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, the issue is usually both parents of working class kids are working very long hours. Some of these are people who work several jobs to send money to their families abroad. The teens are left to their own devices. I know of a few stories where the cleaners kids have joined gangs and lost their way. However, in the same said families some of the kids are great at sports and work since early age. I feel sorry for those parents but they really need to know what their kids are up to.

This.

Where I live, many older people come to retire. There is a large secondary school in town and the pupils have always left school grounds at lunchtime if they want to. Catering facilities cannot cope with all the pupils. The elderly residents complain bitterly about the pupils 'crowding the shops', ' filling the pavements' and generally being visible during their 45 minute lunch break. There is no trouble - if there was, you can be sure that the Police would be involved and everyone would know about it. There is nothing new about the complaints - they were equally bitter and vituperative when my (adult) children were preschoolers.

The local shops rely on the pupils spending money Monday - Friday during term term. The town is a holiday destination, so tourists keep the place going at weekends and during school holidays. But it is the school that provides much of the local income.

Many of the older people, not long term residents of the town, have little face to face contact with their own children and grandchildren. They believe what they read about 'feral youth'. They oppose any proposed facilities for young people because they would 'encourage them'. They talk about young people in disgusting terms (vermin) and when I hear them talk to young people in shops, buses or trains, the older people are embarrassingly rude to young people who are usually polite and respectful to them. The school receives many complaints about the pupils - even the 16+ ones - being allowed to leave school premises.

I think they are frightened of young people because they don't talk to/mix with them. Now that I am well into retirement, I see no change in my interactions with young people. Yes, I avoid the local shops during school lunch break because I don't want to queue. I ask them to let me pass if they are thoughlessly blocking me path (yes, young people can be very thoughtless) and I have never yet heard anything other than a 'sorry we didn't see you'. Mind, I am always cheerful and polite to them - many of my contemporaries swear and shout at them.

So my view of local youth is that they are mostly polite and well behaved - a view that has not changed in the 30+ years I have lived here. They gather in the evenings because there are (still) very few facilities, especially for older teens because there is still huge opposition. I wouldn't want to be a teenager these days.

I don't think parents have ever known what their teenagers are up to all day long. To know that, you'd need to actually be with them. But when I was growing up, it was expected that I'd tell my parents where I was going, who I was going with and what time I'd be back. During the summer I'd disappear all day to the park, we'd have a kick about, a sunbathe, listen to music and I'd have to be home by dinner time. Or if I ate dinner out, I'd be told to be home before dark. I knew what my parents expected of me in terms of standards of behaviour and I didn't deviate. The same applies now to my 14yo ds. He catches the bus a fair bit, so he has a bigger range than when I was a teenager. But he's responsible enough and he lives by the standards we set for him. He's home when he says he's going to be and he keeps us informed if his plans change. Teenagers are in training for adulthood, you cannot micromanage them, nor know what they're doing every second of the day - that's unhealthy. Our job as parents is to provide them with roots and wings. Failure to prepare them to use their wings properly (parenting failure) is the cause of broader societal problems. It's not about giving them too much freedom, it's about not providing them with the sense of responsibility for themselves and others that comes with that freedom.

You've hit the nail on the head.
You went to the park, you sunbathed, kicked a ball around etc.
You would never have thought of kicking a man to death and laughing.
It wasn't in your thoughts.
You wouldn't have thought about it and you would have been to scared to do.it to get into trouble also.

Why was it in their thoughts when they went to the park?
What made them behave like that?
Why didn't they sunbathe, kick a ball around, chat amongst themselves etc.

If this is what's happening now, what will people like that be doing in 10 or 20 years time?

"You would never have thought of kicking a man to death and laughing.
It wasn't in your thoughts."

There has always been extreme behaviour. It's still rare. I think knife crime is a bigger issue.

I spent hours away from home as a teen, often with no money (sometimes I had a phone card or 20p to call home just in case.. those were the days)

Most kids these days are polite (yes, sometimes a gaggle of kids blocks somewhere, but that's just because there's a few of them, they're not doing it on purpose), sometimes they get a bit loud, but then so do adults. My overall experience with teens (and I have one myself) is that they are actually probably more polite than we were when I was a kid.

Those examples are extreme, there have always been the kids that got in trouble - I don't know if there are more of them now, or just that we're all in the same places. I do agree that punishment needs to be given that actually works, but balancing that against not really wanting to go back to the days of security beating up teens around the back of the shop and having no comeback for it? I don't really want that either.

That makes for painful reading PassingStranger, it won’t help but may be some comfort to know that so many are appalled on your behalf.

My mother insists that such things weren’t happening back in my day. For an adult? Probably not. As a kid actually on the streets? I know they happened, sometimes they even happened to me. When I tell her that, she insists they weren’t happening back in her day. Same as no sexual assault, CSA , abuse of children, domestic violence etc. She didn’t see it or hear about it, so it didn’t happen.

It’s easy to fall into that trap and feel like the world is going to hell in a hand baskets when you are actually/suddenly exposed to the worst of the worst everywhere.. telly, newspapers, SM etc.

And if their parents have spent hours trying to get their child help, explaining the situation over and over again, to a myriad of different agencies and professionals?

Because the help often isn't there, even when you're begging for it, and have the resources, education and determination to work your way through the system even when doors are being constantly shut on you.

Well, when I was sunbathing and kicking a ball around, a toddler in Merseyside was being abducted by two 11 year olds and tortured to death on a train track. Which is back to the point made by a pp that this kind of thing has always happened, and they're thankfully pretty exceptional instances when they occur. I remember that abduction and murder pretty much defined an entire decade. People asked themselves and each other how could two squeaky voiced children whose feet didn't reach the floor in the police interview room possibly be responsible for such a heinous crime. They forgot about Mary Bell, a couple of decades prior.

Do these things happen more often now? I think probably they do, unfortunately. But it's not because teenagers are out all day with no supervision. The reasons are far more complex than that.

Just today two teens near where I am crashed their bike into a car. They race around with balaclavas on and the police are discouraged from going after them because they’ll get blamed if the kids come off the bike without a helmet on.

Yes, too many instances of knife crime every week.

I think whilst kids are out as much as they ever were...

In the 70s and 80s, everyone knew who you were, who your parents were and you respected or feared other adults as much as you did your parents.

My parents didn't socialise massively with other families in our village, but they were at parents days, they were at village fetes, they spoke with their immediate neighbours... sufficiently that whilst I may not know an adult, they DEFINITELY knew who my Mum and Dad were and could pass on a message 'I saw Widdlin' doing something awful' or tell me off there and then.

And if Mrs Smith told me off for something and I went home and told my Mum... she would back Mrs Smith up, and I'd probably have to apologise to her for whatever it was AND get a punishment at home too.

My Mum would usually know what it was I'd done, where and to whom BEFORE I got home!

I don't think that happens any more. Kids are often pretty anonymous. Parents are not contacted when their kid is spotted doing something vile and if they find out someone saw their kid doing something awful, they deny, disbelieve, have a go at the messenger. If someone dares tell their kid off they're more likely to have a go at the other adult, not their child.

I am not saying that system was perfect - it absolutely wasn't. But it was different.

I also think adults are frightened of kids now - a kid might stab you, that would NOT have happened 40 years ago, not to the extent you'd actually suspect it could happen.

A kid could make a complaint about you that would be investigated to your detriment even if it is untrue -and kids know that.

Again thats not to say that kids being disbelieved as standard when making allegations against adults was ok, it wasn't... but the downside of 'believe the child' does also exist.

So where a child might have been collared by an adult and physically taken to their home and handed to their parent... that isn't going to happen now.

I don't think that happens any more. Kids are often pretty anonymous. Parents are not contacted when their kid is spotted doing something vile

Tbf I see people on my local facebook page describing kids behaving badly and asking if anyone recognises these children as their own, and if they do, to talk to them. Though whether or not they do talk to them, I don't know. But people are definitely trying to pass on information about poor behaviour in my town at least (the behaviour mostly being things like swearing loudly in a playpark or playing dangerously near water, sometimes bullying, not things like knife crime thank goodness). There are also lots of posts praising children and young people in town for various things so not all bad stuff!

That's it blame someone else. Easier isn't it.
Parent your own children, they are your responsibility.

The family were scum, in this case the famlies were high fiving each other when something went the teenagers way

Disgraceful.
The boy texted his mother too and she said come home I love your my son.
Should of told him to go away and he's on his own now. Not pandered to him. Stupid people.

I wasn't allowed to wander in 90s, either OP, and none of my friends were either. Having said that, none of us were interesting in roaming the streets - we'd either go somewhere like the cinema or to each other's houses.

There were plenty of feral kids I knew though, who were allowed out until all hours just wandering around vandalising things and intimidating passers by. This definitely isn't a new thing

I'm not talking about any particular case, I'm talking generally. As a parent you can beg for help with difficult behaviour and the help isn't there - and not all difficult behaviour is down to parenting, some is down to additional needs or other reasons such as trauma.

I do parent my child and I am responsible - and part of being a responsible parent is asking for help when things are going wrong.

Your teen can say they are at the park or gym but that doesn’t mean they are telling the truth.? My teens are way more sensible and well behaved than what I remember from the 90s

I think they are out a lot less. In our village there used to be about 20-30 of us all drinking and now I very rarely seen any.

It’s to get them off games consoles and stop them from becoming incels trapped in their bedrooms I pressume

I think respect for authority is key. And I know that fear is a part of that. Respect for paRents, respect for law, police, teachers. We have none of that now.
I don't have a solution but soft parenting and wokism haven't helped.

It is the Easter holidays. There often isn’t anywhere for teens to go while their parents work, not like primary school aged children. It is also good for them to be out and about with their friends. I most certainly was from about 14, getting the tube onto central London for the day with friends in the holidays.

By not letting them have freedom we are keeping them young for too long. Staying in education longer and coddling them means they don’t take adult responsibility until into their 20’s. I had a baby at 22 and it wasn’t as unusual then as it seems to be now.

Teenagers can and do lie about where they are and who they are with. Parents can preach and punish all they want till the cows come home. Because if you have a willfull 14 year old who is both physically stronger and faster than his/her mum, and they want to get out of the house down to the shops, there’s not much you can do to stop them. If they meet their mates at the shop and hang around for an hour you can’t exactly punish them for it can you.

I mean this is just nonsense and a major case on rose tinted glasses. My folks didn't give a rats ass where I was from dawn til dusk so long as I didn't interfere with what they were doing or make a mess in my mums immaculate stepford wife house before dad got home. I was drinking in the streets at 13... huge groups for us being chased by police across local meadows and school fields back in the 90's. Shop lifting galore, when I started working in retail on weekends at 15 while at college in the week half my mates where on shopwatch, with pictures and everything behind the tills and security walkie talkies from the main cctv centre letting us know when the main culprits had entered the town centre and this was a tiny, posh little town! I know without doubt it was worse in larger towns and city centres. Now parents aren't allowed to kick their kids out from dawn til dusk, we aren't allowed to tell them off, my teen ran away recently because I confiscated her phone for 24 hrs and when the police returned her they told me to give her damn phone back because they didn't want to be called out again and they said that INFRONT OF HER!!!!! I can assure you parents are up against a wall, we are literally told "don't you dare lay a finger on your kids, or enforce rules or consequences, don't shout at them, don't confiscate things, don't take your eyes off them, you aren't even allowed to shiit alone without someone accusing you of neglect because you took your eyes off your kid while you WIPED YOUR ARSE!!! But the fact these kids are feral (as feral as yours were you just didn't know or have the blinkers on) is all YOUR FAULT and we should immediately be criminalised for it!!! GET THE F OUT OF HERE WITH THAT BULLSHIT!

Media reported the boys mother was unemployed and lived on a council estate.