Do they have a negative reputation and if so do they deserve it? Do teens have sufficient access to suitable leisure facilities and youth centres etc? Do teens feel valued by adults in society?
I think most teenagers these days are just to lazy and can't be bothered to get off their butts to do anything to help themselves. We never had leisure centers or youth centers. they need to be able to occupy themselves how are they going to cope as adults if they can't direct themselves in a positive direction as teenagers. Self discipline is what they need.
i have two teenage lads and they have got into a bad crowd recently but when they are on their own they will do anything for me i think a lot of pressure is on teenagers to fit in with the in crowd or stand out like a sore thumb and get picked on. My eldest lad was had just joined his secondary school a few years ago and it was not the first choice so therefore a lot of his old friends at primary did not go. Yhe result my lad was assaulted by 30 teeneagers in the school because he came froma different school. I thnk the law should give parents and the school the right to disipline kids as we are to soft with them now.
When didn't teenagers have a negative reputation? A small minority of any group will always be an excuse for people to label the whole lot. I think there are perhaps more pressures on everyone these days as we live in a consumer society where we have the media/advertisers telling us what everyone else has. Things that should be perhaps be considered as privileges are demanded as 'rights' & there is often little incentive to work for something. Respect is, as lisa points out, a two-way process. We should respect each other as people - individuals, not as 'packaged' groups of society.
I will probably get marked as unuseful but as a teenager I didn't have access to leisure facilities and youth centres and never caused the chaos and mayhem that some teenagers are creating. Teenagers seem to be asking for more and more to be laid on for them so I think it is rather hard for previous generations of teenagers to feel overly sorry for them as we have to make our own fun and our own fun didn't involve vandalism, grafitti and annoyance. I don't think that all teenagers deserve the bad rap that some are causing but I also think that those who are causing the problems are not being dealt with harshly enough and therefore there is not real reason or consequence for them to stop. Do teens feel valued by adults in society? Personally I don't respect a lot of teenagers as they have not shown me any reason to. The ones I know who treat people with respect and are great kids I treat with respect in return and do value them. Just my personal view and there will probably be heaps who disagree with me.
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