It is time for parents to start doing their jobs people and be a parent. The day of being your child’s friend is long over, as the parent it is your responsibility to know what your child is doing and who they are doing it with. Now I am not looking at the world through rose coloured glasses, I am not stupid, and I do not smoke drugs. I understand that children lie and we can’t be with them 24/7. All I am saying is that if you take an interest early on in your child’s life there are ways of preventing some of the violence and crime that is taking place.
I use to live in a pretty nice neighbourhood. Our city back in the day had a problem with the Hell’s Angels bikers (I said the city not me). In my opinion the worse thing our police department ever did was to force them out of our town. Ever since the youth crime in our city has increased at least 10%. You can’t go anywhere without seeing graffiti scribbled all over the buildings. Every night we watched out our windows as the bastards tip over mail boxes, light off firecrackers, blow up pop bottles, and just plane terrorize the neighbourhood. Back in the good ole days when the bikers were still in town, you never saw this happening. At night you cringe at the sound of kids yelling out side, but honestly why the hell are there kids out on the streets at 10, 11 o’clock. Where are the parents? Now I understand that my oldest child is only 8 years old, but, I understand that we are living in a day and time that children can’t wander the streets by themselves, hell I go outside and watch my son play. It is way too dangerous, if it isn’t some deranged pervert out preying on our kids, it’s older children trying to manipulate younger children into doing their crimes for them.
The police try all they like but there simply isn’t enough of them to keep up with the amount of children out on the streets getting into trouble at night. I was glad that the summer had come to an end because during the winter the kids don’t want to stay out late and vandalize. Now that spring is just around the corner I am bracing for the B.S. to start again.
Another reason in my opinion that children aren’t being watched properly by their parents is the fact that their parents are still children themselves. I have found that after researching these issues the rise in youth crime started shortly after the rise in teen pregnancy. We have babies having babies and no idea on how to raise these children, so by the time they are teens they have no direction, no ambition and have nothing better to do but commit crimes so they gain some acceptance from their friends.
According to the Youth and Violence section of the Public Health Agency of Canada’s website - Every year, approximately 1 in 10 youth comes into contact with the police for violations of the Criminal Code or other federal statutes. To read more from the site you can follow this link : http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ncfv-cnivf/familyviolence/html .
All I can say for sure is that my children are well taken care of, I make sure that my son knows he can tell me anything. I was brought up in a home where as long as you told the truth you wouldn’t get in trouble and that is how I am raising my sons. They might not always like what I have to tell them and I am sure I won’t always like what they tell me but as long as the lines of communication are open between parents and children it is easier to keep them in line.
I am sure there are a lot of you out there that disagree with me on this subject but remember the name of my website, amothersopinion.com and I am a mother and this is just my opinion.
Take care of yourself and your children!
