Cow The Kids

Cow the Kids.

Bring them up in fear. It's the only way.

Things we should not give them:- self confidence, money, knowledge of
sex, equality with adults, precedence on buses, pavements, or anywhere
else.

Do they now have a joyful, smiling happy childhood? They don't. They
scowl and sulk their way through, while cycling and skateboarding over
old people and spending more money than their Grandads ever earned.
They make everybody else's life absolutely miserable for years until
they graduate to Ecstacy and Nightclubs and reach the estate of
adulthood themselves.

Children swagger. Well they might, they've got a lot to swagger about.
They're in charge. They have learned that nobody can do anything about
them. Nobody can discipline them. The schools abdicated that
responsibility some years ago, leaving chastisement to their
parents.....Unfortunately parents had placed it in the hand of schools
long before that, so the result is nobody disciplines them at all, and
the bitter fact for all adults is that all children know it. As a child
you can do as you like, it is the only time in life that you can. They
are making the most of it. A child can follow a wheelchair-bound old
lady down the street, shouting obscenities at her, and nothing can be
done about it? Didn't know that did you? Well it's true.

As a witness to the wheelchair incident, what are you going to do?
Smack?..Don't be silly. Do you like prison food.

Hold on to the kid and tell it off? Might as well go straight home and
daub your own walls.

Gently rebuke the child yourself, verbally? You will thereby
effectually transfer the abuse to yourself (and your family and
friends) and can be followed round the streets all morning, with this
child and it's cohorts, calling you a paedophile.

What if you just report it to the Police? They love the Police these
little gangs of hooligans, they don't run away from them, no reason to.
They smile when they come and have a jolly good time, play-fighting
among themselves with arm-locks to confuse the officers. Teeny girls
squeal at the extra attentions of teeny boys when the police are
present. A 'telling-off' from the Police is both futile and dangerous,
not to the child, to the Officer! Poor Police, impotent and
baited.

Should you, or the Police, go to their homes and tell their parents? Ho
Ho. There are a lot of unlikelihoods here. First it is not likely that
there are two natural parents, maybe a single mother on her own, too
harrassed to do anything. She's got lots of kids, it's not easy and she
may take the line of less resistance and let the kids roam. She may be
cross with the child, and be upset and cry. But the idea was to make it
bad for the child, not the Mother. Maybe the single mother has a new
man who must not lay a finger on 'her' kids. There's no wrath like that
of a father who can actually give them a belt, and no substitute for
the effect that can have. Even if there are two proper parents
nowadays, they probably do not believe in physical punishment, it is
also odd nowadays that parents do not believe that their particular
little rat-bag can be guilty of anything.

These parents will also ascribe the anti-social behaviour of their
little devil, to those with whom he associates, his unsuitable friends,
who keep getting him into trouble. Great myth this is. It is the little
devil himself, or herself, and all the other little devils who are no
better than one another. Why these parents believe their child would
become a paragon of virtue if his playmates changed is a mystery. Lying
used to be the worst crime in the old days, in BTOC. (Before Tyranny Of
Children) It isn't now. Kids will deny any wrongdoing. They always do,
all the time, and for everything. They lie blithely you see. They lie
themselves blue in the face. They have discovered that most often they
get away with murder in the absence of proof. Lies are very powerful.
No one can ever be sure. So the parents can't be sure he/she's that
bad. You, or the Police, or the Archbishop of Canterbury do not carry
much weight in your testimonies if their precious says it was not him.
The precious is called Tom. He says the Old Lady was tormented mainly
by Dick and partly by Harry. The parents will believe anything bad of
Dick and Harry, in fact these are two of the children that will lead
their Tom into bad ways.

We knew it all along. The little old lady in the wheel chair is at
fault. She tried to get past the bikes on the pavement outside the Post
Office. She might have tutted when they threw coke cans down. Perhaps
she shook her head when they spat on the pavement, or waved a skinny
hand and said 'Don't do that.' when they kicked the shrubs down in the
Civic Gardens.

I accept that hitting kids is not a good thing. It's just a better
thing than the Old Ladies treatment and all of us tip-toeing around
letting little anarchists ruin the place. Not all kids need it anyway.
They are different. The best do not perform the anti-social acts I have
described. There is great pressure from their peers to do so but many,
unfortunately at some personal cost, resist it and behave properly.
Let's not start knocking that sort of kid about. It's more difficult
for a kid to be good than bad thanks to the masses of nasty kids who
are cheeky and rude and disrespectful and violent and cowardly because
they have found they have such power.

These disrupters weren't bad to start with. They thought they were just
kids and had better keep their heads down and keep out of the way of
busy grown ups, and be polite, or they'd be in trouble with everybody.
Surprise, surprise, they found they weren't in trouble with anyone.
They could upset all those tall people, make some cry, make some argue
with each other, but the effect on themselves was virtually nil. They
learn to smirk at age six.

Kids don't worry about sanctions being applied at home. Taking away the
Game Boy, no television, a few less Big Macs. This immediately turns
the child more obnoxious at home than it was before. This obnoxious
behaviour, which a 'clip of the ear' would soon cure, is so terrible,
sanctions are soon relaxed, reparations are even made to restore the
'status quo'. 'Grounding' does not work. It is possible for the average
eleven year old to wear down any two adults in an hour of whining and
sulking. Those people who took John McCarthy and Terry Waite hostage
for years wouldn't have kept them a day if they had been modern kids of
twelve.

Now the boot is so thoroughly on the other foot Children can apply
counter sanctions. Invoke Esther Rantzen and Childline. Dial-up premium
charge calls on the phone. Be 'bored' i.e. start kicking the veneer
from the kitchen base unit which is already falling to bits. Be
'difficult' at meal times. (one pea and it can all be thrown away) I'm
afraid they have terrible power if they can't be intimidated.

This must all be turned round mustn't it? If these kids were hungry
they'd eat anything. If they were always assumed guilty on accusation
and given a thrashing, they'd start to avoid the circumstances which
led to it. We should assume all children are guilty little swine first,
not the adults. It's hard, but turning round this runaway juggernaut is
going to be hard, when one extra click on the handbrake would have done
the job a few years ago.