WTF is going on with kids/teens today?

[vr94ss]

Maybe younger people don't show respect to you because you obviously don't respect them? I would understand you saying that the people doing these bad things have no respect, but putting it on a generation is prejudice. That's a fact.

If your assertion is true, then it's fact. No point throwing the "f" word around unless you can post data. You can defend yourself/generation(assumption), without using "crazy", like some poters. In my opinion what you say is what I observe in our society but I can't prove it.

 

[Torborg]

You completley missed the point of my last few replies dude but anyway our future is F'd if kids these days are gonna be running the country in 20 - 30 years

What point did I miss exactly? After reading the above response, I went back a page or so to see what I might have missed and I still don't get it. My only claim is that I see no evidence today's youth is worse than those of my generation. I remember older people making the same claims when I was a teenager, ranting against the rise of American grunge music and the lack of respect. For an older example to prove my claim, I could pull out quotes hundreds of years old along similar lines to some of the posts on this thread ranting about the behaviour of youth. Nothing much has changed AFAIAC.

I seem to be in the minority here, but I'm optimistic about our future. Because of the internet, our youth seem a whole lot more adept at seeing through the BS that is continually regurgitated by politicians and religion. If anything, I think our youth is more informed than 'we' were.

 

[Torborg]

Really? Well kids these days are going to run the world, sucks to have to live with your attitude and see it come true. I've got 3 sons, youngest 18, oldest 24, they've never been in trouble and I didn't beat them growing up, so much for corporal punishment being needed. I hope some of these people that have posted in this thread never have kids to be honest. The thread tars all kids of today just as you did again. I hope you'll enjoy being the old fart yelling "get of my lawn, damn whippersnapper!" Support our youth, I say.

edit: For those that want to beat on kids all I can proffer is experience, I used to get in the **** quite a bit when I was a teenager and was not spared the rod, didn't work, exact opposite effect actually.

I couldn't have said it better. Perhaps a better question is why many older people seem to think violence is the best philosophy for raising children.

 

[Torborg]

Oh, OK, so we suck it up when some brainless little **** paints his friggin' tag all over our fences, or smashes our car windows, or does anyone of a thousand other mindless destructive things that seem to pervade society these days.

And if you weren't around when I was their age, you can't just say they've always done it. (and yes, I've read your later post where someone made a false assumption about your age.) Tagging was NOT done, for a start. Try walking any street in a city and see if you can avoid being confronted by childish scrawl written on every second horizontal surface. The worst sort of "graffiti" we had was bill posters.

Simply denigrating those on the forum who voice their displeasure at what the youth of today does is probably typical of what has happened for many generations. The older generation always despairs of the youth of the day - my grandparents' generation probably did it about my generation when we were young.

However, the young people of today "generally" (ie not all) convey the impression that nothing deserves respect and that other peoples' property is fair game. Police are hamstrung by "Nanny-State" laws and bloody do-gooders, who introduce idiotic political correctness into society then reinforce it with idiotic laws, which bestow rights on children to take legal action against their parents, prevent teachers from administering corporal punishment and believe in talking to kids to amend their recalcitrant behaviour when they are young.

I doubt that my generation can accept the effectiveness of those changes simply because we see no evidence yet of them working, but plenty of evidence to the contrary.

There's a few good points in your post I'd like to address, but I'm too tired now. I'll get back to this post later.

 

[Calaber]

It's your opinion not a fact you old fart I've been around as long as you have and my opinion would not concur with yours. I guess I'll suck mud..

Edit: It may just be that opinion is based on what one perceives, I work at a school, I have three great sons and know their friends, one of which just joined QLD Police. I see many great young people, I also see dodgy ones. The ones that show respect etc, good kids, are the vast majority of those. What do you base your sample data on? I hope not ACA

No, certainly not ACA.

Experience in the workplace, with the young people's attitudes towards us "older generations" - questioning our right to give them directions and instruction in the workplace.
The attitude on the streets towards others. I think the mindless damage to property that I see so often around me such as smashed windows, graffiti, rubbish thrown in front yards, the indiscriminate use of foul language regardless of who is present, indicates that there is a "stuff you" attitude - "I'll do as I please, say what I want and stiff **** if you don't like it" mentality. (though those sort of things probably annoyed our earlier older generations, too). I just don't accept that a large percentage of young people care two hoots about other people.

P plate drivers (an old favourite, that one) drive arrogantly and aggressively and resent the fact that they are subject to laws. Read many posts in this forum and you can see that sort of attitude. I know when I had my P's that I was bloody careful to keep them and stay on the right side of the police. Not so sure that applies now.

 

[devilly]

histrionic personality disorder, parents working 2 jobs no-one home for the children,come home to an empty house,bad parents teaching there children how to do it better and bader then them and getting the innocent children to do there deeds. and yes you can hit your child, but not in access like smack you smack naughty smack little smack boy. its not respect it's the values and morals YOU teacher your young monkey hear monkey say, monkey see monkey do e.t.c

 

[Calaber]

I couldn't have said it better. Perhaps a better question is why many older people seem to think violence is the best philosophy for raising children.

That's not so difficult to answer.


Firstly, let's define "violence".

If you mean wanton acts of physical abuse of children, that is certainly NOT what we advocate. Old story but true is the fact that we were brought up in a time when a smack followed a "bad act" at home and the cane followed more serious infractions at school. Pain was associated as the reward of doing the wrong thing and as we didn't like pain, we learnt to avoid it by not being so "bad" or "wrong" in the first place. It might seem barbaric, crude or just old fashioned, but it worked for most of us. How many of my generation resent the fac that they got smacked or caned? Certainly not me - I can reconcile the fact that the treatment was deserved. I can even laugh today at the rank stupidity of some of the incidents i was involved in at school, for which I was caned. Did it bend or twist my personality, make me a violent or dangerous person? Nup. The simple fact is that most of us older generation beleive that we benefitted from the upbringing and discipline we received.

What's today's option? Reasoning with the child/young adult, trying to get them to understand the error of their ways and hoping that they will not repeat their recalcitrant behaviour? I've seen that put into practice, with pretty lamentable results. Slapping them on the wrist and releasing them on a good behaviour bond after stealing someone's car and torching it? Ask the police how they feel about that. Community service? Well, that one might work, if the work involved was physically hard and demanding, and the sentence was lengthy enough .

Don't smack or "belt" the kids for their acts? OK, how about grafitti-ists for example, caught painting trains from one end to the other, being placed on Community Service for as long as it takes to clean the train of all their "art-work" completely. Bet that would take a hundred times longer to remove than it took to put it there in the first place and be damned hard work to boot. Similar treatment for the little shits that paint fences, signs etc. If their tags can be identified, the punishment is to clean every damned one of them, regardless of how long it takes. (If you get the impression I have a thing about these "urban artists", you would be right. They are grubs. Nothing less.)

So, for those of you who bemoan me and others for our attitude towards the treatment of young miscreants, what's your solution?

 

[ncass11]

if the schools where more like this then maybe there wont be as many ungrateful bastards out there

 

[Immortality]

I think the other issue today is the fact that we hear/see everything happening all over the world, even 20 years ago before the age of the Internet and modern TV channels we didn't know the majority of stuff that was happening around the other side of the world except major stuff that made the 6pm new bulletin or the next mornings paper. 20 years ago it wasn't that common to jump on a plane and travel 1/2 way around the world for a 2 week holiday.......

Yep, we were no angels when we were kids but then we couldn't buy a pocket rocket car straight off a car yard, we didn't have 400hp cars that were almost stock standard. Advances in modern technology has allowed us to get into a LOT more trouble a lot quicker. Politicians who are even older than a lot of us are now throwing out poor legislation to combat these issues when they probably have even less understanding about the issues than we do.

I do pity the this/next generation as these laws do effect what teenagers can do these days, the more you restrict peoples lives the more they will want to rebel.

To the question above, there is a huge difference between punishment and violence.

How do you reason with a young child toddler that his/her actions are wrong and dangerous (normally onto themselves)? Yes, kids (and the rest of us) learn from our mistakes, however there are some mistakes that you would rather we didn't learn the hard way. We had one child that was never scared of cars, would walk out onto a road with a car coming, would walk behind a car that was about to reverse out of a drive way etc. Could say no as many times as you like with no change in behaviour, however a smack on the behind soon tought this child that this behaviour was wrong/dangerous. Unfortunately some folds just don't understand the difference between corrective punishment Vs beating a child to within an inch of their lives, this is the crux of the issue, only law abiding citizens are effected by these types of laws

P plate drivers (an old favourite, that one) drive arrogantly and aggressively and resent the fact that they are subject to laws. Read many posts in this forum and you can see that sort of attitude. I know when I had my P's that I was bloody careful to keep them and stay on the right side of the police. Not so sure that applies now.

This is an interesting point, but no i'm gonna flip it over and see what it is like from the other side, if your young and display P plates than you are going to get targeted by the plod, they will pull you over, they will go over your car with a fine tooth comb looking for anything to infringe/defect. Respect is a mutual thing, if I get picked on for no reason (and P platers certainly do) than I'm not going to have a lot of respect for plod. I'm not saying that some P platers don't deserve that sort of attention, however not all do but yet they all get tarred with the same brush. In my world respect is earned.

What's today's option? Reasoning with the child/young adult, trying to get them to understand the error of their ways and hoping that they will not repeat their recalcitrant behaviour? I've seen that put into practice, with pretty lamentable results. Slapping them on the wrist and releasing them on a good behaviour bond after stealing someone's car and torching it? Ask the police how they feel about that. Community service? Well, that one might work, if the work involved was physically hard and demanding, and the sentence was lengthy enough .

Don't smack or "belt" the kids for their acts? OK, how about grafitti-ists for example, caught painting trains from one end to the other, being placed on Community Service for as long as it takes to clean the train of all their "art-work" completely. Bet that would take a hundred times longer to remove than it took to put it there in the first place and be damned hard work to boot. Similar treatment for the little shits that paint fences, signs etc. If their tags can be identified, the punishment is to clean every damned one of them, regardless of how long it takes. (If you get the impression I have a thing about these "urban artists", you would be right. They are grubs. Nothing less.)

I totally agree with the above, nip that bad behaviour in the but at a young age and it will stop it escalating into more serious crimes as they get older, however once again our politicians have decided that real punishment isn't the way to go forward, taggers don't learn from their bad behaviour because the police/courts don't enforce a proper sentence for their crimes, instead a slap on the wrist, a family conference to discuss what went wrong and they are back out on the streets to do it again.

 

[devilly]

the old days 1 parent worked to make ends meet the other stayed home to be there for the children you sat down at the table and ate your meal as a family discussing each others day. now days it seems both parents work to make ends meet,and the tv always seems to be on or the adults dine in one room and children in another either way they all watching the telly,getting upset by the news e.t.c getting depressed and eating is not a very health life style,how many people were over weight in 1940 and how many are over weight now,it used to be for some-ones birthday party you would go to pizza hut it was rarely done and most couldn't afford it, now it seems every other day people are getting pizza,if all the takeaway places closed world wide how many family's would know how to cook. mashed potatoes, well you just chop them up put them in a saucepan and mash them right.if the teachers were 50 ish in class and security guards in class place would this change any thing