A kid recorded on Xbox Live yelling at his mom

[Thorin]

Someone needs to be responsible for the kids behavior until they are old enough to be responsible for themselves.  Punishments for parents in most cases should be similar as though the parent had commited the offence themselves (eg. kid vandalizes something, parent pays the damages, parent disciplines kids) with more serious offences having some/all punishment for the kid as well (eg. if the kid commits murder jailing the parent for life doesn't help).

Given that children are not under parent supervision 24 hours a day, placing responsibility squarely on the parents is unfair.  Given the frequency with which children will do something expressly forbidden by their parents, this becomes even more unfair.  Given that parents do not have carte blanche on how to enforce their rules, this becomes untenable.  How can it be entirely my fault that my ten year old kicks in a window at school while I'm at work?  Haven't I handed off responsibility to another adult who is in a better position to intervene?

Proper behavior I thought was already reasonably well defined, we call them laws, they deal with everything from murder to vandalism to disturbing the peace.  What do we do with adults that are socio or psychopathic, and why should kids necisarrily be treated differently?  If an adult requires constant supervision due to some problem, it's pretty safe to assume a kid needs even more supervision under the same circumstances.

So proper behaviour is defined as adhering to whatever laws exist?  Given that laws are specifically written in a vague manner to ensure they can be applied to situations that the lawmakers did not think of when they wrote them, this is a very poor definition.  As an example, try to find where it specifically and unequivocally states that yelling in my house is or is not considered disturbing the peace: http://www.stalbert.ca/public/data/documents/NoiseBL19-68.pdf.  As another example, tr to find where it specifically and unequivocally states that shooting a person with a gun is or is not murder: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-46/267361.html#rid-267382.  You'll find in both cases that it is actually up to interpretation by a judge.

In addition, there are lots of things kids can do that do not technically break laws that can still be annoying as hell.  Case in point, this kid yelling at his mother for chocolate milk.

And what do we do with socio/psychopathic adults?  Well, we don't supervise them.  We wait for them to commit an offense and then jail them for that offense.  Frequently, we let them out again way too soon, but that's another debate.

[Ustauk]

I saw a really good  NFB documentary on the Nature of Things a while back called Origins of Human Aggression: The Other Story a while back.  It followed many of the theories of nurture versus nature for the development of early childhood aggressivness into anti-social behaviour later.

One of the conclusions that most struck me came out of the documentary is partially outlined in the following quote from the above link.

It is known that children, at around age two, display wild explosions of rage in the form of temper tantrums, provoked by the most trivial reasons. By age three, toddlers have the ability to threaten or hit if they do not get their way, and they possess the motor skills to engage in physically aggressive acts. Physical aggression in children then begins to decrease over time as they develop a level of self-awareness, and experience other emotions, such as shame or embarrassment, which hold aggressive behaviour in check.

The documentary said that parents had to use the developing shame and embaressment emotions to teach that agressive behaviour, be it verbal (tantrum) or physical (fighting) was wrong.  If this is not done during the key emotional development phase (two to three or four, if I remember right), then the child never properly develops the emotional maturity to properly control the violent instincts of the human race.  This can get them in serious trouble later in life. 

Some children are better at surpressing their instincts then others, so they require less parental intervention.

Not all childhood violence/tantrums or later adult violence can be attributed to lack of early-child hood installation of guilt, but I suspect the documentary is right about this in the case of kids who consistently get in trouble again and again. 

So, in the end, I think you can hold parents responsible for consistently troubled children (excluding psychopathy, autism, or other physiological problems), but not for the occasional outburst that temporarily overwhelms shame/guilt/embaressment controls instituted by proper parenting.

[Darren Dirt]

If he were 13 or 14, it could be blamed on his peers, but at 9 it's very much due to the lack of backbone of his parents.

Even at 14 I'd still blame such behaviour on the lack of backbone of his parents.  IMHO parents should be held responsible for the behaviour of their children, until those children are around the 16 to 18 year old mark.

Since you say the parents should be responsible, what tools are you willing to let those parents use to enforce proper behaviour?  And what would you do to the parent if the child behaves poorly?  And what's considered proper behaviour?  And what if a child is simply socio- or psychopathic and all of the parents' attempts at getting the child to behave have no effect?  These are the hard questions that go along with stating that parents should be responsible.

It should come as no surprise to anyone here familiar with my political views -- or more accurately, anti-political, since politics is simply the art/science of controlling other people -- that I agree with Thorin. In fact, I'm going to declare (rather than just ask/suggest) that in general the very idea of laying responsibility on someone for the actions of others, *especially if that someone has had their resources essentially "taken away" so they are ineffective in regulating the behaviour of those others* , is not just wrong, it's irrational if not insane.

With young children specifically, I do not think they should (or can) be held totally "responsible" for their own actions, therefore those who are their guardians will (or should) bear some kind of responsibility (if not accountability) and THEREFORE they should "be able" to use reasonable means to modify the behaviour of the children in their care (short of obvious abuse, mailicious harm, etc.).

But there's them words again: "let", "be able", etc.

Who decides what is "permitted", and by what right do they dictate to others they can or can not do these things?

Again with the politics (see definition above).

In this day and age the Politically Correct Police (oddly enough, PCP ) would gasp with disapproval at such a thought (personal accountability, effective discipline, etc.) yet they would also threaten those helpless guardians of antisocial children with jailtime, fines, or at the very least public condemnation.


Here's a thought: last night I was watching an episode of Millennium (from season 2 -- the one with the cab driver, the "homeless" folks, the fake Disease Control men in suits, The Human Genome Project, and the repeated line "The trucks!") and it reminded me that we are not mindless animals; we are born with something special above the animals: we have a CONSCIENCE.

But as we have seen over the past few decades, it dies (or is turned dormant) very quickly when there are no *natural* consequences to our anti-social, immoral actions... which is occurring all around us as caregivers are not "permitted" to act out their disciplinary/guidance/teaching role to any significant capacity... as the children are essentially the ones "in charge".

[/soapbox]


PS: re. tasers, and how they are "non-fatal", well as much as I would like to put my faith in yellow stickers (if it SAYS it's non-lethal, well, it must be non-lethal, right? ) there are a lot of groups like Amnesty International who have investigated actual cases (and aren't just speculating and/or trusting the word of the "authorities", or WORSE, the manufacturers!) and they have a differing opinion. See this collection of news stories, as food for thought.

Under the current legal system, no-one is really responsible for something that a kid does, and I think thats the real problem.

Then again, perhaps the problem is that the parents are not "permitted" to ensure the kid is responsible for his own actions, they are not "able to" act like they have a friggin' backbone and soon the kid KNOWS who is really in charge...

And btw there's a lot of people who've been around 5 or 6 decades who recognize that the "current legal system" is a very big part of the problem. For example, let's say a 10 year old boy is in a grocery store and doesn't get his way, he starts yelling and swearing at his father, his emotions get fired up and so now he punches daddy in the stomach and face (drawing blood), and then pushes over his sister -- can that father use any physical restraint, let alone "hit back" (even to a small degree considering the weight/size difference) without fear of being charged with child abuse (or worse)? And what if that boy pulls out a knife... would the law treat this "child abuser" any differently? I doubt it. But if that boy was 18 (16? 14?) then would "self defense" be suddenly "okay"?

The "law" is reeeeal clear on those types of things, isn't it?

[Darren Dirt]

I saw a really good  NFB documentary on the Nature of Things a while back called Origins of Human Aggression: The Other Story a while back. 

By age three, toddlers have the ability to threaten or hit if they do not get their way ... Physical aggression in children then begins to decrease over time as they develop a level of self-awareness, and experience other emotions, such as shame or embarrassment, which hold aggressive behaviour in check.

Woot! there it is: self-awareness, shame, embarrassment... natural consequences for anti-social acts against others. In most "close-knit" communities, shunning is more effective in discouraging criminal behaviour than any "correctional facility" ever could be. It is in the best interest of the potential "evil-doers" to not do evil; it ends up hurting him (call it karma, call it eye-for-an-eye, whatever).


No man is an island -- but he'll be quickly thrown onto one if he keeps treating everyone else like crap.

[Thorin]

It seems I ran into a girl named Pandora, and accidentally opened her box with this thread and my posts in it   Sorry for that, I know we tend to try and avoid these kinds of discussions.

I did find it interesting that everyone (myself included) felt the need to beat this kid into proper behaviour after hearing his ranting.  Funny how that's pretty much the first reaction.

As far as parents and responsibility, we would do more good if we helped bad parents become good parents by providing mentoring, classes, and discussion groups instead of laying blame at their feet and absolving our responsibility to improve society as a whole.

[Adams]

Uh... not to be picky but your missing an opening tag [soapbox]

[/soapbox]

Heh.

[Ustauk]

As far as parents and responsibility, we would do more good if we helped bad parents become good parents by providing mentoring, classes, and discussion groups instead of laying blame at their feet and absolving our responsibility to improve society as a whole.

Agreed.  Parents are thrown into the deep end  without any support, and there can be a social stigma attached to asking for any kind of help from friends or relatives, since people may think you're a "bad parent".  Then again, there are some people who could be completely hopeless parents no matter how much training they got; I have no idea what we can do about it.

I think we try and avoid threads like this because they usually devolve significantly into fisticuffs when someone feel insulted.  So far, this thread has been fairly civilized...so far

[Adams]

I think we are mostly just trying to put out our points of view. Lets hope that we get a more of a learning experience from this and maybe some people who are too soft will harden up a little and those who are too hard will soften up a little.

I can only hope.