I'm doing playing Mrs Nice Grl with the kids in my neighborhood. I just got done telling them the same thing.
Yesterday afternoon, a group of them were in my front yard, playing basketball with my boys (we got a basketball hoop recently - I was hoping to encourage my boys to play outside more often). I have a little park bench in my front yard that I like to go sit on and read in the evening sun.
When I stepped outside to get the mail yesterday afternoon, I was greeted by a lawn littered with water bottles, soda cans, chip bags, candy wrappers....just garbage everywhere. I told them all that before they left they needed to pick it all up. They all agreed.
I stuck me head out the door 45 mins later to tell my boys it was time to come and eat....and they were gone. They garbage wasn't though. THAT was still there.
So, after I found my boys (at the playground at the end of the street, minus the kids that had been playing ball with them) I made them come home and help me pick up the yard. I told them then that no-one else was allowed to play in our yard at our hoop for a week, and if this ever happened again I'd take the damn hoop down permanently and that would be the end of that.
That was that, I thought.
Until this evening. I went out with my book and my water to sit on my bench....
....and it's trashed. Someone has scratched the wood up with a knife or some other sharp object, and I think I can make out someone's initals on it. The frame part is bent (I can probably straighten it out, but that's not the point), and it's all rickety. I tightened up the nuts and bolts and that helped some, but again...that's not the point.
I was fuming. The kids responsible were across the street, playing ball at the neighbor's house, so I went to the end of the driveway and asked them what the hell happened yesterday. I got silence. I asked them who did it. Again, silence. I told them that I was tired of the lack of respect, and that they'd be incredibly stupid to ever come ask my boys to play again. One of them, the eldest (about 14) said that he didn't know why I was "all mad" at them because they "didn't did anything". I said that I was mad at them not only for the bench, but for the garbage that they left yesterday. I asked them if they were allowed to do that in their yards, and one of them said "no".
No, they just go around trashing other people's yards and walking away.
When I was a kid, we'd have got our asses beat for doing something like this. No, you know what? We woudn't have had the cohones to walk away from something like that, we'd have stayed and put right what we messed up because we didn't DARE do anything else. Having someone else's mom come to the door to complain about something we did was a guaranteed ass-whupping and a one way ticket to our bedrooms for a week.
Where have we gone wrong with these kids? What did we do to encourage this kind of behaviour, to make them think that it's okay to crap on other people like that? More importantly, how can we fix this? At what point did America say to the next generation " respect is not a necessity"?. Where I come from, respect is a basic, a must have. Respect, along with politeness, will get you a long way.
It's not just about my bench and my yard, though. There's an overall lack of respect coming from todays juveniles. Thye're rude, they're obnoxious, they're mouthy. They have a 'whatever' attitude with any and everyone; with teachers, the police, their parents.....everyone. It's sickening. These kids are almost old enough to have babies of their own. In a few years, they'll be raising their own kids...and I hate to think of how that will be.
I know where all these kids live, so I'm paying their mothers a visit this evening. Not to say "this is what your kid did, what are you going to do about it?"....I'm just going to tell them what their child did and advise them that they are no longer welcome at my house; that they should tell their kid to give me and my boys a wide berth from now on - especially after next weekend when D's home.
The thing is, they must have learned this behavior from somewhere.....I'm sure after I get done talking to their parents I'll be able to see where it came from.