Today I had intended to do a meme, mostly because the time change has me in such a brain fog that I couldn't think of anything else to do. I have decided, however, to save that meme for tomorrow and ask this question instead. Why is it that more and more parents just don't care anymore?I don't mean care in general. I'm sure parents, as a general rule, still care about their kids. The kind of care that I'm talking about is caring about what their kids do. Why is it that more and more parents let their kids do whatever they want, whenever they want, and the rest of the world be damned?
Case in point: this afternoon. Weather-wise, today has been a really nice day. It has been sunny since I woke up this morning with not a cloud in sight and temperatures in the low 70's. In other words, it has been a perfect day to spend some time outside before winter gets here, which is what I had intended to do. I guess the brain fog must be worse than I thought because I temporarily forgot that I can't do that in this neighborhood.
The dogs and I weren't outside for more than 30 seconds before two boys began circling the backyard with sticks. They went from the right side of my house all the way to the left, stopped, and then reversed directions. On the return trip, they started hitting my fence with the sticks just as hard as they could. They would stop and hit it an extra time whenever the dogs would bark or I'd yell for the dogs to come to me. When they got back to the right side of my house, they stopped walking and started banging on the corner of the house, where the wooden fence meets the vinyl. The banging caused my dogs to run behind the AC unit and bark at the kids, which caused the kids, in turn, to bang even more.
At that point, I started yelling so loudly that I think the dogs became more scared of me than the boys with the sticks because they hightailed it to the back porch . The kids, in contrast, could have cared less that an adult was yelling at them. They just kept on hitting my fence and my house. It wasn't until I told them that I was going to call the police if they hit it one more time and that I was then going to go get a stick and hit their house to see how their mamas liked it did they finally leave.
Of course, I won't be calling the police. I have already done that once before for the exact same behavior, and I was told that there was nothing the police could do because they were kids. In other words, the police in this county could care less about trespassing, destruction of property, animal abuse, or any other crime committed by a juvenile, so long as someone doesn't get shot in the commission of that crime. Only then will the police intervene, which is why the department's gang task force is an absolute joke. After all, the kids in those gangs don't usually start out with murder. They usually start with the smaller stuff. Isn't it better to intervene then than wait until the kids go on a killing spree?
Basically, my only recourse is to live a life with the blind shuts and the dogs inside. I can't sell the house thanks to a combination of the economy and these kids. I can't rent it out for the same reason. I can't speak to their parents because I know from past experience with those parents that they just don't care, but like I asked in the beginning of this post, why is that?
Parents used to care. I have said this before in this blog, and I'm going to say it again. When I was a kid, if I had ever done even a fourth of what these kids have done (just do a search for the term "neighbors" on this blog to get a clue of what I'm talking about), my mother would have torn my butt up. I'm not saying she ever beat me; she didn't, but there were times I had to go to the backyard and pick out my own switch. I'm sure I'm not the only one reading this blog who did. Meanwhile, if I had done even half of what they have done, I guarantee you that my grandfather would have shipped me off to military school or one of those alternative places where you have to kill your own food. They have those in Georgia. I even know a guy who had to go to one.
The thing is I would have never even thought to do those things. I knew what the rules were. I knew what my mother expected of me, and I knew what time I had to be in by (and it was not 12:30 a.m. like it seems to be around here). I also knew that, if I broke those rules and expectations, I was going to be in trouble when my mom got home.
Now before any of you answer my question by blaming it all on parents who work or single mothers, you should know that, after my parents got divorced, my mother worked full time. She didn't really have a choice, seeing as my father only paid child support once in a blue moon. At first, we had to go to daycare after school, but eventually we moved up to my grandparents' house and then our own as we got older. Thus, there were plenty of times that we were unsupervised, yet we never acted like the kids around here. Even if my mother wasn't looking over our shoulders in person, she was there in spirit, and we did not want to get in trouble with Mama.
I remember there was one kid on our street who acted like the kids in this subdivision do--Rusty. Rusty tore up fences. He broke car windows. He hit neighbors' dogs, including my own Pekingese once, yet when he got caught doing those things, he was held accountable. His mother would take hold of his arm, march him down to the victim's house, apologize for his behavior, and then make him apologize. She never blamed the victim. She owned up to having the kid from hell.
The mothers in this neighborhood don't do that. The few times that they have managed to get off their behinds and see what's going on, they have just made excuses for their kids' behavior. Nine times out of ten, these excuses involve blaming you for whatever their precious angels did wrong. Kids banging on my fence and house? Dog feces in my mailbox? My doorbell being rung at 10:30 at night? The pine straw in my flower beds being dragged into the middle of my yard? Well, according to the parents, I just brought those things on myself since I'm just oh-so-mean and always glaring at their babies. (Funny, the glaring didn't start UNTIL they did those thing, and, as with stray dogs, I try to avoid direct eye contact.)
The mothers never apologize. They never make their kids apologize. They don't even tell the kids not to do it again. For all I know, they're patting them on the back and buying them a toy for a job well done the minute the kids get inside.
Why is that? Are all kids like this now? Are all parents? If they are, then why? Is it global warming? The economy? Violent movies and video games? A secret alien invasion?
Seriously, I want to know why bad behavior is now rewarded instead of punished because here I am 33 and not getting any younger. As it now stands, every time my biological clock even remotely ticks, the kids in this neighborhood come along, yank it out of me, throw the clock's battery through my front window, and stomp its gears into dust. At the rate I'm going, I'll be in early menopause by the time I'm 35.
