An interesting post on FB in relation to riots

[Ivortheengine8]

Found this as the status of a couple of friends and people I knew a long time ago at school around the early 1990's

'RIP Broken Britain.. You went soft on discipline!.. You went soft on immigration!You went soft on crime.. Parents were told.. 'No you can't smack the kids'....Teachers were prevented from chastising kids in schools.. The police couldn't clip a troublemaker round the ear.. Kids had rights blah blah blah.. Well done Britain..You shall reap what you sow.. We have lost a whole generation!! '

Our school certainly wasn't the best in the area and it had a bit of a bad name back then so I find it interesting how my generation of average kids feel about this and I agree.

Way too many excuses are being made for the rioters, in my opinion it is sheer lawlessness and lack of respect for anything or anyone which I think starts at home.

I spend my life chastising children. it becomes second nature after a while.

Given that so many of the rioters are school age, 'The Poles took all our jobs' probably hasn't occurred to them. Unless they realise the 6-week summer break was originally intended so that children could help gather the harvest, and they're pining to pick strawberries or hops

I would like to go back to the days when if a child was cheeky, you were allowed to say "dont talk to your mother like that",

It'd probably be quite good for some of them if 'wait till your father gets home' was an option even

:) Grimma and there are not that many strawberries nowdays in the city - its bummer really.

I know that we have these issues of discipline in the UK but remember that in many many countries a smack on the hand or bum is second nature. Are we saying then that all parents in countries who let others tell off their kids or who receive a tap are abusers and should be reported to the social ?

I have lived in both Africa and Asia - yes there is abuse, always has been and always will be. Fathers and mothers have always come home drunk, beaten children nd wives,done other horrid things to their families, but we also need to recognise that there are good parents who chose to discipline in other ways.

....and these same kids do extremely well at school and the quailty of eduction often much higher thn here in the UK.

Why can't you physically keep a 14 year old in the house, though?

It's not about smacking but if you are 14 and heading out of the house, your parent should be allowed to restrain and keep you indoors and lock you in your room if they think that what you are doing is dangerous and likely to harm you or others.

The teenage brain is "act now, think later". Teenagers may look like mini-adults but calling them "women" and "men" (I have seen rioters described as "a 15 year old man" and a "16 year old woman") does not make them any less impulsive or prone to taking ridiculous risks.

Creating a culture in which they are promoted to say it is "against their human rights" to be contained or prevented from taking part in activities that they don't fully grasp the consequences of is silly. They don't need some namby-pamby friendly "respect", they need guidance and authority and part of respecting them is to give them proper boundaries and for adults to be enabled to enforce those boundaries when they rebel. You don't have to be violent to do this, but I don't think that it's reasonable that people just throw their hands up and say "well, what can you do? I can't contain them!".

My aunt, a single parent, sent her youngest to boarding school when he started going off the rails. She had to remortgage her home, sell her car, take up a second and later a third job just to do this. She wasn't prepared to just say "well, what can I do?" but the option available to her isn't available to many and it's ridiculous that in normal family homes you are not allowed restrict the movement of young teenagers.

Grimma, I work in an urban secondary school in a deprived area and it most certainly will occur to them that the Poles have "taken jobs". Kids spout whatever they hear in their community, even if they don't fully understand it. There has been a pervasive sense in this whole debate that these kids don't follow the news or have any idea of what's happening in the world: this is not my experience of kids in this sort of context, they are usually very well aware of the basics of the news and would be very aware of the impact of cuts etc if 8 out of 12 youth centres in their area (this is the number for Haringey I believe) had recently been shut.

Absolutely working, I think people forget that the mind of child is quite different to that of a fully grown adult. It's all about hving to be their 'friend' but even best friends have boundries.

Its ok to call them 'men' and 'women' when they want to but as soon as any authority steps in they revert back to poor little innocent children.

Sorry my 'a' is not working!

It's nonsense. It's fear and it's missing the point.

Of course...just whack the kids and it'll all be fine!

Don't they realise that these are the kids who have been the exception...these are the ones who did get whacked.

Honestly people posting this are being idiots. Violence breeds only violence.

It's OBVIOUS.

I didn't mean why can't an individual person do it, I meant why would it be considered "wrong" to do it as in "disrespectful".

I don't think anywhere in the OP it talks about whacking kids ? It is exactly that MJ a complete 'lack of power' over certain individuals who have no respect for their parents , teachers , police etc

'
'RIP Broken Britain.. You went soft on discipline!.. You went soft on immigration!You went soft on crime.. Parents were told.. 'No you can't smack the kids'....Teachers were prevented from chastising kids in schools.. The police couldn't clip a troublemaker round the ear.. Kids had rights blah blah blah.. Well done Britain..You shall reap what you sow.. We have lost a whole generation!! '

Erm...quite a lot about whacking actually, in terms of we're not allowed to do it any more and that's why it's all gone horribly wrong.

That's what I mean though, MJ, why is that allowed? Why does society support the teen ahead of the parent, it's madness... it seems ridiculous that when kids are totally and utterly out of control suddenly it's the parents fault, yet when they are crying out for support to give boundaries to a child, the rest of the community feels no culpability.

I work with kids with language and communication difficulties and despair at the narrowness of the curriculum and how it excludes kids that cannot, for whatever reason, access it. I have kids whose disability means that they will have to work like dogs to scrape a G in GCSE English and whose participation in these subjects makes them feel totally and utterly shit about themselves who have no other options, when they are brilliant with their hands. Why do it to them? Why?

MJ, my experience with my cousins is similar. They were NEVER told anything was wrong, they could behave like demons and would get whatever they wanted materially, they had no chores, no responsibilities, nothing. My aunt occasionally very ineffectually chastise them but it was never followed through on and next minute they would be taken out for tea or bought some expensive gadget. She was doing her best, but she was worn out from working and raising kids alone (one of her boys had SEN too) and I'd wager this is true in many single parent families even where parents are generally quite decent human beings. The rise of single parent families is a factor here, as much as I hate to say it (having grown up in one myself).

I will discipline someone elses child if their parents haven't noticed. Other people have done the same to mine. It's not a 'lost art', it's common sense. I thanked a lady this week who stepped in and told my daughter and nephew to stop throwing things in the playground. I was looking after the younger ones and talking to my sister and I hadn't noticed.

I have never been confronted by a parent who was cross about my intervention, I have only been thanked. Just as I have only thanked those who have done it on my behalf for my children. I don't think people ARE preventing each other from 'parenting' out of control kids, I think we are guilty of saying 'not my child, not my problem' and then coming up with the spurious excuse that their parents would consider it an imposition.

Grow a pair. If you see a child displaying anti social behaviour, say something. Ultimately, if you catch them young enough, children want approval. If they draw a blank on good or bad behaviour from everyone around them, they will just be selfish.

I said before it really worries me how people cannot differentiate between whacking,hitting,punching,beating and a smack on the hand - I find it very hard to understand that anyone with any common sense can't do that even if they do not agree with smacking.

Discipline is not violence Davda, it is a necessity and if people people chose to do that differently to you that does not make them idiots - I find your posts pretty ignorant without any constructive argument, you are just putting everyone in the same basket.

Not all kids repond to 'please honey don't do that' if you have a child who does then lucky you!

I would be afraid to look sideways at some of the kids round here if they misbehaved. Whether the community can do this or not largely depends on the area and the links between people in the area. My area has teens wandering the streets etc and I wouldn't step in and discipline another child because I would be afraid of the consequences, that's the truth of it. I am no shrinking wallflower when it comes to kids, work in secondaries with vulnerable teens and can be very harsh in this context, but it's a different set of rules on the estate and I don't want trouble, truth be told.

We don't tend to know our neighbours any more. Much easier to abuse and destroy people you have no connection to and barely have cause to communicate with than people you have known forever and see all the time.