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Originally Posted by Less
Are you absolutely sure it is the youth to blame? We grew up in the 50's & 60's with parents that TAUGHT us respect & discipline.
The youth of today are growing up with US for parents & from what I have observed we have caused this situation because we wiped our hands of the responsibility of caring about anything but our own little worlds.
We continue along this selfish vain by blaming them for something that we may well have caused.
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Hang on a minute Less, don't fall into the trap of generalising here yourself. I am one of today's parents with responsibility of caring for my children and I do care for them. I do not accept that I have caused today's situation. I try to teach my children respect but the law says I am not allowed to teach discipline in the way I was disciplined - much as I would like to and for that I have been accused on these forums of child abuse because I said that I don't think that making smacking illegal is a good idea and admitting to having smacked my children when they were too young to understand a reasoned argument.
It brings to mind the recent news story of a father banned from contact with his family for six months because a police officer saw him smack his son in public - the son had been running out in front of cars and a smack was used as a last resort attempt to stop him doing that. It seems we are better thought of if we allow our toddlers to run into the path of oncoming vehicles and possibly get killed. Somehow that is considered kinder than a smack to prevent them doing so.
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Some of todays youth are not the type of people that you want to meet but they must be in a minority because there would be absolute terror on the streets if they were all like that.
I find that the majority of young people are just after the same thing we are a little bit of respect & not to be blamed for all that is wrong in a world which they have inherited from their parents.
Try talking to some of them, not just lumping them all together, maybe you will find it quite refreshing that their real aims in life are not too disimilar from your own!
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It's easy to lump people together in groups like "youth of today" and "parents of today" but of course we all know we don't mean ALL youth and ALL parents. However, it does seem that we have far more lawlessness now than we've had in the past - or does every generation feel the same? That doesn't mean that all, or even the majority are to blame, but a large minority are a problem. Hence the necessity for the CCTV cameras. I remember years ago a friend of my mother's got mugged and it was sensational because muggings just didn't happen in Accy - since then they have become far too common. Let's just hope it doesn't become a greater minority so that we do end up with mayhem on the streets here - some places already have it.