What's happening with society?

[wallycorker]

I deal with young kids all the time through my involvement with junior cricket and football but I can say categorically that personally that I myself have ever felt threatened as some people seem to do when involved with other people's kids.

I had great freedom as a young child allowed to roam far and wide - quite often off for the day on foot or by bike. I'm certain that there were still similar dangers in those days and times when our parents must have been scared to half to death. Especially once when we arrived home announcing gleefully that we'd had a lift back in a van!

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be aware of potential dangers and try to avoid them - but neither should we all live our lives as though something very nasty awaits for us round the next corner.

[AliB]

No, you're absolutely right that we shouldn't - and shouldn't have to, but sadly a small minority has undermined people's confidence in giving their children free rein, as many have discovered to their cost.

Kids don't need 'sinister strangers' to get into trouble, they can manage that quite well on their own, and have done on many occasions throughout the years, but we still can't get away from the fact that there are people out there who mean our children harm.

When evil can be done to children by other children then it is extremely evident that we indeed do live in a very sick World. Yes, kids have always had the propensity to be nasty, but the nastiness now is in another dimension.

The conscience has to be trained in order to be able to guide us to do what is right. When the conscience has been dulled or deadened then the evil that people are able to do to each other has no boundaries. Children turn into feral children and consequently into feral adults who have no conscience or inhibitions. These children are 'trained' by what they see around them, by the conduct of others and particularly by the 'entertainment' industry - many areas of which are also very sick and perverted.

There are children who have been discovered living with animals or who have been cut off from human contact. Over a certain age it is impossible to teach them how to integrate into human society. These children are no different in that respect. They have no concept of decency and dignity and kindness to others and in all likelihood will never acquire it.

The importance of teaching children from a very young age the principles of decency and dignity will shape their whole life. Unfortunately we live in an age where 'anything goes'. You can do what you like, with whom you like and wherever you like and damn the consequences. There is little in the way of self-responsibility. 'It' is always someone else's fault. I'm not sure why they bother to use the word 'accident' any more. According to these 'chasing the ambulance' insurance tykes, someone else will always be to blame (even when it was obviously your fault, they will find a way around it somehow!).

Yes, you had freedom to roam - I had freedom to roam, and often did, and fortunately we 'got away' with it, but the World is a very different place now to the one that we were in back then. Saying that we need to give our children freedom is one thing, but to actually lose a child as a result of that freedom, whether through their own actions or those of another is a terrible burden for a parent - a family - to bear. You can't ever go back and undo the situation.

No, we can't wrap our kids in 'kid gloves', but we can take sensible precautions.

If neither children, nor their parents had anything to fear from any other human being, the World would be a wonderful place, but that ain't gonna happen in this system.

Sorry - not meaning to be a doom-mongerer, but David did ask.......and this is what is happening to Society whether we accept it or not!

[Moi]

Aw, I think that is what the problem is, fear! We are losing the social glue, we're all becoming insular and isolated. Sad.

Sensible, not sad. Kids AREN'T all angels and I don't want to get knived or mugged.
Avoiding kids avoids potential injury as well as potential accusations of pervery.

[David]

Sensible, not sad. Kids AREN'T all angels and I don't want to get knived or mugged.
Avoiding kids avoids potential injury as well as potential accusations of pervery.

The VAST majority of kids are great though. I remember watching a Twighlight Zone type programme many years ago, set in a future where people were so afraid of their children that they would only talk to them at gunpoint. I wonder how close are we to that.

By the way I have worked with 'problem' kids all my life, I've never been assaulted or had false accusations made against me.

[Red]

This is what I think.
I like kids. and although everyone is so quick to say, and its true, they have tvs in their room computer games, they have more clothes more home comforts, more food, everything MORE than generations before them. but there are things that they havent had (the younger generations), a lot of them havnt had time devoted to them, tvs and computer screens and games is not human attention, they havent had boundaries shown to them, they havnt been shown how you develop self discipline, they havent had enough of the right type of stuff, just lots of the indulgent type of stuff, stuff that keeps you quiet, stuff that makes you have no patience and no self discipline. families are often funky, working really hard to just make ends meet and then kids behave bad, exhasuted parents feel guilty and then indulge more. and no Im not blaming the parents, I just think that as a society it would be more help to see the good in young people. Surely all kids and youngsters are not that bad, and if they are, they did start out as the people being shown the way.