Feel Safer Yet?
Posted by Hazel Stone | Filed under Do It Yourself, Over The Seas
It’s been a while since we turned our jaundiced eye across the pond…
Pastors are set to board Croydon buses to help control unruly schoolchildren and teenagers.
Because parents obviously should not be held responsible.
The religious volunteers – or “school pastors” – will also attempt to turn young people involved in crime away from breaking the law and into studying the Bible.
Ooh, that’s MUCH more exciting!
Rev Isaacs said: “I think our courts too readily hand out sentences to our youngsters, rather than looking for alternatives within the community to help them go through the most difficult adolescent period.
Yes, like ACTUAL PARENTING.
I know I’m not speaking Sanskrit* here, this is not a complex concept: parent your children. When they do something wrong, punish them. It does not have to be ten swats across the bottom with a willow switch (though I tell you, that will FLAT get your attention), but it does have to be actual DISCIPLINE. It has to start young, be consistent, and neverever waver. Your child is not a precious irreplaceable snowflake, they’re just a kid, and they do not know what good behavior is unless you, THE PARENT, show it to them, expect it of them, and bloody well enforce it with your will.
And if you haven’t the will, you have no business being a parent, simple as that. Just because you CAN make a child does not mean you should.
*Yes, I know it’s a written language, that’s what makes it, er, funny.
Tags: (formerly) great britain, parenting through humiliation, social responsibility
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April 16th, 2008
An oft heard declaration from my father in his house (and it was NOT a threat):
I helped bring you into this world, and by God if you ever do that again, I’ll help take you out of it!
April 16th, 2008
You’re right in principle: parents should PARENT. The problem is that the nanny state has wrapped so many restrictions around what a parent can do to discipline their children that parents are also afraid to do anything that their children could report to a government social worker (aka parasite). The government would then punish the parent for doing what they should be doing. It’s bad enough in this country, but is even worse in the mostly socialist European states. The incentives, therefore, are to abandon your childrens’ upbringing to the all-encompassing nanny state.
Having said that, you are right that parents need to stop being a bunch of pansies and take care of their children. The “ME” generation is more interested in “validating” their own existence, rather than fulfilling their responsiblities. However, creeping government interference makes this less and less likely and erodes the incentive to do so.
April 16th, 2008
Parents have become so afraid of being called abusers that they have become neglecters.
April 16th, 2008
And if you haven’t the will, you have no business being a parent, simple as that. Just because you CAN make a child does not mean you should.
Trouble is, most of us don’t find out whether or not we have the will to discipline our kids until, well, quite some time after we’ve made them. Probably because there’s no reliable way to measure that quality in any setting other than actual parentage.
There are but three ways around this dilemma (that I can see, anyway). One is to not have kids unless/until you are absolutely certain that you possess the will to adequately discipline them. The obvious drawback to this is that if everyone followed this advice, Western birthrates would drop from merely “below replacement” levels to close to zero, and surely I need not belabor the equally obvious repercussions of that.
Another is for people who do have kids, but lack the will to discipline them, to somehow acquire that will after the fact. Is that even possible to do, so late in the game? In any case, clearly not all parents are capable of doing so; otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
The third, most drastic way (and one I almost didn’t bother to mention here because it’s such an obvious non-starter) is for weak-willed parents to be identified and basically have their families broken up, and the children raised by other, stronger-willed parents.
In sum, I fear that this is a dilemma without a solution, or at least a solution that is both practical and morally acceptable.
April 17th, 2008
When we had a house in London, it was technically in the borough of Croydon. We got a pamphlet from the Croydon Council that skeert the bejesus out of me. It was about what to do if you heard someone breaking into your home. “Some people,” it advised, “feel most comfortable lying quietly in bed and waiting for the intruder to go away.”
It was one of my first trips over there, but it definitely let me know what I was in for. Sick, isn’t it?
April 17th, 2008
I have fond memories of Blighty from my childhood visits, but I honestly would go completely off my nut if I lived there today. There’d be warning pamphlets sent around about ME.
April 17th, 2008
Actually, I ‘m going to disagree with you Hazel. This is a good example of citizens volunteering do do what the school won’t and the police are ill-eqipped to do.
I don’t expect parents to be immediately available during the schoolday, or on the bus to and from. School officials have the duty to act (responsibly) in the parents’ stead during these times. In the case of time on the bus, a group of volunteers has offered to provide additional supervision (and, ok, a bit of preaching thrown in).
I don’t see how this infringes on the parents’ rights or duties to discipline their own children. Now I might argue that I don’t want my child preached at all the way to and from school, but that’s not the issue of contention here.
Now, me, I spent my hours on the bus playing Dungeons and Dragons with my friends. Wonder what the Pastor’s would have thought of that…