Attitudes to kids and teens.

[floppit]

I used to work in children's rights and wound up fighting both sides (not so much the kids but both sides of adults). I fell out with some of the most militant children's rights people over wanting something 'unreal' a sort of strange behaviour where children are schooled up to speak out and oddly end up saying exactly what the activist groups who school them say. That and, more importantly, the kids themselves often made more sense to me than the children's rights adults! On the other side of the fence were those so entrenched in a culture of deference only to one's own age group that in a large room they'd herd themselves into an adult corner rather nervously, the ones who produce visible beads of sweat if faced with talking to a kid - and they ALL worked in childcare (although the latter not usually directly!).

I learned from this experience that I'm quite capable of falling out with everyone on the subject of kids, and I will freely admit I'm arrogant about my own approach with kids, just as I will equally admit I stuff it up and fail miserably at wooing many adults to share my point of view.

So this is what I think:
I think babies, children, teens and adults all need people and guidance sometimes. At the baby end of the scale is complete dependence and total adult control, at the adult end is self determination, not total independence, but choices over who to lean on, where to go and what to do - plus tons of other stuff and a mobile phone on contract. Between the two there needs to be a sliding scale of freedom, one that extends alongside ability, and with that comes allowing increasing choices and risks, the first thing I taught my baby was how to point so that I could give her a choice (but I still controlled what she chose between!). By necessity, if such a philosophy is correct children must be allowed risk in order to be prepared for adulthood. So I believe in children's right to choose, even the need for it - but a little at a time building slowly so that as they approach adulthood in teen years they have a foundation of experience to draw on. In other words I'll fight for their freedom and for the lack of it where adults must be responsible, and that bit is an adult responsibility to decide, and an adults fault when invariably we all cock it up sometimes.

I think children and teens are people, by that I mean while I don't and wouldn't hold back on being clear where the differences are between a child and an adult, I also remember that those differences are not so fundamental as to make children more unlike us adults than they are like us. Whatever is said truthfully about teens is also probably also true of adults - to some extent. Thinking that children are a different species, whether they or we do it is bollox, profound and total bollox. I also think it has arisen from westernised cultures that legally and physically force people into only knowing their own age group, most kids spend 5 days a week with people no older or younger than them by more than a year, apart from a teacher who is by default apart. This curse re appears for the olds, day centres have a minimum age, I once worked a shift in one where the staff were ruled to sit and eat on a separate table to the olds - pure fuckwittery. Even when I looked around a small nursery for munchkin I was shown each year by year room, carefully separated - needless to say it had me running back to the chaos of the childminder where munchkin is bumped into, tripped over and taught ring a ring a roses and how to count by the older kids. These things are not innate in old people, teens, or toddlers, in other countries they actually mix, I mean talk to each other, know each other - all that human shit we teach in courses for trainee youth workers so they know just what to do faced with..... du du durrrr a teen!

Then there's the press and how people talk about kids, no way in hell would half of what's said be acceptable to say about other groups, yet it is sadly reflective of comments about groups of 'others' where separation is entrenched to the point it's seen as needed.

Anyway - I hope 2 things are clear, one being that yeah, like most folk when they try to say what they really think - of course I think I'm right! And that it isn't just about the other thread - that did bring it to mind but it so so isn't just or even surrounding internet site membership!

[JimC]

floppit wrote:

...I also think it has arisen from westernised cultures that legally and physically force people into only knowing their own age group, most kids spend 5 days a week with people no older or younger than them by more than a year, apart from a teacher who is by default apart...

Very interesting post, floppit, and one I generally agree with, with a few reservations here and there. As a teacher of over 30 years, the quote I extracted is interesting to me. I teach in a boys school (which is a bit weird, I suppose, but there are some arguments that single sex schools have some educational advantages)

Out in the yard and oval, the boys are rushing around playing endless games, mostly with their classmates, but with some crossing of the age boundaries. We also have a "big brother" program where the older students organise activities for the younger ones, which seems to work OK...

Basically, I like the energy our boys have, and I like chatting to them outside class, where you see a different side to them, when they are not struggling to solve quadratic equations...

[Rum]

Interesting and stimulating post Floppit, as so often.

Not to be flippant but I just think adults are kids who have lost their way..

[maiforpeace]

I used to work in children's rights and wound up fighting both sides (not so much the kids but both sides of adults). I fell out with some of the most militant children's rights people over wanting something 'unreal' a sort of strange behaviour where children are schooled up to speak out and oddly end up saying exactly what the activist groups who school them say. That and, more importantly, the kids themselves often made more sense to me than the children's rights adults! On the other side of the fence were those so entrenched in a culture of deference only to one's own age group that in a large room they'd herd themselves into an adult corner rather nervously, the ones who produce visible beads of sweat if faced with talking to a kid - and they ALL worked in childcare (although the latter not usually directly!).

I learned from this experience that I'm quite capable of falling out with everyone on the subject of kids, and I will freely admit I'm arrogant about my own approach with kids, just as I will equally admit I stuff it up and fail miserably at wooing many adults to share my point of view.

So this is what I think:
I think babies, children, teens and adults all need people and guidance sometimes. At the baby end of the scale is complete dependence and total adult control, at the adult end is self determination, not total independence, but choices over who to lean on, where to go and what to do - plus tons of other stuff and a mobile phone on contract. Between the two there needs to be a sliding scale of freedom, one that extends alongside ability, and with that comes allowing increasing choices and risks, the first thing I taught my baby was how to point so that I could give her a choice (but I still controlled what she chose between!). By necessity, if such a philosophy is correct children must be allowed risk in order to be prepared for adulthood. So I believe in children's right to choose, even the need for it - but a little at a time building slowly so that as they approach adulthood in teen years they have a foundation of experience to draw on. In other words I'll fight for their freedom and for the lack of it where adults must be responsible, and that bit is an adult responsibility to decide, and an adults fault when invariably we all cock it up sometimes.

I think children and teens are people, by that I mean while I don't and wouldn't hold back on being clear where the differences are between a child and an adult, I also remember that those differences are not so fundamental as to make children more unlike us adults than they are like us. Whatever is said truthfully about teens is also probably also true of adults - to some extent. Thinking that children are a different species, whether they or we do it is bollox, profound and total bollox. I also think it has arisen from westernised cultures that legally and physically force people into only knowing their own age group, most kids spend 5 days a week with people no older or younger than them by more than a year, apart from a teacher who is by default apart. This curse re appears for the olds, day centres have a minimum age, I once worked a shift in one where the staff were ruled to sit and eat on a separate table to the olds - pure fuckwittery. Even when I looked around a small nursery for munchkin I was shown each year by year room, carefully separated - needless to say it had me running back to the chaos of the childminder where munchkin is bumped into, tripped over and taught ring a ring a roses and how to count by the older kids. These things are not innate in old people, teens, or toddlers, in other countries they actually mix, I mean talk to each other, know each other - all that human shit we teach in courses for trainee youth workers so they know just what to do faced with..... du du durrrr a teen!

Then there's the press and how people talk about kids, no way in hell would half of what's said be acceptable to say about other groups, yet it is sadly reflective of comments about groups of 'others' where separation is entrenched to the point it's seen as needed.

Anyway - I hope 2 things are clear, one being that yeah, like most folk when they try to say what they really think - of course I think I'm right! And that it isn't just about the other thread - that did bring it to mind but it so so isn't just or even surrounding internet site membership!

As always a wonderfully thoughtful post.

I too was drawn to the same comment you made that JimC noted. I have participated regularly in a secular chatroom (initially as a moderator of the chatroom that RD.net used to run) that had a wide mix of teens from both Europe and the US. What I have observed, just through conversation and comments that the teens have made is that this separation between the adults and young people is even more distinct and pronounced in the US. It's a clear case of "us" and "them" to US kids. I might be grossly overgeneralizing, but I found the European teens to be more emotionally intelligent at younger ages than the US kids. They were much more comfortable interacting with me than the american kids were when they first met me. Even after they knew me, they were the ones most likely to want to tell secrets.

(although, there were never any secrets really - pm's were monitored specifically to ensure that teens were not preyed upon by predators)

I also found that many of the bright, intellectually intelligent kids, that freethinking and atheism attracts are often outcast and bullied. They have fewer teens of their own intelligence level to hang with, and if they live in certain areas of the south it's much rarer for them to have friends who share their beliefs as well. As a result they end up spending a lot of solitary time at home, or on the internet, further isolating themselves from real socializing. In my opinion internet socializing is not enough to help develop a teen's emotional intelligence.

[Feck]

I'm a kind of beady sweat hide in the corner person near kids I didn't like many of them when I was a kid And I like less now.
I try not to show it I think they can sense fear .

[floppit]

Very interesting post, floppit, and one I generally agree with, with a few reservations here and there. As a teacher of over 30 years, the quote I extracted is interesting to me. I teach in a boys school (which is a bit weird, I suppose, but there are some arguments that single sex schools have some educational advantages)

Out in the yard and oval, the boys are rushing around playing endless games, mostly with their classmates, but with some crossing of the age boundaries. We also have a "big brother" program where the older students organise activities for the younger ones, which seems to work OK...

Basically, I like the energy our boys have, and I like chatting to them outside class, where you see a different side to them, when they are not struggling to solve quadratic equations...

I wouldn't pretend for a second to have been in every school yard, and I'd be the first to acknowledge that wherever separation exists there will be those who don't, people that do, and are determined to mix. I felt at times I was in charge of a group that I was separate by default, but there were other times even with the same kids that it felt less so. A bit like your chats outside class I had the phone calls to arrange stuff and sometimes just to see how someone was getting on. I used to keep a jotter by my desk that had current boyfriends/girlfriends names in it, I could not remember because they changed so much but by writing it down I could ask after the most recent with confidence - things like that, I also used to ask the kids to ring me when they got exam results in or were waiting for any big news. I think that connection outside of being in control was so important it was always worth the effort but it never took away the feeling of being slightly apart when the next meeting came. That distance was another thing I fought over with the children's rights bods, they wanted the kids to chair meetings but the kids didn't, they wanted to try but not to have it all if that makes sense - mind you they weren't the world's most confident kids!

My school life was bloody awful, with a couple of memorable exceptions the school seemed to ooze a culture of division. We had a maths, RE and English teacher all with different styles, all of whom had no problem controlling a class but also felt trustable, on the flipside there were sports teachers who encouraged bullying actively and teachers who were more interested in doing the bullying themselves.

I was really lucky in other ways though. I started working on Saturdays at 14 and went to full time work at 16 so through the majority of my teens I had a mixed age group of real friends - I also spent my early childhood growing up in a cafe!

Mai,
I think the internet is valuable but I agree it is sad if it's the only outlet. The other thing is it being the internet, being something that people don't have an equal access to and somewhere where literacy effects image can create a different looking world. I've stayed physically quite close to the very poor area I grew up in and (it could just be my own slant) it seems to me that it retains more rather than less interaction between the generations, grandparents still look after grandchildren X days a week, the younger generation, some very young mum's, know I grew up there and are accepting of me as someone a bit bookish. Since attending Surestart (a scheme for Mums based in my home area) I've helped with 3 application forms and some of the staff with NVQ or evidence gathering/justification work. I've only lived down south for 3 months of my life so I haven't a clue whether any of these things are different there, but I would say retaining what community people can is a part of northern pride - no utopia, just something people in the north see as part of their identity.

Rum,
Rum, I wouldn't be a teen again for all the tea in China! I haven't lost out (don't think I have?) getting older, but I also wouldn't wish away the time I had young.

Feck.
I can appreciate the feelings, that's how I used to feel in big meetings with adults - neither of us are free of prejudice, but I'd hope we both smudge the edges over time. At least you aren't trying to make a living from kids, the people I was talking about were and it's that incongruity that used to rub on me.