What happened to children respecting their elders?
We moved to a new neighborhood recently, and I have come across more rude, obnoxious kids here....little wanna-be thugs running around, terrorizing any and everyone.
In the 6 weeks that we have resided here I have been cussed at and flipped off, my kids have been pushed around, had things thrown at them, cussed at, teased unmercifully and told they were 'white trash'. We have gangs of kids who roam the steets at night and start fires in trash cans, who make noise just for the hell of it to see how many people they can piss of and who, in my opinion, are destined for long, illustrious careers in the federal penitentiary system.
As you may have guessed from the preceeding paragraph, most of the juvenile offenders are black. And, because we live on a military installation, all of them have at least one parent on active duty military service. Not that that means anything; on the few occasions I have had cause to go talk to a parent about their child getting into it with one of my kids, I've got the same attitude from the parent that I got from the child, just on a bigger scale. It's easy to see where it comes from.
The thing is, the parents are the same age as me. I know that I was raised better than that, and I know that I'm passing my values and disciplines on to my kids. Am I missing something here? Is there that much of a difference between black and white culture? All the black kids I knew growing up had mommas who would take a switch to them as soon as look at them. They all had stricter parents than I did.
What happened to the days when kids dare not back-talk an adult? When I was a kid, you didn't smart mouth a grown-up. If you talked back to them, you did so respectfully and politely. You didn't cop an attitude, and you sure as hell didn't cuss at someone. So, what went wrong? When (and why) did parents stop teaching their kids to show some respect to their elders? I just don't get it.
(before anyone gets on their high horse and starts screaming 'rascist', I am simply writing about what i have seen and what is happening in my neighborhood. It just so happens that 75% of my street is black. If it was white kids acting this way, I'd be writing about that, so please don't play any rascism cards. I'll simply delete them)