Enfield riots?

[Empusa]

Just seen on Twitter and in a few articles like this, that there are meant to be plans for a riot in Enfield tonight and riot police are in the town centre?

Used to live there, and got family there (luckily a fair distance from the centre), but fucking hell! What the hell is going on?

Again, you are equating domestic violence and consistent discipline.

The fact that kids are walloped at home is a terrible, terrible thing. It means that they are much more likely to resort to violence themselves etc.

However, when they do, the fact that there are no viable consequences within the public field that match their experiences of what it is to get into serious trouble is a problem. This does NOT mean that I think teachers or police should be cracking whips and walloping, but kids are met with the other extreme where not only do they get away with blue murder but they are often rewarded for behaviour that's really pretty shoddy. We had a girl who was generally ultra-cheeky and we tried to put in place a system where she had to maintain a certain "attitude grade" over a day, with five minute reviews to show her how she was progressing. For every hour that she maintained that grade, she would earn however many points depending on the majority of her behaviour in that lesson. This was to be put towards a trip at the end of the week. It was considered by the head that this was "too strict" and that she should be allowed go on the trip even if she gave cheek to every teacher in every lesson all week long.

Everyone in education knows these kids have shit lives and don't have bedtime stories and homecooked meals... but that doesn't excuse antisocial behaviour in or out of school even if it is a reason for it. Anyone working in a secondary school with kids who are in trouble knows they can't be in a room alone with them or so much as look sideways at them or there will be allegations of "assault" and that even where kids behave in threatening ways, the teacher's hands are tied. This is not good enough. Having empathy for the fact that a child has had a crappy upbringing shouldn't mean that discipline is thrown out the window because of the fear of repercussions. There is NO FEAR in these kids, there are no consequences that upset them and if any do, there are cries of "I know my rights".

......and I doubt many years go when families had many more children they all got a bedtime story at night.
Ok, we have on average 2 or 3 children here in the UK to look after at home, That's fine. Imagine having a much bigger brood - not so easy then maybe to control them but they obviously did somehow.
My parents had 5 of us, I can't imagine what mayhem we would have caused if we had not had a pretty strict father and mother. Ok they made their mistakes and they weren't perfect but we all still have good manners and respect for our elders even though some of us went off the rails at some point.

I use the word assault in its technical definition, without intending any drama. And cold blooded in opposition to Ivor's 'heat of the moment' or 'heat of anger', sorry, too complicated with the page to go and check. HTH.

'Ivortheengine8 Thu 11-Aug-11 10:02:33
Davida, you seem to have a lot of experience of inner city kids and how to manage them and also teenagers, Why don't you share how exactly you would manage them?
Abuse is very different to discipline and I think you must know that, maybe you are just scared of going too far?'

Where do you get the idea that I have a lot of experience of inner city kids and how to manage them and also teenagers?

I don't equate smacking with discipline, sorry. I don't think it's effective or necessary. It just doesn't work. My feeling is that consistent discipline can work either with or without smacking on the sidelines. I don't think the smacking is relevant. You know if your parent is consistent or means business without any sort of blow taking place.

I'm not confusing discipline with domestic violence - I am saying that smacking a child is not the same as disciplining them - it just shows you lost your temper.

Actually, I agree with a lot of what you are saying working.

Corporal punishment has been removed from the classroom, but the classroom set up hasn't changed to support this. Teachers are still expected to maintain order with 30 children, act as a social worker, get through SATS, teach PSHE etc. etc. I would imagine your example of giving a child an attitude grade every 5 minutes is pretty time consuming. I don't really understand how this would work in a practical sense, unless the child had a TA accompanying her to every class.

Bedtimes stories and family meals are ways of having a strong relationship with your children, and ensuring that your children have a strong adult role model. Obviously you need to adapt accordingly, but no amount of naughty steps and sticker charts can replace having an adult in your life who values you, spends time with you and demonstrates how to treat other people.

I don't think behaviour was better 100 years ago when many families had 9 children. Universal education was introduced by Victorians and Edwardians to get poor children off the streets and prevent them from causing trouble.

Smacking is ineffective apart from releasing some tension from the smacker and making them feel 'in charge'. It achieves nothing or you would only ever do it once. You are teaching children that bigger person cross with little person can physically assault them if they do something they don't like. If you use these tactics then you have to expect older siblings to do the same to little ones. There is absolutely no need to hit them Every time you do you erode a little bit of their self worth

'I don't think behaviour was better 100 years ago ' - Really?
Would you have caught a 9 year old swearing at his dad everyday?

Noddy, but as a parent you do need to be 'in charge'! I agree smacking does not always acheive that. Do you feel that parent and child should have a mutual understanding of everything. Its wrong to expect a child to know what is wrong and right if you don't teach them.
What about talking sternly or in a raised voice to a child - or is that considered to be belittling to the child too?
What about physically restraining a child or a teenager?
Sometimes it is simply to take them away from danger.

Merry, just because a child sees his parent do something does not mean he is just going to willingly follow. Most Kids go through phases of rebellion, testing their parents and testing boundaries.

You can teach without hitting.Ds is 17 never been hit and is a lovely boy!(mostly)

"Would you have caught a 9 year old swearing at his dad everyday?"

To be honest I don't spend any time with 9 year olds, or children apart from my own on a daily basis so I couldn't tell you. I am however sure that a 9 year old who swears at his dad is sweared at by his dad.

However if you would like some literature on children behaving badly in the past I would recommend Dickens or Lark Rise to Candleford. Bill Bryson's 'Home' is also pretty good on social conditions through the ages. As I said, schools were introduced to get unruly (and probably unsightly) poor children off the streets.

"Merry, just because a child sees his parent do something does not mean he is just going to willingly follow."

Actually I believe that is pretty much how it works - mirror neurons.

I have never smacked, will never smack etc but where a teacher puts a hand on a student's shoulder it is often met with cries of "assault!",

The child with the attitude grade has a full-time TA due to the extent of her behavioural difficulties, it basically involved the TA moving the attitude grade up and down a scale and then writing this down every five minutes. It was working and a LOT less time consuming than the continual stoppages of class that were occurring because of her outbursts. This is the thing I find ludicrous, that it is okay to allow kids to run riot because good disciplinary methods are "too time consuming" and it is a common belief. You can turn behaviour around with solid behavioural techniques pretty rapidly but they do need to be time intensive at the beginning and this costs money.

Bedtime stories are lovely but they are indicative of a particular class. Sure Start, for a time, seemed to tell people that if they only parented like middle class parents their kids would be fine. I had to attend this lecture where I watched all these inner city parents being told that if they gave their kids butter it would be much better for their brain development, followed by a demonstration of how to make home made play doh! When your family is in a gang, burglarising homes and there is prostitution occurring in a bedroom in your house, a bedtime story or home made playdoh is really not going to cut it.

"Smacking is ineffective [...] You are teaching children that bigger person cross with little person can physically assault them if they do something they don't like."

And you don't think these lawless kids don't learn that lesson quickly at school or on the streets whether their parents enforce it or not? What would you rather have? A situation where children respect their older peers/gang leaders, who are willing to back their authority up with violence, but don't respect their parents or teachers (who aren't)?

"Bedtime stories are lovely but they are indicative of a particular class."

Oh for goodness sake. My grandmother grew up in the East End of London. Her husband drove a bus. She was bombed during her own childhood and brought up her own children with all the disruption of the Second World War - evacuation, air raids, food shortages.

I remember very few books in her house, but every time we visited she had a stack of library books that she read to me and my brother. That is what I remember about her - blackberry tarts and books. I would imagine that many 'working class' people have similar memories. (I am definitely middle class, but I suppose thats what you get when you read books to children and invest time in them - class betrayal...)

I didn't say good disciplinary methods are too time consuming. I said that teachers aren't supported enough in using them.

You may feel teaching play doh to prostitutes is pointless, and you might be right, but making playdoh, sharing meals, reading bedtime stories, are just examples of ways to share time with children - through doing these things with adults they learn how to be adults.

The clash of those cultures (home/contact with public professionals) is a massive issue. There is no respect or fear for teachers/police who "do nothing" no matter what transgression has occurred.

My family were "working class" too, let's not do this "who's the most working
class" nonsense. The point is that your grandmother, and mine, did all of this without middle class folk coming in with well-meaning smiles and sacks of books and challenging their parenting: this was their parenting, it had nothing to do with money.

Community was very different then, people were poor but had aspiration, some people don't have that aspiration or hope anymore. Bedtime stories and playdoh just don't change that much when you are talking about living in the sorts of circumstances that involve toddlers being given methadone so their mother can turn a trick. That is a very different type of class and no, bedtime stories don't feature high from my experience with families who are living this experience.

Violence causes disrespect not the other way round. Hiding thread now as I have been on Mn years and always get in a to do about smacking as I see no place for it and consider it abuse and people who do smack are adamant tehy are right so no resolution ever!

I dont agree with smacking or even worse belting etc.

I do agree with firm boundries and tough love.

However I also think the best way to raise children is through positive reinforcement. Its better to make a big deal out of the good behaviour by huge amounts of praise (though not OTT so it becomes meaningless)

I would never win in a whose the 'most working class contest'. I grew up in East Sheen.

My point is that you are making books and home cooking into a class issue. I am saying that they just represent a parent spending time with their children. No amount of schooling can replace having this relationship with an adult. I can see your point that you aren't going to transform a mother who gives her toddler methadone by sending her on a course, but what I'm not sure about is whether you are suggesting some other solution? I don't see why you should, I don't know what the answer is.

However, I would stand by my point that the difference between a functioning family and a non-functioning family is the amount of time they spend together playing, reading books, eating, and even making play-doh, not their disciplinary technique of choice.

Perhaps class is the wrong word. I am not British, so it is not as loaded a word for me as I appreciate it is for many who are British. Perhaps "culture" is a better word.

I have no idea what the solution to these families who live in situations which are beyond most of our worst nightmares, certainly beyond the worst nightmares of my grandmother despite the fact that she lived with severe domestic violence, but I have a deep distrust of the idea that making the superficial trappings of a middle class (or decent working class) family available to people in these circumstances leads to real changes. What we are seeing now in terms of social disorder is a step beyond even the most dire circumstances of our yesteryear (though am sure there will have been this criminality further back e.g. in Victorian poverty etc).

I don't really believe that the difference between a functioning family and a non-functioning family is about quality or even quantity of time spent doing particular activities. My grandmother is a great example here. 8 kids, several miscarriages, living with intense and severe domestic violence, sexual abuse in the home. Absolutely horrifying.. but she did manage to teach right from wrong and seven of her eight children grew up to be fully functioning adults who are all married and with kids of their own etc (my father is the eighth and though is an alcoholic, has had a good professional career and is not a bad man, certainly very law abiding, has worked hard to be sober but just not really managed it etc). I suspect she will have smacked but it doesn't much matter, she will have spent the majority of her time involved in domestic labour etc not playing or reading etc.. but she made her family function through setting standards for their behaviour, showing them love and seeing the best in everything even in the direst of circumstances. You could read all the bedtime stories in the world, cook the best food in the world and sit with your kids but be inconsistent and distant and have very different outcomes.

How you make a family or a person function, however - what the magic mix is that makes one person resilient while another crumbles - is just beyond me. Would be great to find the answer!

Some of it is genetic too.
The important issues are we have totally run out of money to spend on anything much and I don't think there is a huge will on the part of the British population who are in very difficult circumstances to increase say the basic rate of tax from the 32% tax/NI or whatever it now is to fund most schemes for these people.

Interestingly most of the people convicted yesterday in London were 30 - 45 and I was about to write that this is mostly a problem of teenage boys so I'd better not write that although I think a lot of it is.

One council is going to make people lose their council accommodation if they are convicted. That might work. They could housed on camp beds in large halls or something unpleasant or made to go to areas of the council (one way bus ticket) where there is much cheaper accommodation available.

I thought it was mainly 15 - 25?

There may not be a huge will on the part of the British population to fund schemes for "these people" but not dealing with this issue threatens the fundamentals of our everyday existence.

Realistically, if people are evicted from council houses etc, they will be "sorted" by gang members and so it will continue. I don't think that's a fantastic strategy. Also, do you evict a struggling mother who just can't control her 6 ft son because she didn't get parenting right?

I thought that the only information we had about court at this point was this, in which two thirds are under 25 (and no recorded figures for under 15, though we know at least one 11 year old has been tried).

There will be a mix involved in these riots, that's pretty clear.. but I will be surprised if the majority are older and/or have decently paid jobs.

Ah, well those BBC stats suggest 66% 24 or younger which is probably what most of us thought. I had just heard one interview where for some reason most people convicted that day were 30 - 40.

I think it's largely over now and perhaps some of those caught are now realising it wasn't just a fun game and they are in trouble.

We can't solve the problem for this generation. There's very little to be done at all except pay their bad, slack, selfish, restive, short-sighted, stupid behaviour. The only thing we can do is change things with this generation being born now and currently in school.

This was totally predictable. Downgrade education and remove sanctions and this is what happens. In fact I predicted it myself. Fail children at school and this is what happens.

We have an education system that abandons children with crappy parents and the middle class don't care because they can read with their children, they can teach them their arithmetic and help them with homework. In fact the middle class like it because it gives them a leg up, a legacy, turns them into an elite. Stupid, shortsighted, complacent approach.

It's not just the children of feral parents that lose out when the parents are blamed for not helping them at home. It's everyone's children.

CustardCake
While it's extraordinarily difficult for a woman to convict her rapist, whenever a woman steps out of line, in a patriarchy, they come down on her like a ton of bricks.

girls getting a 6 months prison sentence for stealing 10 packs of chewing gum sounds about par.

Men, on the other hand, are held to quite a different standard of behaviour. In the UK 2 women a week are murdered by their spouse, and the men get an average of 4 years in prison. I recently saw a case where a man who raped a four year old got a very short sentence. Whereas women regularly get 16 years or more for retaliating against and killing a batterer.

This is because one of the ways male dominance operates is by punishing women severely for the slightest discrepancies, while protecting men's right to violence.