Kids these days: are they all bad?
Children are behaving like animals. At least that's what adults think, according to a new poll commissioned by Barnardo's. It found that 49 per cent of adults think children are increasingly dangerous to each other and adults. According to Barnardo's chief executive, people blame children for "up to half of all crime" yet they are only responsible for 12 per cent of criminal activity. In fact, a Barnardo's report shows that half of 16- to 19-year-olds help informally in their communities and a third to formal voluntary work.
But it's not the feeling you get on the street. The jostling, loud group of pre-teens and teens outside the school in my neighbourhood sometimes seems simply self-absorbed and clueless (which pertains to all teens, doesn't it?). Other times, as they smoke cigarettes and spliffs on the steps of nearby schools, yell curse words, drop rubbish and barge past adults on the sidewalk, their behaviour veers from rude to threatening.
Maybe it's just the worst examples that catch our attention. Maybe - and I suspect this is true as well - a lot of us don't remember that we acted just the same way when we were kids, when we thought we were cool and grown-ups were morons, when so much of our behaviour was performed for the benefit of our friends. Sometimes I feel myself infected by the kind of thinking demontrated in the Barnardo's poll.
I like to remind myself of a situation a petite, 20something friend of witnessed near Hatfield. A group of young teen boys boarded the train, pushing, yelling and generally taking over. Two slumped into seats next to her, one propping his feet on the seat opposite, while their friends hovered in the aisle. She put down her book and said, "Excuse me, could you take your feet off the seat? It makes them dirty."
"I'm sorry about that miss," the boy said, putting his feet on the floor.
It doesn't always pay to intervene with groups of youths. Sometimes it's dangerous or even lethal. But my friend's experience helps me remember that being loud, or silly, or even stupid doesn't necessarily make someone a bad kid.
Have you ever spoken up when you saw a child or youth doing something you objected to? Take the poll and post your comments below.
