No respect

But if you dont, they'll know your just another easily intimidated white that they can push around. Its a difficult situation, and i wish i knew the answer.

I'd rather be called a racist and have me and mine stand up for ourselves than anything else.

Do parents not see the way their kids act?  I know how my kids are...I know they're no angels.  The parents I spoke to, however, refused to believe that their lil' Tyrone smacked my Davey's glasses off his head. "your boy musta done somethin' to my boy to make him act like that.  yeah, that's it...your boy made my boy act that way".  Bullshit!  Do you not see your kid flashing gang symbols at everyone who walks by? Do you not understand that being in detention at school every damn weekend because he can't behave himself isn't normal?  That not every kid gets into trouble with the cops?

Like I said, I don't get it.

Hey Dharma...

There is a couple of influences I can see..

1. Television
2. Pop Culture

I see it with my nephews, who really do have respect but every now and then try it on to see how far they can go, but really if we did the things they did im certain I would have got my ass kicked to high heaven long long ago. But they know what they can get away with now. It really is sad because you can see the next generation and really how sad the world might become.

btw.. I had a relaxing weekend away from computer and soaked up alot of vitamin D.

That really sucks that you are going through that.
I have two words for those kids that are being so dis-respectful...work camp.
I am also in awe of the dwindeling level of respect kids have for thier elders.
I think the there is a lack of disiplin with the kids of today because so many kids parents work full time jobs or a too busy from other things going on to take time to fully disiplin. It sounds redicilious but it is true. I worked at an after school program where kids would be at our site from 12 noon until 6:30 pm. They were usually the ones who acted out the most. But their parents did nothing to dis-courage their behaviour.
A lot of the time I have seen a busy parent over-compinsate for their abscence with gifts. So children learn that not only can they behaive however they want and not get punished, but they are rewarded with their parents abscence.
Good luck to you.

I think the there is a lack of disiplin with the kids of today because so many kids parents work full time jobs or a too busy from other things going on to take time to fully disiplin.

I don't think it sounds ridiculous at all, Brenda.  I think that you've hit the nail on the head, to be honest. 

Boot camps are wonderful things, IMO. 

The problem is parents dont beat their kids anymore. Kids were alot more respectful when they were afraid of a good beating.

Seriously, I dont beat my kids, but they are very well behaved because my wife and I vowed early on to establish firm boundries with swift and consistant punishments. My children know exactly what their boundries are, what is unacceptable behaviour, and what will happen if they cross the line.

They also know they are loved unconditionally and that they can discuss anything with us. Punishments are a mix, depending on severity of infraction, ranging from time out, grounding and/or punishment oriented work to actually spanking their little butts (for serious things, like playing with electrical outlets and kicking each other in the head). Punishments are ALWAYS consistant - throw rocks at your friend and you will always get spanked. Throw all the sprinklers on the roof and you will always be grounded.

Also, grounding is grounding, not vacation from friends. Electronics are cut off, video games are gone and except for going to school, the child stays inside, bored to tears. I saw too many of my friends growing up get 'grounded' only to have Mom take them shopping for new clothes or shoes. These kids thought it was funny how they always got Mom to reward them for being grounded, and they invariably got in trouble again.

Chores are not a punishment because we do not want them associating regular work habits with punishment. Too many parents dont have a plan for their kids, dont have guidelines for kids behaviour, and dont care to take the time to invest personally in their childrens development.

Hi, Zombie man, and welcome to my blog!

I got whupped when I was a kid.  It made me scared of my dad, and I hated that....I swore I wouldn't do it to my kids, and I haven't, for the most part.  I do spank, though.  I think sometimes it's necessary.

You parent much like I parent.  My kids get spanked for serious stuff....and they don't have to get spanked very often anymore.  Grounding, however, is more frequent, and it's not just a break from friends for them either.  Grounding means spending time in the house with no TV, radio, video games, or computer privileges.  

I honestly think that the advent of a 'have it all' culture has had a profound effect on the attitudes of kids. 

What happened to the days when kids dare not back-talk an adult? When I was a kid, you didn't smart mouth a grown-up. If you talked back to them, you did so respectfully and politely. You didn't cop an attitude, and you sure as hell didn't cuss at someone. So, what went wrong? When (and why) did parents stop teaching their kids to show some respect to their elders? I just don't get it.

Want to know where it went? It went to he** in a handbasket right along with being able to disipline our children. If their momma tried switching them now like you and I remember. The kids would scream "abuse" and "momma" would be in jail. You can thank ALL the feel gooders for this one!

I am not a parent so I am offering my opinion as Aunt Colleen here. I not only believe boundries are the answer here but also spending quality time with children is necessary. A lot of times these children that are exhibiting negative behaviors are doing so for the attention. Apparently from what I am seeing with your examples stated with meeting with these childrens parents and receiving that defensive reaction it appears it isn't occuring. If they were being defensive I for the life of me cannot imagine these individuals sharing healthy family time.

I cannot imagine a parent reacting in such a way, when you are addressing such an issue. I would have apologized for my child's behavior and invited you in asking you to fully explain the situation so it could be addressed with my child having the full facts.

It's a real shame you are enduring such ignorance without a rational parent in these equations.

Goodluck in the new neighborhood I hope things get better.

Have a good evening~!~

~Peace,Love,Health & Happiness ~Extended to you and your family

You can thank ALL the feel gooders for this one!

I'm of the opinion that parental rights have been slowly whittled away, and that parents in this country today have effectively been handcuffed when it comes to disciplining their children...and the kids know it.  They know that their parents can't hit them, and they play on that.  They have the attitude of 'you can't touch me and if you do I'll call the cops on you', and they use it at every opportunity.

You know, I can remember getting my ass beat by my dad.  I turned out alright.....

I would have apologized for my child's behavior and invited you in asking you to fully explain the situation so it could be addressed with my child having the full facts

Thanks, Colleen.  That's what I would have done too.  But, when you don't spend any time with your kids it's hard to see the 'real' them.  It's easier and nicer to keep the mnetal picture you've formed for yourself of your child being a little angel who does no wrong.

My husband's a cop, and he has to patrol our neighborhood some nights.  In the past week, he's caught one girl setting fire to a trash can at the playground, and a 9 year old spray painting an empty house.  The parents of the fire setter said that they'd 'talk to her' and shut the door in his face, and the graffiti artists mom said that the fault lay with the people who carelessly threw the cans of paint away in the trash, not her little cherub who went trash-can diving to get them out and vandalize government property.

With parental reactions like that, how can we expect children to accept responsibility for their own actions?  They're being taught by their parents to push blame off onto someone else.....it's only natural that they're going to follow suit!

That monster called political correctness has a lot to do with it. If you administer the good ole paddle board, you will be arrested and your kid can then sue you.

Otherwise, most of it is trash raising trash. Or, how can anything good come from bad?

ggray97

Or, how can anything good come from bad?

I understand what you're saying, but I have to point out that there are exceptions to that.  I know people who were raised horribly by their parents, and who recognized the need to break the cycle of poor parenting and do a better job with their kids than was done with them. 

Unfortunately those people are the exception rather than the rule.

Some parents just don't care. While ago I was living at an apartment, and I always see those packs of kids that's under 5 years old.

I once almost hit a fucking under 2 year old running around without any adult. Lucky, I was going under 5 mph because I was blinded by sun.

Many single mothers black or white are actually afraid of their children

Some parents just don't care.

Another bullseye.  As long as the kid isn't bothering them, they just don't care.

I'm not saying that every black parent doesn't parent their child properly, nor am i saying that every mom who works full-time is shirking her responsibility...it just happens that the kids in this neighborhood who are the worst behaved are the ones whose parents fit the bill.

So, what's the remedy for this epidemic?  How do we fix the problem?  Should this country start to untie parental hands?  Should women with children be encouraged to stay home?

Correcting these behaviors would start with the parents. Willy Wanka hit it on the head when he was saying who’s fault lies when your kid is a brat? The Mother and the Father. Without proper parenting kids will suffer from it.

It sounds like these kids have a lack of control and discipline, and were also brought up to hate. If the parents hold ignorant prejudice attitudes the children will adopt similar views in life.

I can say that I am not a parent myself, but I am a proud uncle to a wonderful niece. She is not hit but she is taught early about rewards and consequences. She is taught that if she misbehaves there are consequences and the severity of the punishment follows with the seriousness of her transaction.

Now these children behaving so poorly and acting so ignorant, where else can the fault lie, then their parents who refuse to take the imitative and take action in their lives. How are they supposed to have good children if their parenting skills is surely lacking. If they cannot be bothered to teach their children right from wrong the behavior and cycle will continue. Unfortunately ignorance like this does not get cured into a serious wake up call has happened. Let us hope the lesson will not happen when it is too late.

I really don't think its a black issue... I think that its a general parenting issue, there are a lot of shitty parents out there. Say there are 100 kids in your neighborhood. 75 are black, because they are the majority, most of the "bad kids" would most likely be made up of the racial majority.. Does that make sense?

Or I could be talking out my ass..... it is getting late

dharmagrl: Thanks for the hearty welcome, Ive been watching your blog for awhile now.

I dont spank my children very often any more and when we do we follow rules my wife and I thought up before we had kids:
1.) We never spank when we are angry. Spankings are not a parents chance to take out their anger or to revenge themselves upon a bad child, but as a memorable punishment that drives home the seriousness of the wrongdoing being punished.
2.) We only give as many swats as the age of the child. This allows us to maintain the consistancy I mentioned earlier, and matches the physical punishment to the childs physical maturity.
3.) Most importantly we always talk to our child shortly before they receive the spanking, and then we discuss with them the why, what, when & where of the situation after the punishment. We always include love and firmness with these talks, and explain why the consequences were so bad that they received a spanking (they always know ahead of time, spankings are never a surprise).
4.) Spankings occur immediatly after the bad behaviour. I wont let my kids sit in dread of when the spanking is coming... thats just wrong.
Thats our guidelines for spanking, and they seem to work. Their little bottoms DO hurt afterwards, but they tie that pain into the consequences of their actions. Luckily the older they get the less they do that merits this form of punishment... out of three kids we spank MAYBE once every 2-3 months: I guess my kids are pretty good.

This is a topic that is close to heart at the moment so it has been interesting reading everyone's responses.

I live in a relatively wealthy part of London. Every night children are on the local streets setting fire to garbage bins, stealing mountain bikes, swearing in the loudest voices possible and generally causing so much trouble that the cops are around here every two or three nights. These children are all white, all decked out in the latest fashion (if that's what you can call it!) all carrying the newest model mobile phone and those who are old enough seem to all race around on Vespas.

I used to wonder how kids with so much could still be wanting to brawl and cause such disturbances but then came to the same conclusion as other people here. Their parents may be generous with their money, but it seems that they aren't generous with their time.

These children have no boundaries. Firstly there is no way in hell my parents would have allowed me to be on the street at 10 o'clock at night, yet hoards of these children seem to think it is normal. While there may be some who sneak out, the majority are obviously allowed. Secondly, if the police were regularly moving me on because my friends and I were causing a disturbance (do I mean regularly? I actually mean once!) i would have been grounded so long I'd forget what the outside world looked like!

While I hated my parents for all their rules I can now see exactly why they had them. I think that, apart from people being too lazy/busy/ignorant to properly discipline their children, many parents don't want to be the bad guy. They don't want their kids to think that they're mean or unfair, so they let them get away with murder. Which basically means it is a situation of children raising children.

However, blaming the parents is easy to do. I'm sure that children who are just bad news do exist. I'm sure that there are parents who agonize over how to discipline a seemingly uncontrollable child. I just don't think that there are many cases of these out there.

I am a father of 3 girls and I have never spanked my kids in there life due to how I was brought up so when I had kids I talked it over with my partner at the time and worked out how we would punish our children and so far it has worked great guns they care about other people hardly ever do anything wrong and have never done anything that would even warrant a spanking.

But also I believe it has also got to do with how we treat them aswell for them to be like they are, basicaly we treat them as our equal they do wrong we explain why its wrong and help them to understand why its wrong and 99% of the time by the time we finish talking they agree and with my eldest daughter who is now almost 15 we have prob had had to have one of these little chats about 10 times in her life. I get comments all the time about how good my kids are and even with me being the main parent now with my 15 yr old and working I still have no problems with her what so ever.

So basicaly what I am saying its not really a matter of being able to spank them its more a matter of how YOU treat your kids if you treat them and how YOU deal with them in times of trouble....


"" little_whip

He also seemed to relish the act, and anticipate it eagerly, i can still see the belt coming off the moment we walked through the door...as if he could hardly wait to beat us. The worst part, though, and i hope you keep this in mind when you spank your children, was being forced to hug and kiss him and 'make up' after the beating. In those moments i literally despised him, and giving him a hug or kiss was the LAST thing i wanted to do. I was hurt and angry and wanted to calm down alone. To deny him this forced 'forgiveness' was to risk raising his ire even more, and our attitude after a beating could quickly earn us another one. """

Hate to say this but to me this sounds like he was getting his jollies out of this.....

nottie.

I think that the PC police are a lot to blame.  There were a lot of careless parents when I was growing up but their kids still got discipline at school.  Now the teachers and administrators can't touch the kids.  I know a lot of kids that straightened up just by being threatened with having to go to the principal for a spank with the big paddle with the holes in it.  Teachers could give you a nice stinging whack on the bottom with a yard stick if you cussed.  Now teachers get cussed out and physically threatened all the time.  What happens?...They suspend the kid.  Is that a punishment?...Hell no!  Mom and Dad are at work or just didn't give a damn in the first place.  Either way it is vacation for the punk.

When I was growing up not only did you respect adults but you also had respect for the older kids.  I don't see that at all anymore.  It is extremely frustrating.

Back in the day when a smartass kid who disrupted a class could be pulled from class and smacked with a very large board on the ass. That is when kids had respect. Today, you even look at a hoodrat wrong and they cry foul.

Remind those kids that yell child abuse and I'm gonna sue you that if they do they'll end up in foster care while your in jail. This works really well especially if they know other kids that are in the foster care system.

My 9 year old tried it once when she got a spanking and I handed her the phone told her to go ahead and call but, that if she did she wouldn't be able to live with mommy and daddy anymore, because we'd be in jail and she'd be in foster care.. She hasn't tried it since and yes she still get the occasional swat.

Most of what is said here is true. For the most part though, the important thing is, the parents or parent have to make time for the child. If they don't, then the child knows no limits or have no boundaries to follow. It doesn't matter whether the parent is working or is a full-time mom. It has to do with how much time is spent with the child to teach him or her the values you as a parent have and want them to follow. I'm a full-time worker and a mom of three children, teenager to toddler years. They do try sometimes to follow their friends but they know the standards to which their dad and I uphold them to. Surprising enough, if there's any spanking to be done, if you call what I do spanking, I'm the one who does it and that's not spanking with a strap or anything, it's a couple of slaps on the butt or the arm to get their attention to let them know what they did is wrong and not acceptable and this is done only under extreme circumstances like really bad behaviour. My husband doesn't like to hit, and frankly neither do I, but there are times when it's required. We mostly discipline them by talking it out, giving time out, grounding and/or denying them their allowances. This might seem flimsy to some people but to my kids this kind of punishment is like the end of the world to them. I encourage my children to talk to us about any and everything and I tell them come to us with any questions if they ever have a problem and they do. There are times when they come to me with stories about their friends' behaviour or their friends' parents treatment fo them and I always talk it out with them. Once my eldest daughter's friend wrote her a letter asking for help and after talking to her to find out what was going on, I contacted the schools guidance counselor to see what they could do without causing disruption to that family. So, you see, it depends on whether or not there are any time spend with the kids and how they are encouranged by their parent.

Dharmagrl, What seems to be going on in your neighborhood is a lack of understanding and acknowlegement of the parents for their kids behavior and also a lack of time being spent with them. The kids probably need an outlet like a recreation center or someplace where they can hang out doing something constructive, like playing games or something. The fact the parents you approach come off as they do shows their lack of understanding and as you say, that's where the kids' behavior comes from. It's unfortunate when kids are like that and all they need is a firm "kick in the butt" and I don't mean that literally, but rather someone or a group that will bring them to realize what they are doing is wrong and get them to put their energies elsewhere. It's sad too that these kids are aware of what their parents limitations are as to what they can and cannot do because all they have to do is squeal child abuse to have the authorities at their doors. If the parents were doing their jobs and disciplining them from "baby stages" they wouldn't be the way they are now. Sometimes though we have to look at the parents before focusing on the kids to find out why they didn't or couldn't discipline their child; i.e. emotional or psychological problems etc. Also, from the threads I've read, these kinds of problems with kids and teens just doesn't happen because of the colour of their skins (not denying who is doing it in your neighborhood Dharmagrl) or how much money their parents have or dont' have (although the latter part of it could be a reason), but rather kids in general will behave this way due to the influences of their friends. Peer influence is a powerful thing. They all want to fit into the group and not be an outcast. It all boils down to what we have all said, the involvement of the parent is very crucial to discipline and set boundaries and limitations so that the child knows what they can or cannot do and what is absolutely not acceptable. Without a parents invovlement, there is nothing.

The kids probably need an outlet like a recreation center or someplace where they can hang out doing something constructive, like playing games or something.

We have 2, a rec center for kids and then a separate one for teens.  They seem to prefer to roam the streets in packs, smoking (although they're underage) and being obnoxious.

I think that peer influence is a big reason they don't go to the teen center....