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.

Bullocks to youth clubs, you are misinformed.
Children aren't interested in youth clubs. Even if they went their behaviour would be bad.
I know someone that tried to run one.
You need to accept times have changed.

That poor old man was not killed at night.

It has ever been thus.

“… I find by sad Experience how the Towns and Streets are filled with lewd wicked Children, and many Children as they have played about the Streets have been heard to curse and swear and call one another Nick-names, and it would grieve ones Heart to hear what bawdy and filthy Communications proceeds from the Mouths of such…”
A Little Book for Children and Youth – Being Good Counsel and Instructions for Your Children, Earnestly Exhorting Them to Resist the Temptation of the Devil, Robert Russel
1695

That's it blame the government. Children are your responsibility

It's pretty obvious as in the case of Brianna Ghey that parents are giving in to demands for I phones but not having any idea what their kids are doing on there or who they are talking too.
Wake up. It's easy to blame others.

Girl in this case had clips on her phone of violence, is that what the parent/s bought her the phone for so she could film attacks on people. Wonderful.

Makes you wonder how nobody else noticed what was going on, and how the dog didn't protect him. Shame.

When I was a teen (in the 90s) we were all in the pub from about 15/16ish. As children in the 80s, we were out from breakfast to tea time and would only go home for lunchtime we remembered or were really hungry. This generation spends so much time indoors and playing violent video games.

Yes, it is easy to blame the parents, but I'm fairly sure every parent tries to teach their kids right from wrong, so there must be other factors beyond parental influence at play.

Parents must surely know where their children are, who they are friends with etc ? Also keep an eye on the phones, install parental controls and generally have conversations of good behaviour and choices. Children don’t wake up one morning and decide to kick an elderly man to death. That behaviour is from years of neglect and lack of parenting.

Well, i',m not sure you can blame the dog!!!

But I do agree re people. I'm constantly shocked at how people don't ever want to step in anymore. Of course, I assume that no one was around in this case because his chidlren found him so it' snot even like a passerby who was too scared to intervene then called an ambulance once the children had gone.

While that situation was truly awful, the fact that it' sreceived so much coverage etc is because, awful though some anti social behaviour is, it does not usually reach this level of appallingness.

When I was a teen, I was expected to inform parents about my whereabouts. My parents knew all my friends and their parents. We were outdoors playing etc, but my mum knew were I was and who I was with. Bad behaviour had consequences. “Bad” friendships were not allowed. I would do the same for my kids.

Children are Interested in youth clubs.

We have three in our area, as well as thr youth bus that goes to the park and it's always busy and has lots of kids engaging with it. They offer thr kids activities that they want Esther then whether they think they want, and because of ther its successful.

This is totally untrue - I think you are misinformed. I run a range of youth clubs across a city and we have hundreds of kids in every night of the week one of our clubs alone gets over 200 on a Friday night. And often their behaviour is much, much better in club than it is in school, on street or at home. I know this because I work with other providers to support them so I do hear how they're getting on in other places and I will go out looking for young people on the street to direct them into our clubs - usually they just want somewhere safe and warm to hang out with their friends where they can be themselves and they're receptive to it. Kids who struggle to engage with youth clubs are struggling for a reason - the most common reasons are trauma or exploitation related, or sometimes it's because the club is hobby specific or putting too much focus on group work and some kids struggle to sustain this on top of school or due to being ND. Or they may struggle due to their circumstances - for example its very difficult for young people in care to engage with youth clubs simply because they are moved around between placements so much it becomes geographically difficult.

But youth centres absolutely work.

God I was hanging round in a cemetery drinking cider and kissing boys as a teenager. Don't see much of that in my area now! (Thankfully)

What rose tinted world did you grow up in?! As a teen I, and most others I knew, were out all day and parents didn't know where we were. Sure, we might have told them. But whether it was true or not.... And with no mobiles, how could they check?

I think generally, teens these days have way less freedom. But for the most parts they are just doing what teens have always done. That's not to say there aren't some more extreme issues like knife crime and other things like sexting and cyberbullying that weren't around 'in our day'. But a blanket 'kids these days....' isn't really true or helpful in any way to addressing actual issues.

I completely agree.

I know a 14 year old who literally is not allowed out of the front door alone, I'm not exaggerating, he's not even allowed to put the bins out. He can't ride a bike, and is driven to and from school. He even has to ask to go out in his back garden and they will sometimes say no, because it's too windy or spitting a bit.

On the other hand, I know kids of 10 or 11 who's parents have pretty much washed their hands of them and they are bringing up themselves. By 12 or 13 these kids will be out of control.

The problem is by this age some parents either start to feel like they can relax and their work is done or are terrified of losing control and over manage. It's a difficult balance to get right, but that's parenting, it's what we signed up for, it is difficult and it doesn't stop once your child starts getting more independent.

I'm not blaming the dog
Just wondered why he didn't protect his owner though, I thought dogs did.

I’d be too scared to work with today’s youth (the outdoor ones). They’re brave!

It was a small dog, going by the picture. It will have been terrified too. The dogs I've had would have been pretty useless faced with a raging, violent thug.

Well obviously I don’t know what every child in the country was doing but I’m certainly talking about all the kids in my school.
This was in a mining town, so somewhere that would be considered quite rough and working class.

As many others have said I wandered around as a teen with my friends, never did anything particularly anti social, the worst was sharing a bottle of White Star in the park and trying to get in to the abandoned building nearby (never managed it)

My teens will occasionally go and wander around but much less than I did, most of the time they're at friends houses rather than wandering.

There is a couple of groups of teens that do terrorise our town though (small town) they ride around on those annoying motorbikes all over the parks/paths, break in to cars, hang around outside the supermarket and intimidate people and terrorise the security staff. The worst thing is recently they've taken to arson, two houses and two shops have been set on fire recently, thankfully no one has been hurt but its only a matter of time if they aren't stopped.

The naughtiest thing we ever did was run in the fields of wheat

Hello Theresa May!

Not true, do yo have teenagers or ever had teenagers? We have amazing new skatepark and bike track near us and a youth club that runs gigs for teenage bands, phot and art competitions. The gigs are always sold out. I grew up in a rough part of West and South London and the behaviour was often scary and intimidating with gangs of racist thugs, my DC's life and the teenagers around here are immeasurably better.

Also, these basic notions of good and bad are stupid, I smoked cigarettes at 15 through width form, we certainly drank alcohol but we weren't bad people, I also have a Masters degree. My eldest (late teen) goes to pubs with his friends they often talk about politics, they are not bad teens because they drink a pint! Ridiculous.

I never considered my parents as feral parents I grew up in the 80s, they gave me the rules I had to abide by while I was not in their care and out with friends and I largely stuck to it, I was allowed to go out on my bike where I liked from age 11, and by 14 we’d regular cycle 30 miles away to different places on our own never a problem, even at age 8 me a a friend went to the local outdoor swimming pool on our own for the day and would play in the local forest

it was a great learning time

We are living in a world were adults think popular politics and extreme right wing governance is the answer, what a betrayal to our forefathers like my Grandad who fought in the second world war, had no choice, landed on the beaches on D day, was fighting fascism for what reason when you look how appealing it is to many now. At the end of the day teenagers are operating in this context, why is it a surprise to people if the adults around them have fallen for the above, not exactly a strong moral code!

The youth club in my town is popular. Its open every weekday after school until late evening and teenagers can just drop in and hang out, no pressure on them to do anything (and no religion!) My DD goes there every other Friday to play D&D.
The skate park and pump track are very popular too (which the town council built after two primary school boys wrote to them asking for one, which is fantastic as it shows local government actually listens to the youth. We also have a youth council for the town)

Surely that’s the way to encourage them to be better behaved though. Where I live there is a well attended youth club, scouts / guides is popular, army cadets, trad music groups. Everything is free or a £1 a go. They tie in with other local groups too like local organic growing project so head out and light a campfire type stuff. Fair amount of “feral” unattended children roaming local park, and woodland but not actually doing anything wrong. Dog owners who gang poo bags on bushes are more of a menace tbh.