Kids These Days
Crazy. Kids continue to amaze me with the things they are doing and they are getting more and more violent/dangerous. Take this story I caught in the news yesterday:
A 14-year-old boy was arrested after his 3-year-old sister was found passed out drunk from hard liquor at home, police said.Rest assured that the brother was arrested and will probably get off with a slap on the wrist and maybe some time in juvey. Back in the day, the parents would be able to deal with this issue on their own with a little corporal punishment. Nowadays, the parents would end up getting in more trouble than this idiot who thought it would be funny to get his little sister drunk. Who's laughing now?The girl was unconscious when she was taken to a hospital after her sister called police Monday night, police spokesman Lt. Greg Reinhardt said. "The child could have easily died," he said.
Or take the story I read a couple weeks ago about
An 11-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by as many as 20 boys while a 16-year-old girl she was romantically interested in watched and coached her.Where do kids come up with this stuff? Oh, wait. Could it be from the perverted 40-year-old uncle of the 16-year-old girl? That would be a good start. The uncle needs to be sent to jail to be potentially violated by a group of 20 men all named Bubba.
Here is a little more:
According to court papers, the 11-year-old girl told police she was interested romantically in the 16-year-old girl, who looked and dressed like a boy.The alleged victim and two friends went to the 16-year-old's house, where the child performed oral sex on three teenage boys, according to court papers. The 40-year-old uncle of the 16-year-old admitted he also had sex with the 11-year-old and told police that the 16-year-old was directing the child, the papers said.
The 11-year-old then went to the basement, where there were about 15 males and she told police she "began to choose who she wanted to perform oral sex on," court papers said.
As for the victim, 11-years-old seems too young to me to be so enfatuated with someone, same sex or not, that they would be willing to perform sex acts on multiple people. And if she was sexually interested in the girl, why was she willing to do sexual acts with boys? Because she is a child who is naive and not sure what she wants or what is right or wrong. It makes me sick that people take advantage of naivety, especially when it comes to children. It is even worse when it is children taking advantage of other children. I am astounded at how young kids are nowadays who are getting sexually involved.
As for prosecutors, I am thinking that if the article is accurate and the 11-year-old girl was "picking" who she was going to perform acts on that it will be argued that she was not molested as it was consensual. Statutory rape charges will probably be more likely to stick, but I do not think anyone other than the uncle will be charged with rape or assault. This is just an unfortunate and sick situation. And these are just a few of the stories that have been in the news lately.
My question to everyone is: what can we do as a society to educate our children or at least protect them from these things? The 14-year-old brother was in all likelihood doing something he thought would just be funny. How do you educate kids that age that these type of thing are not funny but very dangerous?
Comments
In brief, we must begin treating childen as children again - not little adults.
Posted by: David Langley | September 29, 2006 04:42 PM
Kids do seem to have too many grown-up priveleges and freedoms, i.e. cell phones, make-up, allowances without doing deeds, etc.
Treating them like children instead of "little adults" would also mean that society would have to accept responsibility for their children. Most parents today act like everyone else is responsible for keeping an eye on their children and refuse to be the parent. I agree though, children should be treated like children.
Posted by: Lucent | October 1, 2006 11:17 PM
I was just watching TV and saw a commercial for Cingular that made me think about your comment, David. It is a commercial where a girl and her mother are arguing about a cell phone but in a reverse agrument than what you would normally hear. Check out this link to it on YouTube. Even corporations have made children into "little adults" because by doing this, they get more product sold. Children have actually become a huge target market for corporations because parents have allowed them to become "little adults" which means the children have come into a sort of power. This means that an effort to get back to treating children like children will be an even bigger challenge than if you had to get only parents on board with the idea. If corporations are investing huge dollars into R&D on product geared toward children and are relying on these "little adults" to buy their products, you can be certain that they will be against any effort to remove children from their new "power", if you will.
Corporations are encouraging the "little adults" factor and if anything are actually multiplying that factor exponentially. Parents fall prey to the need to be cool and not be mean. Parents today would rather be friends to their children than parents. My point is that you are on to something, David, and the driving force behind the issue is a force that will be difficult, if impossible to alter.
Posted by: Lucent | October 2, 2006 10:33 PM