when did parents stop parenting their children??

[lovesduckies]

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hmm. it's a big city. i might. i'm sure she will be at the bust stop right by my house again, but i am at school pretty much all day mon-thursday. this was more of a venting post anyway. it just kinda irriates me. not that i was the perfect kid, but i don't think i would have ever thought about doing anything like that. maybe cuz i always think of the worst possible outcome of things.

 

[RabbitMage]

I hate seeing this stuff brushed off at "kids will be kids" or especially "boys will be boys" (as if boys/young men are somehow less culpable for their behavior than girls are). Kids, teens, and plenty of adults do stupid things, sure. That becomes Not Okay when you're endangering someone else's person or property. You wanna play with fireworks and risk blowing off your hand? Fine. You want to do that next to my car? No.

 

[redhen]

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[thaiturkey]

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Not 'brushed off' so much a getting things 'in perspective'. The OP described an incident which involved something so innocuous hitting her car that there was no damage and suggested that the kid had bad parents. I say that's a conclusion beyond what's reasonable based on the facts given.

 

[Chick_In_The_Burbs]

Sometimes 'I'm bored' can lead to the STUPIDEST games. My aunt was driving home a few years back and ended up hitting this 16ish kid in the middle of the road. The whole works showed up(Cops, Ambulance, etc) she was in tears as she hadn't seen him until he was, like, 15 ft-ish off her bumper. She tried to stop but there was no way to stop completely.

End result was he had (I think) a broken leg and various scrapes and bruises. While she was trying to figure out what happened, (knowing her, probably half hystarical) how he got there without her seeing when one of the cops told her they had had repeated reports of a group of teens playing chicken with the cars that came down that street, specifically at that corner. They just hadn't been able to catch any of them.

Sometimes you just have to wonder; what the H*** are they THINKING?! And where do their parents THINK they are????

When does one's own common sense kick in??? Past a point it's not a matter of parenting (to mean, if you didn't get it into their heads when they were little, it's a bit late now). It's a matter of intelligance, resistance to peer pressure, and respect for yourself as well as others. And unfortunantly for kids now, our culture is promoting a level of selfishness and an inflated senses of self worth that are appauling. Yes, it's good for kids to be self confident and to know themselves. It's something else to set the bar so low that no one can fail at anything and really learn for fear of harming their self image. In a sense, we've made ANY failure shameful and create the atmosphere that even the smallest mistake is larger than life. Failure is only truly failure if you don't learn from it!

**Stepping off of my rambly soap box now.

 

[sosanista]

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Well when I was a kid guess where all the extra eggs my parents thought the chickens weren't laying went. That's right me and my homies would throw them at cars. I felt my parents did a pretty good job. If only they knew some of this stuff my friends and I were doing.

 

[PineappleMama]

Police definitely. That twit could easily have caused a major wreck, if she was stupid enough one that made HER get hit. Someone needs to educate her before she kills herself or someone else. Though I understand being so mad you can't see straight n'mind calling police.

I've never done any of the things y'all mention simply because I THOUGHT about possible consequences... not to me, grounding, spanking, etc but the What Ifs of the whole situation... just the way my mind works (may have noticed I have a habit of going off on tangents?) I'd be thinking of that person getting in a wreck, having a heart attack, hitting ME or some other kid... etc and thus I wouldn't do it.

I never even TP'd a house because I'd seen it happen and it was everyone in the family that was stuck dealing with the mess. Why should someone's mother be punished because their child is a moron when mom isn't around to tweak their ear?

But, that's me... I was often called an "old soul" as a child... and I know my brain isn't normal... I'm not left or right brain dominant but 49/51... maybe that's part of it... maybe it's just paranoia about over-punishment... (over does not equal spanking, over = beating, there IS a major difference)... whatever the case there are kids able to know right from wrong on their own, many simply choose to ignore that little voice and do whatever the hello they want.

 

[debilorrah]

Good grief the stuff I did as a kid that would today get me arrested: water balloons from an over pass, liquid dish soap in sprinkler heads, purple rit dye and tide in the hot tub, burning bags of dog poop - ring the doorbell and go hide and watch., toilet papering, I was a hellion and it had NOTHING to do with how my mother raised me.

 

[PineappleMama]

I don't see how dye in the hot tub would be a big tadoo... stain you for a while of course, but you wash off tons of cells daily so it wouldn't last all that long... mostly embarrassing I'd think.

TP = Litter, so there is a law on the books about that... hitting driver's with anything is a bad idea, particularly at highway speeds... sprinklers/lawn could be forever damaged by soap I guess...

But dye? I don't see the charge on that one...

 

[Dunkopf]

My 16 year old friend would drive down the road while I threw water balloons at bicyclist and at oncoming cars. I hit a grille on a station wagon and it broke it. The guy made a U-turn and chased us. We used to pull up next top other drivers and point a cap gun at them. This one woman freaked out. She got our license plate and the Police came to my house. I was only 15 and the cop let me off with a call to my parents. Yes I got the belt for that one and was grounded for a month. It wasn't really necessary. When I saw the look on that Ladies face it suddenly dawned on me that what I was doing was dangerous and really stupid. The cop showing up was just really good reinforcement.

Fear of the belt never stopped me from anything. Sometimes I was given a choice between the belt and grounding. I always chose the belt. Of course my Dad didn't beat me half to death either. Just 10 or 12 good wacks. Stung and left red marks but it was better than grounding. Onlyhappened about 10 times in 5 years anyway. I was actually a pretty good kid.