If and why............

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Ok the smacking thread had brought up a few questions that are hard to answer within that thread and i'm interested in your thoughts.....

**1.....ARE kids these days more out of control than they were say 10-20 years ago??? ** we hear so much about the way they are today, the lack of respect for just about everything is it right, or is the media just highlighting all the bad stuff - more media coverage = more bad stuff.

**2.....IF your answer to the above was yes, then what do you put it down to? ** TV babysitters, lack of disapline in schools and lack of consequences when they do wrong.

3.....IF your answer was no, tell me why you think it.

If you do bother replying to this post could put your age on the post too it would be interesting to see how the opinions differ for different ages - thanks.

When you say kids, do you mean 5 year olds or 15 year olds?

good point Bob DUH! im tired and even more thick than usual today,go with 11 - 17 year olds then..

Oh, well then we can go both ways with this.Every day I see extremes on both sides, some unusually good and others horribley bad.You have the good kids, the studious, polite, smiling kids that are near-perfect members of society. They go out at night, maybe go wild and kiss a girl/boy at a club, but thats about as wild as they get.Then you have the complete bastards. The ones that walk around insulting complete strangers, offer hard drugs to smaller kids and beat the shit out of them for no reason. The little 12 year old sluts that remove their g-strings from under their tiny skirts and wrap them around their wrist before walking into an U-18 disco as a sign that they're out for a fuck. The evil shits that purposely set small children on fire in the back of a car.The little fucktards who turned the protests against the Love Ulster Parade into the Dublin Riots, a free-for-all for any little bastard to fuck up the city, vandalise shops, destroy cars. They even took chunks of stone from century old statues on our capital's main street to throw at the Riot Gardaí(police).Now, since 10 years ago I was only 9, I can't really judge whether its improved or has become worse. I've seen some good kids, but I've seen a LOT of scum.

I'm in my early 20s and I can tell you that kids are more defiant than they were when I was coming up. When I was between 5-10, I would never do the things that I see kids doing. Even when I look at teenagers today, they are more defiant (my youngest sister is a prime example). The cause? Well, you can't blame the media--that would be scapegoating. I believe parents nowadays feel like they have to be their children's friends instead of parents. And I also believe that, due to our soceity's prying eye of anything that looks out of the ordinary, parents have been scared stiff to even look at their kids in the wrong way. Also, a lot of parents were brought up in homes where they were beaten/spanked/abused in a brutal manner and it may have made them so anti-spanking that they refuse to deal with discipline and instead use appeasement and bribery to keep their kids in order.

You seem to be implying that spanking is the only way to raise good kids, and that kids are bad nowadays because they haven't been spanked enough.

I wasn't implying that at all. However, thanks for trying to get inside my headI'm saying that parents don't discipline their kids at all nowadays. Whether it's being grounded, spanking, or taking things away from them, it seems that kids today don't have to face up to what they do.

it may have made them so anti-spanking that they refuse to deal with discipline and instead use appeasement and bribery to keep their kids in order.I wasn't climbing into your head. I was reading what you wrote. It appeared that you were equating anti-spanking with refusal to discipline.In my opinion, based on personal involvement and observation, a lot of divorced parents don't want to discipline (or set limits) for their kids because they feel that they hurt the kids by divorcing, and still feel guilty. If parents refuse to agree on limits and such, it lead to bad behavior of the kids. Plus kids are brilliant at playing the parents against each other to get what they want.I think the increase divorce rate, with split custody, has a lot to do with how children behave nowadays.On the other hand, I'm not aware of any scientific research that shows how much worse kids are nowadays then they were at any given time in the past. Adults always think the generation behind them behaves poorly.In some ways, things are surely better. Within my lifetime, it was acceptable for a white child to treat a black man with disrespect. That's not true any more.

My answer is yes but not to the point that the media and popular belief make it out to be.I sorta explained why here. To short hand it, I think it has to do with the increasing isolation people keep putting themselves in. The extended support network keeps getting further and further depleted as we isolate ourselves form our family and community.I'll be 33 all to soon.

I don't think kids are really worse. I think that parents are worse. Steve threw out the divorce issue, I have to agree. I will also add, that when parents are in a custody battle, they are not disaplining as well because they have this imaginary fear that the other parent is going to end up with their child if they do.I think parents do not realize what is REQUIRED for the health and well being of a child. Food, clothing, and protection from the weather. Homeless parents don't lose their children if they seek out food, water, shelter and clothing for their kids. And that can be minimal.Taking away privelages (and anything beyond the above mentioned IS a privelage) is probably the best way to do it. Especially for the age group we are discussing.At one point, my daughter (the little one) was sleeping in my car. She was being fed when it was meal time, and NOT the yummy stuff we were having in the house, she had her water jug filled when it was empty, and she was clothed, and sunscreened. It took her 2 days to figure out, that if she just did what she was asked, the house, soft bed, warm shower, yummy meals, and family were all at her disposal. Was this degree of shunning, more or less abusive that swatting her?OK ranting....I will close with this:If raising children to make them self sufficient, respectable adults, is the goal, I don't think we are doing to bad. If that is what we are to compare, I think twenty two year olds are doing a hell of alot better now than they were when I was twenty two!Oh ya, I am 31.

i personally think that kids are waaay out of control these days compared to what they used to be. i graduated last year from high school, and some of the kids in the school were just so violent and disrespectful to the teachers and other students. its terrible. and the sad thing was, they were getting away with it. the way i think of it is, they are probably getting away with it at home, because they feel as though they can get away with it at school. As for younger kids...i work at a movie rental store, and of course we have candy and popcorn and bubblegum there. the majority of them throw tantrums if they dont get whatever they want. and the parents (most of them), just sit there and let them do it. maybe its because its in a public place and they dont want to discipline their child in front of people. and of course the kid knows this, so this is why they freak out to get their own way. it seems as if the parent isnt the boss anymore, the kids are. now, i am NOT saying that hitting is the answer here, but parents need to stick to their gun and let the child know that they are NOT the boss.o btw, im 18 o and people, please dont bash at me for saying how i feel, i held back what i wanted to say in the spanking thread, but this one im not.

> they are probably getting away with it at home, because they feel as though they can get away with it at school

I suspect it's the other way around.

Do the teachers just leave really disruptive students in the classroom? Does anyone get sent to the principal (or vice principal)'s office any more?

When I went to junior high school, they paddled kids who acted badly. I don't recall that any girl was ever paddled, but I can tell you that paddling was no deterrent for the boys who got it, at least the ones that I knew. They thought it was kind of cool.

But being taken out of class at least got rid of the really disruptive kids, and in and of itself was a deterrent. It's not like it happened that often, though, and I went to a pretty big junior high school (grades 7 through 9).

well yeah maybe it is the other way around. i mean, sometimes, the teachers would kick them out, but thats what they wanted. theyd just come back the next day and be the same or worse. so yeah i guess your right there. some teachers ignore it, but so do some parents.i do respect your opinion though hunn

I remember there were kids with problems, who sometimes acted out, and there was the occasional fistfight outside of class, but I don't recall things being that bad. It would be hard to compare now, because the demographic is so much different now.Paddling is still legal in Florida, but I don't think it's done as often as it was 25 years ago.I think TV deserves some indirect blame, because some parents use it as a babysitter. It puts the (young) kids in a trance and quiets them down, but it doesn't burn the energy they need to burn, and it doesn't teach them much that is useful. In fact, that applies to older kids as well. Some kids have trouble sitting still because they're too sedentary, and act out because of it.

I have a good memory of most of my years...some say quite good. I can remember how kids behaved in school and at home (from visiting friends houses besides just my own). Without any doubt in my mind whatsoever, kids have become much more disrespectful and undisciplined than they were over the years.I attribute this mostly to the TV, both directly and indirectly. Watch any sitcom involving kids and you'll see and hear kids mouth off to their parents on a regular basis, while their parents are generally portrayed as being bumbling idiots (the kids always being smarter). It doesn't take a rocket-scientist to figure out the effect it will have on the kids watching the program. This is the direct influences. Add to this all the tripe about letting kids raise themselves and parents being unwilling to discipline them (based on what they saw on the TV or read about in a magazine) and the effect gets even worse with each generation. This is the indirect influence (from TVs influence on how the parents raise their kids). Kids will not limit their own behavior. Parents must set the limits. Social behavior is learned...it's not instinctive. Lack of discipline in schools certainly reinforces it all.

I can only talk about what I find here, which may be different from the US.One very noticeable change is that they are now much more rarely outdoors. It's now rare to see anyone under 25 when walking the dog. If they are out of control, they must be doing it at home.I do see lots of people 18-21 at work. My impression is that in the late 70s/early 80s they were much more confident and assured than in the early 70s, but since then the average confidence levels have declined. I don't know if that's relevant to the question, though.In general I don't see kids' behaviour as any worse now. Each generation tends to think the next is worse than they were, but I think it's just that each generation forgets what they were like when they were younger.

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In general I don't see kids' behaviour as any worse now. Each generation tends to think the next is worse than they were, but I think it's just that each generation forgets what they were like when they were younger.
That's basically what I said. I don't know whether it's true or not, since I'm not sure what metrics would be used to measure childhood behavior, or what data may have been collected. I suppose one could examine juvenile delinquency records, but enforcement seems to wax and wane over time.

That doesn't mean that I'd exclude the possibility that children are behaving worse; just that I don't trust people's subjective observations, which are so often wrong. Most people have no idea how often they are wrong.

Everyone seems to have rosy memories how well-behaved they and their contemporaries were.

What makes me really suspicious of the observations is, how do all those poorly-behaved, disrespectful children turn into normal young adults? Do they have a magical transformation at age 21? So far, civil society hasn't fallen apart.

\> is the violence. Insane, crazy, downright scarey violence
You should have seen some of the high school in Miami from when I was a kid. Lots of serious violence, although I don't know how much gang activity there was.
I don't think there were many cases of kids shooting each other in school when we were kids (although, in Miami, lots of people were shooting each other outside of school), but I wonder if the current level of violence in public schools is hugely overblown by the media. Kids with automatic weapons in schools goes over really big on the cable news channels, but I don't think that an individual, average student has a great chance of being shot or stabbed.

as has been stated, every generation seems to think the kids are awful now. Mine is only 9 and is very well behaved and welome everywhere he goes. At least he is with me. His usless mother has complained to others that he's unmanagable but that's just because she never had any skills of discipline.Several of my friends have teen kids and i can't think of one of them that's been a real problem. I guess I befriend good people therefore they have good kids.I'd also hazar to guess that there was more random violence between kid in the 20's, 30's than now, allbeit likely weapon free.btw... I'm ageless

Better or worse? Well, I'm just going to say things are different.I believe kids are growing up faster these days. In school, we demand that they learn more. They have information available to them 24/7 via the internet. There are a number of things that have changed, and so have our kids.