average, not perfect, family, but they allowed him to access this school of thought and fall into manosphere hole. We, as parents, need to ensure this stops hanpening. My boys are now adults, but i have had many many conversations with them. Regarding AT, though thankfully my boys could see the flaws in his thought processes, but about everything, from consent, how it feels to be a woman knowing not all men are dangerous, but not knowing which men are, to how it feels for boys and men being in spaces where girls and women cant trust them, and how to navigate that, and how to call about bad behaviour from their peers. Its the parents roles to ensure children grow up, not only safe and protected and loved, but able to navigate the internet and the world independently and give them the tools to think critically about the information they access or are exposed to. Yes, kids will fall through the cracks even wth strong parental influence. But id confidently bet this is rarer than the kids that fall from having very little imput from teh adults around them.

I think you’re right, and I would definitely never want this to impact the way I parent my son obviously. Because as you say positive praise directed in the right areas is a hugely important way to build the self esteem needed to stay away from this stuff. And let me be clear, I also want to make my daughter into a good person too. I just feel much better equipped to do that.

I also think that it’s hugely important for gender equality across the board that we start addressing the massive issues affecting young men right now and not brushing them off because women have had it tougher for generations.

This is true. But the number who rape or commit sexual assault, or enter a woman without a condom without her consent, or share revenge porn, or try to strangle for fun during sex are all much higher. And these are symptoms of the same problem. This is an extreme and rare example for the sake of tv but the question of how we raise boys to have the right values is an important one.

I don’t have children but I was thinking about it for a day or two after.

I always used to wonder about how the families of people like John venables coped with knowing what their child did. I imagine they were tarred with the same brush for a very long time which makes me sad.

For anyone who’s worried about all these issues I recommend you read ‘Hold on to your kids’ by Gabor Mate.

It addresses the very real issue of ‘peer culture’ and peer pressure and how kids especially teens attach to their peers in our western culture when they shoud be attached to their family especially their parents. That’s not to say they don’t socialize with other kids but that other kids (& the online world) is their MAIN source of attachment.

The book claims attachment to peers undermines parenting. Part of the reasons our children begin to detach from us and find something else to attach to is that we encourage “independence” and self-reliance, most of the time, way too early. We mistake dependence (which is natural and healthy) for an inability to mature. It says that if we do our part to keep our children attached to us, we won’t have to “teach” them independence at all. It simply comes naturally.

I think this is a massive issue for teens (& has been for a long time, it was for me growing up in the 80s/90s and I come from a stable loving family). They have too much peer influence (this includes online today too) and too little parental influence. We are all separated for hours a day for most days of the week and other kids don’t have the wisdom and maturity to influence one another in a healthy way. This was definitely the case for Jamie. He spent most of the day in a toxic environment at school and most of the evening and night in his bedroom alone and online in a scary world.

It is a TV show.
He is not real.

@howchildrenreallylearn Thank you for sharing that. I read 'Hold onto your kids' last summer, I think after a recommendation on here, and it really is excellent. It constantly pops into my head as a parent of children heading towards teens and we have definitely made changes and plans based on Mate's ideas. No parent is perfect and parenting really can be hard but I do think society at the moment isn't helping people get it right. So much pressure, including financial, to work so much, people seeing it as normal for teens to be off out or on screens with each other all the time, parents so desperate for a break and stretched financially that there is less opportunity to build connection. These things all make it so much harder to focus on the right priorities for our kids but it's not impossible and it's so important. I really would recommend everyone to read that book.

I find many boy mums quite terrifying tbh.

I'd disagree about the abuse. The dad clearly had a level of control and anger that had the mum quietly handing over her bag and getting into the car with the daughter after him throwing paint everywhere. In a normal family with a stable dad it wouldn't have played out the same.

Oh yes the mother son bond is harder to break.

My first boyfriend's mother was terrifying. She was domineering, controlling and extremely jealous of me. He didn't need a girlfriend he already had his mother as his girlfriend. I dropped him pretty quickly when I realized.

It's why you end up with so many entitled lazy men who are dreadful partners and dreadful fathers, as they ve been mollycoddled by their mummy, all their lives and waited on hand and foot.

What does this mean? I hear a lot about ‘boys mums’ on social media but I don’t get what they’re on about. I’ve never met a mother of boy that seems to be referring to how they do.

It also annoys me because it’s another way of blaming mothers for men’s irresponsible behaviour.

Once again, blaming women for men’s bad behaviour. Why aren’t you calling out their dads for their lack of parenting? Because if a man is a mess it’s due to his dad too, even if I’m his dad isn’t there.

It’s like no matter how badly he treats you he’s the victim to them and to be fair plenty in society too. It doesn’t matter how many women have to face abuse at the hands of men because to them, men should never face any responsibility especially their darling sons.

Ive observed “boy mums” as mums who favour their sons over their daughters for just being make. Often times they will demean any girlfriend he has because she isn’t good enough. I have no doubt boy dads exist too. I think people probably would expect women to care more about abuse done to other women.

What do you mean by this?

They indeed can be but you can also have a good dad and a mum who favours the son above all logic and reason and even at the expense of his sisters and other women unfortunate enough to encounter him.