'I'm not saying my boys are angels - but they’ve got behavioural and emotional problems.'Or, as MacHeath points out here, is that hoary old chrestnut simply being used as a means of avoiding the 'bad parent' tag, and accessing the resources of the State to cover inadequacy and laziness?
Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteI knew you wouldn't let this one pass; it's a textbook example of 'someone else's fault...'
'Walker [...] claimed she should have had 'more support' from the authorities to curb her children’s behaviour.'
Neighbours have been documenting incidents for 4 years, which means the boys were already a problem when aged 7, 8 and 9.
According to another article, Walker also has a 'teenage daughter'; since she is 32, applying the usual chavrithmetic gives a not unexepcted answer.
Like so many other problem families, this one almost certainly started with a parent who was not yet legally an adult and whose emotional and rational development seems to have been arrested at that point of adolescence.
I also knew you'd be unable to resist Julia. What got me in the Mail article was the bizarre justification of:
ReplyDelete"They have been blamed for all the crimes but I needed more support".
That is so close to I'm innocent of murder M'lud but he well got what was coming to him...
[Council for the Defence weeps uncontrollably into his wig.]
No surprises there. Give 'em an excuse and they'll use it.
ReplyDeleteAlso I just spotted this from Ms Walker in the Mail:
ReplyDelete"Walker claimed other children on the estate caused problems. She said: 'My kids have been difficult but all of the children used to congregate near our driveway."
Another bizarrely self-defeating evasion.
Parenting is a skill that takes an entire childhood to learn.
ReplyDeleteIt can't be learned from 'first principles', nor can it be taught with a short course either.
Who is to blame? Not the 'bad parent' but the society that enables (and encourages) people like her to get trapped in procreating and that fawns over 'patchwork families' and other dysfunctional set-ups like priests used to over repentant sinners.
The Victorians used to say "spare the rod and spoil the Child"
ReplyDeleteI think they had a point
A consequence of providing incentives to breed to those least likely to raise their progeny to responsible adulthood..?
ReplyDeleteI've said it before: that this took four years of complaints is indicative of the problem. Insufficiently rapid escalation is giving free rein to the ferals. The authorities seem to have abdicated all responsibility, at which point 'taking the law into your own hands' becomes a matter of doing the job the State will not do. The touchy-feely progressives are suffering from a failure of imagination. Either that or they are actively seeking vigilantism.
ReplyDeleteI'm must err towards David Gillies on this one. The fact that he said it before must make it true.
ReplyDelete"I'm not saying my boys are angels - but they’ve got behavioural and emotional problems" ...
ReplyDeleteOdd really but when I was a kid in the early 1950's, I knew certain other kids who weren't exactly "little angels" either, they were in fact, right little buggers ..
But back then, kids knew who their Dads were (the man married to their Mums) ..
In those days, Dads used to give their wayward children a thick ear when required .. for embarrassing them in front of the neighbours ..
And I certainly never heard tell of anyone suffering from "behavioural or emotional problems" .. Whooping Cough, Chicken Pox, Scarlet Fever or Mumps yes .. but not pathetic, conveniently invented, excuse ailments ..
Laughably, they describe the level to which we've descended these days as being "progress" ..
The problem is that this is happening in every town.
ReplyDeleteWitnesses scared to give evidence and the CCTV pointing the wrong way means that they do not go to Court often enough. And when they do go they never get a meaningful sentence.
'Ma Baker' and family will move on and some other neighbourhood will suffer.
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ReplyDelete"Neighbours have been documenting incidents for 4 years, which means the boys were already a problem when aged 7, 8 and 9."
ReplyDeleteAnd shows just how long it takes to get anything done, as David Gilles points out.
"That is so close to I'm innocent of murder M'lud but he well got what was coming to him..."
Heh!
Dunno why I'm laughing, though. That sort of defence probably works now!
"A consequence of providing incentives to breed to those least likely to raise their progeny to responsible adulthood..?"
Spot on! Still, as anon pointed out, it keeps a lot of people in employment.
"'Ma Baker' and family will move on and some other neighbourhood will suffer."
Sadly very true...
It's amazing how many emotional and behavioural problems end when the offender has been given a good hiding every time they make someone's life a misery. In the worst case scenario - on an estate I used to live on and which was terrorised by three teenagers who set fire to cars, smashed windows and mugged elderly ladies - it was found that a broken arm and kneecap tended to concentrate the mind somewhat.
ReplyDelete