Saddened by the way people seem to react to teenage boys as if they're all monsters

[Schroeder]

That's it really, there has been a lot of comments on mumsnet lately about teenage boys as if just they are all bullies/rapists/thugs.

I'm worried about how my ds who is almost 12 will be treated in the years to come[hsad]

Better than a wild party tho.My 3 always reminice about the time they had a party when i was out and got away with it. So they thought untill the next day they arrived at the door to find a note pinned to it saying

"f off, this is not a youth club or a doss house and neither is it a club, kindly find somewhere else to party and do not take the p again or you will be grounded for the rest of your lives"

We never spoke about it untill they were grown up haha.

I also found a porn mag under a bed so i sat reading it with a coffee as they came in from college. Should have seen their faces.

Dara O'Briain in his book "Tickling the English" (which is fab) says this:

"If there is one part of English culture which looks truly inexplicable to an Irish person, it is your attitude to your own young. For some reason you think they're scum......English society, and the media in particular, absolutely fucking loathes them......The public perception of young people in this country is so bad that, if I meet a teenager who isn't feral, I immediately run to the parent and grab them and go "How do you do it? How?"

He goes on to talk about surveys that say 50% of Brits are scared of teenagers and how people accept these statistics as facts, despite the fact that the people interviewed for the surveys might all have been 90 yr old ladies who had previously been mugged by teenagers....and how some woman from a crime prevention thingy talked about how teenagers "had to realise that certain behaviours, like standing in groups" (WTF? even carol singers? Or charidee collectors?) were unacceptable.

I love working with teenagers (although admittedly mine aren't British!) I find them stimulating, and interesting, and very motivating for me as a teacher. Not quite sure how I'll feel when dd dresses all in black and locks herself in her room for weeks on end listening to crap music though.

I think the problem is it's just a few teenagers that are bad and they give the rest a bad name.
My mum has just moved to Norfolk from London and she says the difference in the behaviour is really noticeable.

I get the train 3 times a week, that has 4 different schools on it, most of the teenagers are fine, sitting and chatting, but there are some girls who get on and seem to think they own the train, walking up and down the carriages, constantly leaving the doors open, shouting at each other,no consideration for the other passengers, not what you want before 8 in the morning. The trouble is you notice them and not the other 30 or 40 well behaved kids sitting around them.

I'm really very depressed by the way we treat teenagers in this country. I get really offended by signs limiting the number of school kids in shops, or systems whereby adults are allowed to skip school kids in the bakery queue at lunchtime. If a group were singled out in the same way for any characteristic other than their age, there'd be outrage. But it's apparently fine to treat kids (and especially teenagers) like crap. It's as offensive as putting up signs saying, 'no blacks, no irish' in shop windows (or I guess 'maximum 3 black people allowed at one time'). There's a very good reason why that sign would be illegal, so I don't see why it's acceptable when it specified kids or teenagers.

I love teenagers too - I'm a secondary teacher and the best part of the job is the young people I get to work with every day. (Although that doesn't stop me spending half the time cursing them!)
I also think it's awful that people assume that once they hit 13 or so people assume they're 'grown up'. Let them keep their childhood going for as long as they can!

Really interesting thread - I can remember taking DS to the park and feeling slightly intimidated by the teens hanging around.

Now when I take DD the teens hanging around are DS and his mates