10-year-old anti-angels
October 18th, 2005 at 10:04pm
Sometimes I find the attitudes of some children to be quite appalling, and even more disturbing is the non-caring attitude that the parents of such children often display.
For example, the other day while I was taking Nattie for a walk, a bunch of children aged around 9 or 10 were playing in the front yard of their house, as Nattie and I walked past, one of the children for no apparent reason called out “Go Away!”, pulled a funny face and stuck his tongue out at me. A person, who I can safely assume was the mother of at least one of the children, was only a couple metres away from the children and saw the whole event, but did she reprimand the child for such unprovoked anti-social behaviour? No, she did not.
I mostly ignored the event, making a quick glance at the child in question and kept walking the whole time. I was not intruding, I was walking along the footpath, and there was a small garden wall and a row of small bushes between myself and the front yard which the children were playing in, so I am at a loss to explain why I received such words and gestures.
The thing that amazes me about the whole event is that the parents of this anti-social miscreant of a child are reinforcing that the actions of the child are acceptable by not punishing him for it. Is it any wonder that a small proportion of the child population grow into reprehensible teenagers when the people who should be acting as role models and authority figures allow their children to act like little devils.
I can understand that children are children and have little games, but the actions of that child are not acceptable, and they are lucky, considering the area which this occured in, that it was me passing by and not some drugged or drunk idiot who may have seen such actions as a reason to start a fight.
It might sound like I am making a big deal out of nothing, but this kind of behaviour should not be encouraged. I know the type of child that does that, having been a child myself recently, and I have seen far too many of that type of child turn into utterly moronic teenagers, the worst part of which is that the parents of such children often think that they have done nothing wrong or that the behaviour is “normal”. Very few things irk me more than parents who do not assert their authority over their children and then wonder why they can’t talk to them as teenagers, I often find it sadly amusing when “experts” claim that it is normal behaviour and tell the parents that they didn’t do anything wrong. Opinions may differ over how to raise children, but one thing is for sure, parents have a responsibility to assert their authority over their children, and to stamp out the kind of behaviour I have just discussed before it turns into a larger problem.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Samuel's Editorials
2 Comments
1. Tiepo | October 18th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
A friend of mine who is a psychologist told me that children who don’t have this “devilish side” (using samuels wording) stamped out before eight years old, tend to stay bad.
Thought you might find that interesting.
Also I beleive that children are not evil they simply go evil from lack of parental attention.
-Tiepo
2. Samuel | October 18th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Well, I didn’t know that (the eight-year-old thing) but it certainly makes sense. I personally was mildly naughty through most of primary school, but I was sent to a behaviour management school in year 1 and I think that helped quite a bit. It certainly gave me the ability to control my behaviour, even if I did still choose to do some things which I found amusing. I think there is a difference between choosing to do things and compulsively doing things, I certainly chose to do a lot of strange things in primary school, but that is to be expected from children, and I always expected to get punished for these things.
I agree with your statement about lack of parental attention, and I think that it is quite clear that parents that don’t pay attention to their children end up with overly naughty children.