How and why are teens allowed to roam the roads freely for hours?

[LadyGillingham]

Where is parental responsibility? My parents had to know where I was, who I was with and it was always timeboxed. Good behaviour was expected at all times. I’ve seen young teens on bikes, at all hours, hanging around the high street - shouting, littering, damaging property etc.

Parents must be held accountable and charged for neglect alongside violent crimes by children. That old man (Bhim Kohli) didn’t deserve to be murdered. Why aren’t parents being held accountable? Feral kids are a result of neglect.

Yes, I think you are absolutely correct here. There is a 'middle ground', as there always has been, but the extremes are becoming 'more' extreme - whether it's feral parenting or extreme controlling.

I think it is tricky prosecuting the parents for their children’s crimes.

In my early career as a barrister I carried out failure to attend school prosecutions for local authorities - I was involved at the stage parents were risking prison if they didn’t get their children into school.

In virtually every case there was a single mother who had been subject to domestic violence (often from both her former partner and her children) with a teenage son who used threatening behaviour to get his own way and even when she tried really hard to parent well, he would just ignore it because he had no respect for her - respect was earned through violence or willingness to be violent.

What has been shown to have some success is parents risking losing their social housing if children commit crimes. This obviously wouldn’t pick up every inept and failing parent , but there is some
evidence that the risk of being homeless or having to move miles away is an effective deterrent for teens who are getting involved in gang violence.

Ah, this really wound me up!

Our society is GERIATRIC. It is so unusual to see young people just hanging about any more or using public spaces.

Our local playing fields are taken over by retirees and their off leash dogs and you almost never see kids and teens playing in groups or, yes, just loitering.

Leave them be ffs.

We don't have the foster care, hostel and prison places for what's being advocated. I say it on every thread, but early intervention and investment is cheaper in the long run. A lot of the children involved in serious crime should have been removed earlier, or had involvement with services. Our children's services, including foster etc placements needs massive investment. It's interesting that no-one was calling for the Southport attackers parents to be charged. In the case of your average family, what do we do with the other children in the family? How would punishment, in practice, work? Even less time or money within the family? We were never guaranteed a job, up north, but there was housing, now there isn't. What is the country actually doing for its citizens? It's all linked. It links to the falling birth rate, the falling rates of young people joining the military etc. People do wonder to what level our population will grow, without the additional housing/education/medical/dentist etc provision. I agree that the rioters were scum, but the whole thing was a sit show and our next government is likely to be Reform, unless we have honesty from politicians and less bias within media outlets.

This.

So.e teens have less freedom and don't go out much. There are a group of teens however where parents font care at all and they ate out late and causing mayhem. Examples from my smallish town. A group at the supermarket at around 9 pm, scroll night, threw bins over, trolleys thrown over, 2 thrown at oarked cars, jumping up and down breaking things and scattering around. Store had called police, a group.of 10 or so and felt quite threatening.

In town centre 10 pm ish, up and down.on bikes drinking and smashing glass, shouting obscenities at people who passed by, abusing a homeless man in doorway. Shoplifting from small late night shop.

Not all teens but some.

Yep, agree with all of this. I have friends/colleagues who live in 'nice' areas where they're not exposed to any of this. One of my friends, visiting recently, was shocked to see the locked booze cabinets in Morrisons and the security guards (2 of) stopping and challenging people as they left the store.

I also seen Checkout Supervisors in big stores (unrewarded heroes in my book) skillfully needing to take control of these youngsters and discipline them, making clear the rules, in a way they are clearly not being at home. It's a toxic mix of lazy, disengaged parents, isolated families, social media and no consequences.

I'd love the 70s kind of childhood to return. It certainly wasn't perfect, and there were a lot of dangers, but it simply was not like this.

You've got no clue. I wandered feral because noone wanted 10 teenagers in the house.

We misbehaved at times because everything was a paid for service and there just wasn't the money so we found our own fun.

My parents weren't neglectful, they were working shift jobs to make ends meet. One had a violent upbringing, the other was moved around for years before joining the armed services for years but didn't have transferable skills.

My parents cared.but it takes generations to break poverty and the social issues thst come with it. My brother and I respectively earn 40k & 80k and out kids go to good schools, we socialise with the nice middle class folk who work nice middle class jobs and live on new estates where we all take our kids to hobbies in the evening, soft play at the weekend (something that would have been a once in a summer holiday treat as children) and ask questions about phonics. Shit my parents could never have done, nor were they brought up to do it.

The incident for that poor man is horrific, any yes, it may be a symptom of society, but that society was always there, modern standards have just been eroded, ironically, by modern standards.

So get off your high horse.

I was a poor kid, no money for clubs, what do you propose kids from those demographics do? Obviously not beat people and damage property, but what actual positive stuff I'd there for them, free, at evenings and weekends? And no, we didn't qualify for benefits (that i saw), like many people, my parents were hard working and scraping by.

"What has been shown to have some success is parents risking losing their social housing if children commit crimes"
All that did, in some areas, is fill up the teen hostels, were then, both sexes wasn't protected from grooming. Or the children just went missing. It's shocking how many children do go missing. It does also disproportionately punish those in social housing. In the case of some, everyone in the house can be legitimately classed as vulnerable.

There could be a choice then

1. Sort your children's behaviour out
2. Use contraception unless you take a parenting course
3. Lose you benefits or social housing unless you do 1 or 2
4. Go to jail

Yup, we have this too. I live alone, walk to/from the supermarket after work, and it can be quite scary - bikes, black tracksuits, face masks, even balaclavas sometimes, weaving in and around you when you're on the pavement. Yes, this is the minority, but still it's awful.

Teenagers shouldn’t be out and about with their friends between 3 and 6pm and instead should be … at home online gaming??

I agree. This is why we need to consider more creative punishments and corrective actions alongside traditional legal or economic sanctions. I also believe social media bans could also be effective as the 'threat' of losing access to SM would terrify some people more than, say, a fine.

BUT We also need to create a culture of public intervention. Gone are the days where you could intervene, safely, and prevent something from happening. Try that these days, and feral parent (or middle class parent, to be fair) will react very, very badly.

You spend an awful lot of time chastising parenting and at the same time being woefully unsupportive of parents. It was only recently you were moaning about a mother breastfeeding in a coffee shop and suggested she was using it as a waiting room and should stay home.

Well that did happen in the US with the kid who carried out a school massacre - his parents were charged with allowing it to happen. But I think the bar for this would have to be pretty high! Are you trying to put people off having children altogether? Either you don’t have children or you’ve got the kind of kids who will never do anything wrong and you think that is down to your superb parenting. Lucky you!

My DSs12 and 13 were out hanging around all day yesterday with friends. One was one a bike. They went to the park to play football, met a group of friends for a nerf war, walked to McDonalds for mcflurries, went to one another’s houses for snacks/ drinks, played more football.
They absolutely were not damaging property or hurting people, despite being young teens on bikes! It should be more normal for teens to be out and active, rather than sat in a far room on a screen.

Their not ime all the kids i know socialise online from their bedrooms
Unlike kids when i was a teen in the late 80,s early 90,s getting up to all sorts behind their parents back.

I think you are conflating giving teenagers age appropriate freedom, which involves teens hanging out with mates in public spaces and the horrific actions of a couple of teens.

Most teens aren't rude, or disrespectful or violent but we remember the ones that are.

Also, apart from the skate park / bike track there are no public spaces available to teens.

There are no youth clubs in my area.

Has ever been thus. It’s really not new.

And this is interestingly opposite to the message that adolescence brought about teens being at home, in their rooms alone reading online content.

I know it’s one extreme to another but parenting teens is a minefield is my point and with some very different challenges to even 15-20 years ago.

Nonsense. Kids have less freedom than ever before. My parents never knew where we were, yet we managed to behave ourselves. The problem is lack of discipline or consequences for a minority. Most are good kids and independence is essential.

You’re also ignoring the significant influence of peer pressure on teens and their general poor (scientific) ability to see consequences of actions / poor decision making.

You could be a hands on, decent parent but if you have a 16 year old, 6 foot son who has fallen in with a “bad crowd” how do you actually stop them misbehaving? You can’t physically stop them and you can’t actually lock them in the house so other than moving area to get them away from people, which might not be possible, options might be limited. How will punishing the parents help?

(And I say that as a parent of a very well behaved mid teen DD).

Teens and kids(because it started a lot younger) have always had a lot more freedom to roam in the past. In fact, it was almost an expectation.

There should be a defence for parents that are trying though and just not being successful. So if people are being offered help by social services (rare I know these days), being offered help by the school etc etc but not engaging and doesn’t give a shit what their child is doing that if different to a parent who is engaging and trying their best but not being successful

I know where mine is and who he is with, I track his phone and he tells me who he is going out with/to meet (his mates earpod things are on my phone too so I can track 2 of them also 😂) - they go play football but sometimes they are walking the streets. I can't afford to give him money every night to go to an actual place to hang out with his mates. They are a good bunch of kids and there is never any bother.

I also control what apps he can go on, what screen time he can have all through my phone. He is 15 and his screen time on his phone goes off at 10 and back on at 6 on a school night, notifications everything off. He has an xboxb which goes off at 10 and he does not have a tablet or anything else with internet access other than his TV.

I can't parent much more other than instill in him a good moral compass, responsibility for his actions, manners and teaching him right from wrong. He also knows his actions have consequences, if he has pushed his luck in the past he has been grounded and phone taken off him, but to be honest it was that long ago I can't even remember what it was for. (actually just come to me, decided to go camping with 2 mates and said he was staying at a friends at 13 - but I tracked him to the middle of a field just after midnight, not infact his friends house, told him home and grounded him for a week and told him why, it was not just the lie but also his safety)

The boy who killed Mr Kohli is just a c*nt who has been mollycoddled by society for years over his "anger issues" rather than punished. The girl, unfortunately, is a moron.