Violence in Today's Youth

**Blue Jacket** · 06-20-07, 08:26 AM

I have worked with kids for over 34 yrs and have seen them from a teacher's view and from the law enforcement side. It's sad but you can actually select which 12 yr olds you'll be reading about in the newspapers and police reports 3-6 yrs down the road. Sometimes it's a look in their eyes that triggers an instinct in you. Other times it's outright violence. Once in a great while, you can step in and turn someone around but for the most part it seems to be their destiny of drugs, violence, jail and death. I have worked with several that I was only to attend their funeral a few years later. Yet you knew this was going to happen years before. How sad.

Is it because they are latch-key kids, abused physically/sexually or just a born hidden trait that surfaces?

I wish I had answers. I wish that I could prevent more youth self destruction as well as to others. But sometimes their destiny is in stone.

**rob84** · 06-20-07, 08:31 AM

Alot of parents these days just dont give a flying f*ck about their children, and unfortunatly, this is what happens.

**Rhino** · 06-20-07, 10:48 AM

I think Rob's got a point. I think due to lack of a parent's involvement in their child's upbringing it was turns them towards violence. When you have rap artists singing about drive-bys, people blowing each other up on TV, in the movies, and on video games and the parent isn't around to put it into perspective, the child is going to think that's the norm.

**Blue Jacket** · 06-20-07, 11:07 AM

I once knew a kid who skipped middle school and shot at a door to door cosmetic salesperson to see if he could hit her. The woman was paralyzed for life. No remorse was ever shown. His own parents were afraid of him.

A lot of it lies with how close parents relate with their kids day to day life. There is no doubt about it. Gangs become family to many kids. Kids who are involved in PAL and other activities tend to avoid a lot of trouble.

But how many times have you heard from a parent or received a call that they can't control their kid and they call the police????

**Crimebytes2** · 06-20-07, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by Blue Jacket

I have worked with kids for over 34 yrs...

You have the answers right in front of you. Ask the kids... they will tell you! If you will listen; they will talk.

**rob84** · 06-20-07, 12:26 PM

Originally Posted by Rhino

I think Rob's got a point. I think due to lack of a parent's involvement in their child's upbringing it was turns them towards violence. When you have rap artists singing about drive-bys, people blowing each other up on TV, in the movies, and on video games and the parent isn't around to put it into perspective, the child is going to think that's the norm.

Exactly Rhino, kids walk around acting like nothing can hurt them. Movies and music play a big role in this in my opinion. Also, when a kid is acting up in school, other kids may think its funny and imitate him. If the parents don't actually stop the children from acting up, and punish them, then the kids will get the mentality that it is ok. That results in alot of adults acting how some of the music artists that we see on tv act now.

**Tony** · 06-20-07, 07:18 PM

All good points, there's also the fact we don't have "families" in the tradional sense, with so many single parents. Kids need guidence and a role model and if it's the gang member next door or some game character then the influence of the lone parent is diminished. It's a trend everywhere.

I know there's a mentoring scheme called Big Brothers and Sisters (BBS) in the US, which aims to create a one-to-one friendship between an adult volunteer and a child from a lone-parent family. A mate in the UK told me they are trying out this there because over 20 per cent of children now live in a family with only one parent, a statistic that means the UK has the highest proportion of single parents in Europe. The BBS mentoring system is one way of confronting that problem, and finding an innovative solution to it.

Here's a link worth reading about how kids get influenced by those around them ~ Understanding the Early Years

**BEB** · 06-22-07, 08:40 PM

Another article about kids being influenced by those around them. This psychologist's views are pretty controversial, but from what I read he has some worthy points. Mostly I like what he said about how we create this adolescent culture where kids are isolated from adults and overexposed to peers.

Full article at the link as its quite long. Just a bit below.
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/...02-000002.html

Psychologist Diane Dumas and I also found a correlation between infantilization and psychological dysfunction. The more young people are infantilized, the more psychopathology they show.

What's more, since 1960, restrictions on teens have been accelerating. Young people are restricted in ways no adult would be—for example, in some states they are prohibited from entering tanning salons or getting tattoos.

You believe in the inherent competence of teens. What's your evidence?

Dumas and I worked out what makes an adult an adult. We came up with 14 areas of competency—such as interpersonal skills, handling responsibility, leadership—and administered tests to adults and teens in several cities around the country. We found that teens were as competent or nearly as competent as adults in all 14 areas. But when adults estimate how teens will score, their estimates are dramatically below what the teens actually score.

Other long-standing data show that teens are at least as competent as adults. IQ is a quotient that indicates where you stand relative to other people your age; that stays stable. But raw scores of intelligence peak around age 14-15 and shrink thereafter. Scores on virtually all tests of memory peak between ages 13 and 15. Perceptual abilities all peak at that age. Brain size peaks at 14. Incidental memory—what you remember by accident, and not due to mnemonics—is remarkably good in early to mid teens and practically nonexistent by the '50s and '60s.

If teens are so competent, why do they not show it?

What teens do is a small fraction of what they are capable of doing. If you mistreat or restrict them, performance suffers and is extremely misleading. The teens put before us as examples by, say, the music industry tend to be highly incompetent. Teens encourage each other to perform incompetently. One of the anthems of modern pop, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, is all about how we need to behave like we're stupid.

Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become. When young people exit the education system and are dumped into the real world, which is not the world of Britney Spears, they have no idea what's going on and have to spend considerable time figuring it out.