Most of my thoughts have been covered in the earlier replies to your comment - bad parenting is certainly a factor in some cases, but at the same time we have some parents who come along and tell us that they have no idea what's going wrong with their kids. In a lot of cases it seems that the only thing going wrong is that they live on the wrong estate, and their kids are getting mixed up with others who encourage them to do things they shouldn't.
I've certainly seen that almost all of them are perfectly nice one on one, but once they get into a group setting they can be utterly horrible (I've been called a cunt by a seven year old girl for telling them they need to let someone else have a go on the xbox). Society has a lot to answer for, in telling people that they should be the centre of attention at all times, and have everything that they want whatever it takes.
Its a really difficult problem to solve, and if I'm brutally honest, I think a large part of the generation growing up now was lost years ago. Our organisation exist to work with seven to twelve year olds who are particularly bad, and even at that age there are a few who I have little doubt will spend their late teens and early twenties in prison. That largely comes from growing up in a culture where nobody has achieved anything for generations - and so they've been told from an early age that they won't either, given that sort of background the odds of working hard to make it are pretty slim.
On the basis of your comments, I applaud you for your volunteering efforts. It seems to me that an important way of reducing "bad parenting" is helping people to not become bad parents in the first place.
May I ask which organisation it is you do this work through, and how you got involved? If you'd rather not say then don't worry.
Thanks, that's the idea. None of us are really qualified to do much more than attempt to provide a positive role model to kids who don't really have any, and every now and again it actually seems to work.
The particular organisation I'm working with is the Forest Estate Community Hub, in Egham, which is run by my church. I ended up getting involved mostly because I was one of a few people who thought something like the kids club we run was needed, and in a small church the only way things like that happen is if you step up and get on with it!
The closest we get to a web page is a Twitter account at https://twitter.com/ForestEstateHub, which gets updated both with the kids club, and various other groups that use the building.
I've certainly seen that almost all of them are perfectly nice one on one, but once they get into a group setting they can be utterly horrible (I've been called a cunt by a seven year old girl for telling them they need to let someone else have a go on the xbox). Society has a lot to answer for, in telling people that they should be the centre of attention at all times, and have everything that they want whatever it takes.
Its a really difficult problem to solve, and if I'm brutally honest, I think a large part of the generation growing up now was lost years ago. Our organisation exist to work with seven to twelve year olds who are particularly bad, and even at that age there are a few who I have little doubt will spend their late teens and early twenties in prison. That largely comes from growing up in a culture where nobody has achieved anything for generations - and so they've been told from an early age that they won't either, given that sort of background the odds of working hard to make it are pretty slim.