h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bbadger:
"it´s sad how many of my *thick* school friends have ended up in prison"


Teasswill:
"teenagers were occupied"

If those friend of BBadger had been taught considering their abilities and at the same time how to manage their emotions and how to understand and interpret other´s people emotions, they would have been a bit more fortunate, perhaps.
Howard Gardner´s books like Frames of Mind, or any other about his Multiple Intelligence theory, now put into practice in some schools, should be read and known by parents, teachers and whoever interested in improving society in general.

The "occupied teenagers" mentioned by Teasswill were probably doing something in relation with their abilities.
Vocational Training should be promoted. Academical knowledge shouldn´t been considered like the only aim, not all people have to go to University. (at least in Spain, parents consider a failure if their children don´t go there)

I agree with Teasswill,there´s not a simple answer to account for so much rudeness and violence

I have to say that's a fair point if kids have a learning disability. Though there must be ways of dealing with their behaviour. :like was said about the boy with autism being able to undo catches and latches, and his mum adapting how she approached the front door with him.

I remember hearing of kids who've been believed to have ADD or ADHD and when their diet is looked at, it turns out to be e-numbers or something.

Teenage moodswings are mainly caused by hormones and can't be controlled. In the past, teenagers really were occupied with work. They either helped out their parents or were learning a trade. My grandfather had to work on his parents farm. Teenagers now have way more free time than their peers from the past.

The 'trouble' children are mostly produced by not caring parents. Kids are placed in front of the TV instead of being talked to. And some parents are to lazy to deal with their children when they do something wrong. Instead of telling them what they did wrong and handing out a suitable punishment they do nothing at all.

Parents need to be consequent and stick to their decisions.

Some friends of my parents, a couple and a single mother, had sons about the same age. They both fell in with the wrong crowd and started smoking marihuane. The couple did nothing, saying it was 'just some phase'. They came home once and the house was in shambles. Now the boy is about to completely fail school. His parents never were consequent. Dad said no to one thing, mother allowed them to do it anyway.

When the single mother found out her son was smoking cannabis, she did research and located programs that helped getting him away from that. She gave her son a choice: Pick one of the Programs and stick to it, or I will find the strictest boarding school there is and send you there. The boy found out that he was interested in music and got away from the cannabis.

In most cases, the children are not the problem. It's the parents that don't care.

I agree with Pris.
Some should think twice before having a baby. I call some of my pupils the Pets, their parents thought " let´s have a baby, they are so cute!" and now they neglect them ( is not proper to throw them to the river as some do with snakes, crocodriles, turtles...)
There should be a compulsory subject about that. Usually, common sense is enough, but that is the less common of senses.

Good one, Otto! (post 3)

<> (Beatrice)

And I would add Spanish to that list. About 90% of the time Spanish children are very well-behaved in restaurants ... I put the other 10% down to maybe the kids are feeling tired or bored. Thing is, Spanish kids are taken out *everwhere* from almost the day they are born and so they learn to socialise very early on.

When I lived in Canada and England I used to cringe whenever I saw there were small children in a restaurant, frankly because they were so often rude and noisy and it really was upsetting to other diners.

In Seville I haven't noticed this problem. Simply because kids seem to know how they are meant to behave in a restaurant (in tapa bars they are a bit 'noisier' but so is the ambiance there so it doesn't matter so much).

I remember going out for a nice meal with Nog and there was a big family table next to us with a few children. And the parents allowed the kids to wander around when they got bored, which ended up being quite charming when a kid showed up at our table to say hello. I said hello back and asked her name and told her mine, then she ran back to her siblings to tell them this new information. But it didn't feel intrusive at all.

Small babies on the other hand . . . yeah, I know. The parents want to get out and have some sort of normal life. But when the baby starts screaming *please just take it outside for awhile until it calms down!*.

In my experience, bringing babies to the cinema is the worst, especially when the parents don't remove the screaming baby.

As for corporal punishment ... it's my opinion that when a parent has to resort to this then they have already lost the battle.


az

Some parents definately have a lot to answer for. You see the ones who don't give a toss ever. I've seen ones as well who pretty much let the child do whatever they like until something happens when they just let rip instead of stopping the situation long before it gets to that point.

I'm a parent. My son is 7. but, like so many of you I also believe that the parents are mostly to blame for unruley children.

It takes such a little amount of effort really, to teach a child the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavour. And if you start the training when they're small it's so much easier than dealing with a 12 year old tantrum.

I find myself constantly reitterating my own son's 'training' while his friends seem to get away with murder.

One mother I would gladly slap sometimes, (Don't but would) her son has learnt from her that the bigger the paddy, the bigger the choclate bar he'll be bribed with. GREAT! while I'm teaching MANNERS she's teaching tantrums get you what you want!

- And when my son trys this trick on me?

he has to quickly realise that this is not how it works.
Bad behaviour loses benifits (treats, sweets, time on the computer etc) and good behaviour gains these things.
like I was raised - firm but fair.

I don't think we need corpral punishment. maybe a national program of educating parents. either that or, if a kid is bad - cane the parent for not bringing them in line. maybe then more of these 'parents' would show more interest in their own childrens behaviour.

As for taking a baby to the cinema - why? as if a baby would be the slightest bit interested in that environment.
who are these people? what were they thinking? it certainly wasn't 'what's good for my child?'

Sorry for the long rant but just one more thing...

My son is the centre of my world. My whole life had to change when I had him, as do most parents. How is it that so many (it seems) people have missed this part? why have children if you're not prepared to try to give them whatever help you can growing up in this confusing world.

most kids just want the loving attention of their parents. (that, and the occasional pillow fight!)

Didn't we?

I have a seven year old daughter.

She is as good as gold and we don't hit her or beat her.

It's simple and here's how:

1. My wife and I back each other up in everything that we do - our daughter never gets a different response from either of us (If one parent doesn't agree with something then we support them at the time and discuss it later when our daughter is not around).

2. We always and I mean always do what we say we'll do. We never make idle threats. Never threaten to do something that you are not prepared to carry out. If you always go through with it the child quickly learns the boundaries.

3. Reward good behaviour.

4. Make a list of bad things, hitting, biting, kicking, shouting, running off, not listeing, not doing what you have been asked to do etc. Basically this is a list of all the things that you don't want your child to do.

5. Make a weekly chart - each new week gets a fresh clean new chart, (a fresh start) split into the days of the week, each day subdivided into shorter time segments (ours is three, morning, afternoon and after tea-time).

6. Bad behaviour on your list gets a cross in the relevent time segment on the chart. Three crosses and a toy gets removed. To be replaced only if the child is completely good for the whole of the next day. More than two crosses in one day means no television or computer (I should say here that television and computer time is restricted to just half an hour each per day just after tea and before bathtime - this is relaxed a bit at weekends and can be as long as it takes to watch a film).

7. If she's good for a whole day she gets 10p. If she has no crosses for a whole week she gets £2.

And that's it. No shouting, no hitting, no squabbles. Just crosses on a chart and sometimes very few toys and no television or computers for a day or two.

We never buy her something to shut her up. We never shout at her (well rarely !). We always praise her when she's good and my wife and I always support each other.

And we have fun!

She's extremely well behaved in restaurants, by the way, and I hate kids who aren't.

See ya

I've heard a lot of parents say that charts work really well. Maybe they work so well because the child can actually see more clearly how behaviour and consequence works?

We were out shopping today at our local ASDA store, and since we are both disabled we tend to stay well clear of other shoppers as we are both a bit slow, and don't want to hold other up. We came across this family which had three kids, aged about from 6 to 12, they were all so loud and rude we could not believe it, they were running around screaming and playing "catch" by running around barging and bumping into all the other shoppers.
One of them even knocked my walking stick out of my hand causing me to stumble

I was expecting at least one of the parents to check this child, but no, they just looked around, saw what happened and waked away, (taking up the entire isle as they were walking side by side with one of the largest trolleys) So no one could get passed them?
We could not believe this, and can only imagine what those kids are going to be like when they grow up.
Smudger.

Sadly, Smudger, they will probably be running the country when they grow up . Or maybe robbing it !

askme1

Yep, and society as a whole has a few, too...

I hope you mean, by 'corporal punishment', severe beating.
A short, sharp slap can have salutary long term effects (best if you can judge it to surprise more than hurt - make a big noise, without much mark).
Which would you prefer, a slap in childhood or a prison sentence later?
But yes, it must be done immediately with a child, else the effects are separate from the cause.
(That's something I dislike about our judicial system - a trial can be weeks or months after the misdemeanor/crime has faded into the background)

Civilisation is founded on self-discipline.
Very, very few of us learn about self-discipline without having some form of discipline externally imposed.
Much the best if you can do it with persuasion, lists and so on, but that's not always feasible.

I really like askme's discipline plan. And I agree that the most important thing is to be consistent. Kids feel safe when they clearly know what the boundaries are, even if they don't like them.

I also like what Cristalblossom had to say.

Meanwhile, let's not get into generalising about what badly behaved small children will be like when they are 'running the country'. Because nobody knows what sort of positive influences they will come across during their adolescence or early adulthood.

<> (Cristalblossom)

Oh, I wish I'd had even some of that! I reckon that I'm supposed to be one of those who are *ruining our society* now because of how I was brought up (basically raised by wolves, with apologies to wolves everywhere). There was no positive or consistent discipline, just chaotic rules that we could never understand, and then lots of violent punishment whenever the goalposts were moved. Which ended up with a childhood spent in fear, and then anger, about what was going on around us.

When Nog and I were in Lisbon last June we visited a historical site and there was a father patiently explaining all the history of the place to his 10-year-old son, and both of us got a bit choked up - both because it was lovely to see that and also because it was something that neither of us had ever known. And so we hugged each other, looking at this kid who was so obviously loved, non-verbally sharing what we had missed out on and all the emotions that went with that.

And then we went to have a cold beer at a terrace under the trees and remembered how lucky we were to have each other now.

az

Hats off to askme and crystalblossom for their kids! I'm impressed and it's great to hear. I just hope you're in the majority in this area.

I 'm embarrassed to hear what happened to Smudger. It's so sad to hear of such obvious rudeness. It cracks me up in general when you find people blocking an entire aisle in the supermarket anywayu, but such a deliberate act of rudeness....

There were discipline plans like the ones mentioned when I was young, there was only two; the fist of the boot! and I never turned into a criminal or indeed a bad person, I just learned, very quickly, how to duck and dive
I do think however that this P/Correct stuff that we are getting rammed into us these days, has gone too far, and its time we stopped pussy footing around with these louts, and got some self respect and discipline rammed into them, no matter how tough it is for them

Smudger.

There were NO discipline plans like the ones mentioned when I was young, there was only two; the fist of the boot! and I never turned into a criminal or indeed a bad person, I just learned, very quickly, how to duck and dive
I do think however that this P/Correct stuff that we are getting rammed into us these days, has gone too far, and its time we stopped pussy footing around with these louts, and got some self respect and discipline rammed into them, no matter how tough it is for them

Smudger.

I´ve met a lot of parents due to my job.
I´ll try to classify some of the most usual ( Im from Spain, but human condition is the same everywhere, so it can fit here)

- The " my child? really?" one: they don´t want to know anything troublesome about their lovely child. You as teacher must work out the problem by yourself. They are whether stupid or have only a few minutes left to be with them and do not want to spend that time telling off or applying discipline ( I know it´s hard to do it , but it MUST BE DONE, I´m a mother too)
- The " ok, never mind, how much is it?" parents that consider that money can fix, do, solve ANYTHING. The children are wild, they break, push...never mind, we have money, money give you power and we can do whatever we please,my Dad says that. My Dad is a winner.He earns a lot of money.
-The "ok,take the money, go out and leave me in peace" parents of teenagers. They lost control of the boy/girl some time when s/he was a child. Very sad this.

I´ve teaching teenagers for a few years, This course is the first time I teach primary pupils. I feel quite vocational now, I keep "Great Expectations" about me being able to switch any emotional device inside them and try to help them manage their feelings, solve calmly their problems, behave in a sympathetic way... that is mainly the most appealing problem: lack of empathy. It´s a plague.

I´ve also met many students that, despite having really stupid, dumb or just unable not bad, but useless, parents, they have survived them.
Also , the reverse, but just few. When I meet parents in a tutorial interview I can understand in a few minutes their child. Children reflect almost 99% their parent´s education or lack of it.

Relax.

Well at least if you're now teaching priomary school kids maybe you can have a bigger impact and get in there early before they become delinquents.