What is happening with children nowadays?

Nowadays the respect seems to be going away, the care for the things we have seems to be going towards "if it’s broken I’m going to get a new one" instead of "if you break it you lose it" kind of attention.

I remember growing up that if my parents bought me something I had to care for it because I didn’t get another one and that parents worked hard to get it for me. I was taught that money came from hard work and I should respect that.

If I broke someone else’s property or things my parents had to pay for it and I was going to get punishment in the way of being grounded for a few days or sometimes if the damage was great enough, I was going to get some form of physical punishment (yes I did grow up when that kind of punishment was allowed) NOT that I do agree with this kind of punishment. If I and my friends annoyed or we damaged someone else’s property intentionally and we got caught we risked that person to retaliate or take us to the parents to make sure they got compensation.

Nowadays it seems that children are not afraid of any kind of retaliation or punishment due to the fact that most of the time they can’t be touched in any way because of their rights that I don’t think they understand or know why they are in place.

I think that the rights that the children get nowadays are not explained properly to them. They know that they can’t be punished physically, but they don’t understand that the reason for this is to avoid extreme punishment that some of us grew up with, and they do whatever they want because nobody will touch them.

I saw once a group of children coming out of a fast food place with food and drinks and they decided it was funny to throw the drinks (which I can imagine were not that cheap and they didn’t work for them) towards a bus waiting in a bus stop. They literally threw the cups of milkshake into the bus through the open doors and they had so "much fun" in doing so without any regard to the fact that they could have hit someone, that they made the floor of the bus slippery and that the bus driver had to cancel the trip and return to the garage to get it cleaned. I know that because I was sat on that bus going home and the driver asked us to wait for the next one.

Whenever something broke in the house and was beyond repair I was allowed to open it and explore its insides with my dad explaining what he could. He let me stay around him to see what he was doing whenever he was fixing something and let me help him any way I could which usually translated in me fetching the tools required.

I do understand that nowadays you can’t really fix your radio, your phone or any appliances you might have around the house due to the fact that its components are usually quite expensive on their own and that it might be more cost-effective to replace rather than repair.

But my point is that children seem to be losing respect for hard work and other people’s property.

A couple of years back I owned a small motorcycle that was kind of abandoned in a bike shed. One night some teenagers decided to break into the said bike shed and pull out my old and dusty bike and started breaking stuff off it, like the indicator lights, started kicking it and just damage it for the laughs. What I didn’t understand (I still don’t) is: why the damage? Why not steal it and joyride it? Or steal it for the parts? They were just damaging it for no apparent reason. I’m not saying that stealing is good but I would have understood that. You steal something to gain something in an easy way not just to thrash it and probably you won’t take care of it if it breaks because you didn’t care for it (joyride part).

I have seen kids around my block getting their hands on a (probably) broken laptop and they just destroyed it by playing football with it and throwing it around with no apparent curiosity towards how it was made and to see the different components in it and to try to discover how it worked.

They don’t understand that getting good grades in school is not the same with getting through school just because the system can’t drop them out and wants them to have a chance in life. I have seen children looking at school like a playground where they can do whatever they want because they will not get any form of punishment that they truly understand.

Sometimes I think that the parents are so busy trying to make a living that they don’t really have the time necessary to give a good home education, that they rely on the school and teachers to transform the children into capable adults.

How many teenagers know today how to change a light bulb without calling dad to do it? How many will try to fix some old lamp that they knocked over? How many of them expect us adults to replace the old with something new without regard to any chance of repair?

You will probably tell me that I grew in a different time and nowadays things have evolved toward a better society but have the respect for other’s people property, for other people, for their own property decrease over time? Shouldn’t we try to teach the meaning of hard work?

Probably I live in a bad neighbourhood where the education part of a child is neglected a bit or maybe I see only the bad children and I expect them to be good or maybe I have too high expectations. Or maybe we need to look at how our children play and try to steer them towards a healthy way of thinking.

I don’t know. But I hope I will be able to raise my child in a way that I think correct and responsible and end up with a good human being that cares for other people or someone else’s property.