Why are kids so fucked up?

[Sean of the Shed]

A coupe of recent stories have got me wondering what has gone so badly wrong with kids in Britain, how have they become such horrible bastards. The two boys who wanted to copy the Columbine massacre, and, more especially, this, the boys who carried out the Edlington attacks. An accompanying story seems to give some insight into the behaviour of the brothers who attacked the two boys.
I'll be honest, I don't like children, I have no intention of having any as they irritate me and sometimes just repulse me.
But generally they were just considered cheeky, or troublemakers. This seems to have spiralled now into some being absolutely evil cunts. They seem to have no fear of repercussions for their actions, no regret or remorse, they seem to be aware that they are pretty much untouchable.
Is it down to shit parents, the end of discipline at home or in school or a lack of moral guidance and inspiration, or is it that some kids are just fucked in the head and beyond any help. Can they be given a direction in life or is punishment the only possible response. I'm not sure I like it but I'm beginning to think it may be.

[Bruno]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I'd say if you've turned out a murdering cunt by your teens, it's probably down to some combination of shit parents, lack of moral guidance and inspiration, and being fucked in the head, yes.

Btw the best cure for disliking children is to have one of your own. Then you'll be guaranteed of only disliking most of them. But you probably won't think of them as a large demographic blot as much.

[Sean of the Shed]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Obviously most kids are normal decent human beings, and it's wrong to group them all together, but then, the quiet average kids don't draw alot of attention, leaving the focus on the worse cases.
My biggest worry with regards to having my own children is that my opinion won't change, and i'll end up resenting both the child and my wife. I enjoy spending time with my nieces and nephews, and I love them to bits, but even then at times they can just annoy the hell out of me.

[Taylor]

Why are kids so fucked up?

When it's your own kid though, you see atrocious behaviour as a problem to be solved, more than an irritation. To put it prosaically, if you walk into someone else's kitchen and see food splattered up the walls you think "yuk". In your own kitchen you think "oh right" and grab a sponge. It's a totally different kind of response.

[Sean of the Shed]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I tend to think my response would be to give the sponge to the child in question (depending on age) and get them to clean it up. Action > Reaction and all that.

[Bruno]

Why are kids so fucked up?

My biggest worry with regards to having my own children is that my opinion won't change, and i'll end up resenting both the child and my wife. I enjoy spending time with my nieces and nephews, and I love them to bits, but even then at times they can just annoy the hell out of me.

Sean of the shed despite not knowing you from Adam and based only on the appearance of your writing like a thoughtful intelligent normal upstanding guy, I'd be utterly complacent in assuring you that a child of your own would be a greater love than you'd ever thought possible and that the notion of your resenting its existence and its need to both receive and reciprocate your love for it, would very quickly become most outlandish to you.

[Guest]

Why are kids so fucked up?

But therin lies the rub.
These children who behave so badly, probably don't feel love or affection, let alone know how to reciprocate.

[Bruno]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I'm not sure I see where your rub is lying. I'm no expert but I would say, almost invariably (i.e. barring some severe psychotic disorder), a child's inability to feel or reciprocate love has been the fault of the parents or guardians from a very early age. They don't feel it because they weren't given it.

[Sean of the Shed]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Agreed, in most cases there seems to be a link to either abuse or just a lack of care, as in the Edlington case above, the mother left the kids to do what they like and turned against the father when he tried to instill some discipline. Her answer to their bad behaviour was to lace their tea with cannabis.

[Bruno]

Why are kids so fucked up?

...which raises the obvious point, parenting is bit of a hard go in the best of conditions and some people are dizzyingly not up to it.

Believe you me, there have been times I've wanted to lace the little urchin's tea (tea? at that age) with cannabis, but I didn't.

[danielmak]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Munchkin wrote:

But therin lies the rub.
These children who behave so badly, probably don't feel love or affection, let alone know how to reciprocate.

The kids who shot up Columbine came from middle-upper class homes. The general sense was that they lived in loving homes, although we can never know for sure. So, the central problem seemed to be that they were outcasts, who were picked on by macho idiots and likely shunned by the girls in the school. They didn't think school officials would or could protect them from the emotional and physical abuse that occurred in the school. This seems to be true since after the Columbine shootings happened a Denver newspaper did a report along the lines of Columbine 2 years later and found out that some gridiron football player was harassing a girl in the school and the principal said there was no evidence and that the girl should just transfer to a new school.

Now you take this situation and you add the usual teen angst and the context gets quite scary. So parents can do all they can do to love their kid, provide the kid with a social network that is safe (e.g., after school sports or music programs), and still their kid turns out to be a serial killer. I always say to my wife that I hope that us being vegetarians (and by extension our daughter being a vegetarian) will mean that our daughter's form of rebellion in the next few years is going to be eating McDonalds rather than smoking crack or shooting heroin.

BTW if anyone is interested in a response to a broader sense that popular culture produces teen violence, I recommend [ur=http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jenkins_ct.htmll]this piece from media scholar Henry Jenkins[/url].

[Guest]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I was responding to assertion above as I read it (and talking way beyond WSC MB), that if you have them, that parents will love their kids and not resent them, which just doesn't happen sadly.
If it ever did.

Just another reason why human beings are not the best species on the planet....

[Bruno]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I was responding to assertion above as I read it (and talking way beyond WSC MB), that if you have them, that parents will love their kids and not resent them, which just doesn't happen sadly.
If it ever did.

I think if you possess the self-awareness and sensitivity to worry whether you'll resent your kids, you're probably not going to end up resenting your kids.

As for the Columbine duo coming from loving homes, it would take an awful lot for me to be convinced there wasn't some drastic parental culpability going on for things to have reached that point, but as I said there can always be psychotic exceptions. Not the sort of thing you want to be basing your suppositions about parenthood on if you ask me.

[adams house cat]

Why are kids so fucked up?

It is a horribly complex issue. Ask any attorney who had defended juveniles and they will tell you that bad kids can just as easily come from good homes.

I admire your candor Sean but I can't say that I agree. Mrs. House Cat and I have no children and can't have any. It doesn't mean we don't miss them.

The Columbine kids were poster children for latchkey kids. Both sets of parents worked every hour God sent to keep up their lifestyle. The kids raised themselves. Making a pipebomb in the garage. My Dada knew if I farted in the garage.

Raising kids demands sacrifices, even lifestyle sacrifices. The Columbine parents didn't seem to be prepared to make them.

[Cal Alamein]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I work w/ about 180 of 'em every day and have done so for 17 years. Can't really say that kids today are any 'worse' than when I was a kid - sometimes I am amazed that they are in many ways MUCH better behaved and more naive than I was when I was a teenager.

I am also a parent and wouldn't trade it for anything.

Kids always did wild shit, only now they have the opportunity to be media stars, albeit infamous, 24/7. Blame can go all around.

[Wyatt Earp]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Can I make the obvious Goldacre-y point? That these cases make the news precisely because they're wildly atypical?

[wingco]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Exactly. A lot of this is "going to the dogs" talk. Appalling acts of the sort cited by Sean do have a a confounding effect and do cause the red mist to descend but this talk of mysterious downward "spiralling", prompted by an increasingly degenerate popular culture is the stuff of moral panic. As for the problem being that kids are "pretty much untouchable", I really don't think that you'll find that the fundamental problem with people who commit monstrous acts is that they weren't slapped around enough as children. Guess what - Hitler got duffed up a lot as a kid. And if it's not that, it'll be some equivalent emotional abuse or neglect. Even then, however, the equation is incomplete. Although certain bad conditions have to be in place, the likes of the Columbine killers are, basically, odd 'uns. You're gonna get them. Always did, always will.

[Uncle Ethan]

Why are kids so fucked up?

What they said. We have three boys, well one's a man now, and they are different but all great. Their friends are without exception thoroughly pleasant young people.

Nothing excuses what the kids in the seond story, did but even a quick look at their background gives an indication of the resentment and anger it must have created within them.

Not having kids because you hate them is a pretty sensible position.

Unwanted, unloved kids sums these two poor buggers up pretty well by the looks of it.

[Bored Of Education]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I have somewhat altered my opinion on this. When the Jamie Bulger case happened and there was all this "Face Of Evil" Daily Mail bullshit, my take was that all of us start off with the same capacity for evil, good, empathy etc and no child was "pure evil" or whatever.

I have since seen that, in a time where you can have a child being born into a family where not only the parents were in care but the grandparents, some children are pretty much fucked from the beginning.

Add into that their best alternative is going into care themselves, where their chances of ending up undereducated, unemployed, in jail or all three is massive, and their future is bleak, to use an understatement and a cliche.

There appears also to be evidence, which I haven't got time to find at the moment but am happy to later, that children whose mothers are subject to domestic violence prenataly, will be born with a lesser sense of empathy.

Obviously, all these issues point towards bad parenting but they also are to do with support for parents, education generally and the social services issues that we have addressed before.

It is too easy to point the finger at one area and too easy to see it as some sort of sign that society is regressing.

I also would like to applaud Sean of the Shed for his honesty and say that, if he and his wife are happy not to have children for whatever reasons, then they shouldn't. THere are too many people who aren't as self-aware and forward thinking in this respect and, thus, a lot of children in care

[evilC]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Uncle Ethan wrote:

Not having kids because you hate them is a pretty sensible position.

Unwanted, unloved kids sums these two poor buggers up pretty well by the looks of it.

Speaking as someone who doesn't like children, this is precisely my position.

Separately from that, I know that I simply haven't got what it takes to be a parent, regardless - it's just too ridiculously challenging and I'm not up to it. I'm not balanced enough in myself to take on such a task and thus I wouldn't dream of doing so. However, every day I see people who also probably aren't up to it, but have gone ahead and done it anyway, for whatever reason. It's horrific to witness and you can almost see children getting fucked up 'in realtime'. (See also the "...parenting?" thread I started today. Regardless of social background, it just beggars belief.) The child in that story was 4. I see children even younger than that on/near the huge estate just up the road from me, along with slightly older kids, hanging about outside the local corner shop (a Tesco Express down and across a main road) hassling people, shoplifting, destroying property etc. Parents nowhere to be seen.

In my infinite cynicism, when I see this kind of behaviour, I sometimes think that the only reason the parents have their (multiple) children in the first place is for the social security cheques.

Sure, I don't like children, but they just annoy/repulse me. The parents infuriate me.

(And don't think this is a class thing I'm going off on. I'm from a working class background, brought up on a council estate myself. It's no big deal. I've also, on the other hand, seen kids - some in baby chairs - locked in big Mercedes Benzs in supermarket car parks, while their parents are presumably inside doing the shopping. I'd feel guilty doing that to a dog! If you did it to a dog and left the windows wound up, you might come back to find the car broken into by the RSPCA and the dog rescued, in fact!)

Parents! Who'd have 'em?!

[tracteurgarcon]

Why are kids so fucked up?

I'm amazed that events like the Columbine massacre don't happen more often.

I was bullied quite a lot at school (and I'm now involved in stand up comedy, look at me, the walking talking cliché) and if I'd have had access to firearms I dread to think what I might've done in the heat of the moment, when I was railing against the world and all it's injustices.

In my limited experiences with the youth of today I'm often surprised at how polite and well mannered they are, okay so they dress and talk a bit funny to a mid-thirties man, but generally my dealings with them are fairly positive.

[Twisted Sister]

Why are kids so fucked up?

My partner and I have decided not to have children. We made this decision before our peers starting shooting the buggers out. Judging by what the new mums and dads tell me and the way they look (distant and pained) we have made the right choice. I find myself being the one telling the parents that I’m sure they don’t mean it when they tell me “Well he/she wanted a child” or “I’m still waiting for the warm fuzzy feeling to kick in” or “Yeah! Don’t ever have children…really don’t”. Of course I realise that these could all be glib comments sprouting forth from there tired brains but it still makes me angry. Did my friends think it was going to be a walk in park? How can they be that naive? What if their kids heard them talking like that? The beef I have is that these are not one off comments but are continuous stream of resentment and disillusionment. If their kids feel those bad vibes radiating from their parents now wonder they have little self-worth and turn “evil”. Ironically I’m told that I would make a great dad. Really? Surely jolly/mad/fun Uncle/god father Twister Sister would turn just as resentful/tired/pissed off/ etc jas the rest of the dads. The world has toooooooooooo many people living on it. She needs a rest. The world can do without a little Twisted Sister.

[Wyatt Earp]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Twisted Sister wrote:

The world has toooooooooooo many people living on it. She needs a rest.

[Twisted Sister]

Why are kids so fucked up?

Why on Earth... wrote:

Twisted Sister wrote:

The world has toooooooooooo many people living on it. She needs a rest.

ha ha.

I forgot about him.

[Wyatt Earp]

Why are kids so fucked up?

TS: how old are these kids of whose parents you speak? I mean, there's a period of very little sleep, which you have to kind of tough your way through, but if they're older than that, your sample of parents seems a bit skewed to me.

I think getting evangelical on either side of this issue is pathetic, to be honest. Having kids is by some distance the best thing that's ever happened to me, but that implies nothing about anyone else.