I feel like a lot of parents don’t talk to their kids.
I was chatting to a friend recently who is a nurse in A&E and she was giving 2 brothers a stern talking to and she told me (obviously Im paraphrasing) how she told these boys that not only could they be dead, but someone else’s precious child could also have died due to their messing around with things they shouldn’t. She said their parent wasn’t showing any engagement with her dc or even the discussion. She kept wondering off for phone signal to use her phone.
My DC had a friend over recently and he was very sweet but basic manners non existent, it was like he just hadn’t encountered them, because he would be the type to use them.
Parenting is very hard and we live in times of such stress so I appreciate we don’t always have times to drill things into our kids.
But manners, safety, right from wrong, treat others as you’d like to be treated, all the bare minimum do need to be taught.
My DC many years ago now and his friends planned a day out, most of the school year attended. They went the beach. Im not stupid, Im sure loads too alcohol or weed, but the kids arranged it themselves. They were strangely (unless times really have changed hugely since my school days) were as a whole year group close. During lockdown 1 a genius managed to make a whole year chat and they used to watch movies together. No idea how Im too old. They had a lads group chat where the idea was “no lad left behind” and even quiet kids were talking in there and the girls had a group chat based I believe on them all watching love island together. Anyhow they plan this beach day and word gets out, 2 kids from another school show up and stabs a child from my son’s school.
The child thankfully was fine physically. But the parents of the children who attended the event they all arranged were dragged on social media. Why did we allow our children to all go out in a group? What did we think was going to happen?
Well considering that our kids have managed to effectively set up groups amongst themselves during lockdown to keep spirits up, the fact that “popular” boys were sending messages to the lads chat saying if anyone needed to talk or were struggling to DM them. The fact the girls would arrange group sessions to watch TV together or cheering one another on to do their 10,000 steps by dancing or doing tiktok dances in their gardens, i didn’t think it was a group of kids that I had to worry would take knives to the bloody beach. And I was right, it was kids from another school who did. Same kids from the same place knife crime is high. And the difference is that school has kids from poverty, parents are often struggling with active addiction, just cycles of generational trauma and families that embody the spirit of the tv show shameless. I grew up on the estate the kids who showed up with knives are from and it was hard 20 years ago, now it’s harder. These kids are left to roam the streets from early childhood, the houses are full of rubbish in the front gardens, stinks of weed everywhere, full of dog shit. I went back recently to visit my aunt and went the shop for her, kids outside looking terrifying and I asked one was his mum such and such, he said yeah and I started a chat with them. Really nice lads. Just bored. The kids who’s mum I knew from growing up was sweet but was stood around swearing and vaping, but his mum was like that when we were kids, had him at 16 and just continued the cycle. Knife crime is an unbroken cycle of poverty. Kids having kids they weren’t equipped to parent. Bad choices, no money, poor education, poor food, lack of experiences (days out/holidays/even going to restaurants) These kids are getting addicted to smoking/drinking/drugs through sheer boredom and seeing their parents do the same. They don’t have outside influence and often don’t have dads or those do are witnessing DV. It is fucking embarrassing that we don’t have people forced to be better parents. We should be teaching parents how to enrich their kids lives, you’d not have a hamster without a wheel and a ball. Why are kids allowed to decay? They grow up and become a burden to society, they deserve so much fucking more and so do the parents. They deserve to know, just because their parents didn’t take them to places or nourish them correctly or they grew up in squalor, let’s not do this anymore. But it’s cheaper to keep the cycle running than it is to throw money at it because people will always need minimum wage jobs etc and the hope is these are the people who will take them, but often they don’t anyway. It’s people like me who need flexibility or aren’t smart enough for office jobs.
All the problems that we see with violence and knife crime are very rarely committed by someone who grew up with present and engaging parents who enabled a good childhood filled with experiences, conversation regularly and shown love and kindness.
Parents from areas of generational poverty could be given opportunities to expand on education, to have opportunities to learn to budget and cook, to have experiences with their kids such as group activities to the zoo/beach/theme parks. It would require active community centres, addiction help, classes for parents. But the outlay is huge but long term it would help tackling the problem of entire communities not working.