One wrong move

In many of our major cities today and some not so major, there is a juvenile crime problem. Not delinquent type troubles, no they have progressed to carjacking, robbery, assault, and carrying guns. And I hear from the experts the reason for that is, the kids don’t have anything to do. They’re just bored!

I hear proposals to entertain them. They should be provided with professional level services; every piece of equipment or instrument they want to occupy their time. They should have structured programs that will empower them, inspire them to become contributing citizens to our society.

Well, when I was a kid things’ were a bit different. Bored, have nothing to do? Mom and dad could find plenty for you to do. And you had better do it right! The objective, as a kid was to be like a ghost. If you had any sense at all, you knew not to draw any attention to yourself.

You learned that lesson quickly by acting like a delinquent. We believed there was a delinquency officer roaming the streets just looking for you. Additionally, any adult, at any time could stop and detain you! Your parents would thank that individual and then administer punishment for them having had to do so! You were guilty. There was no discussion.

I think a lot of this started with that Dr. Spock book about raising children. I still subscribe to the spare the rod and spoil the child method of raising kids. Like Barney Fife would say, you have to nip it in the bud! Yes, fear is a great motivator! As a kid I really didn’t want to “find out.”

There has to be rules, structure and enforcement. A breakdown in any of those will lead to problems. You don’t need a degree to understand any of that. Because I said so, is enough for a five-year-old!

Do that and by the time they are ten they understand why they shouldn’t do whatever it is they are planning to do. It simply isn’t going to be worth it! It isn’t about being entertained, it is about reward. I may decide to take a risk, you know like snitch a candy bar from the 5&10, but if I get caught, I understand there will be no mercy! No discussion, no appeals, no analytical reasoning, the hammer comes down!

Yes, it is all about consequences. That is what we were taught growing up. Consequences were a bad thing. Consequences never involved a reward. The final result of an action is consequence. The trick was to get the reward you wanted, not suffer the consequences of any actions you took to get the reward.

It was like taking that candy bar. You might enjoy eating it, satisfy that sweet tooth but that was a temporary thing. If you were caught it definitely wasn’t going to be worth it, no doubt about that. Not even close. You would be humiliated, shamed and possibly ostracized! You didn’t know what ostracized meant, but you knew you didn’t want that.

If you did something positive, something good that made the adults happy, you might get a reward. It was best when they didn’t know that was your objective. You did have to learn to be subtle about that, practice a bit of deception. Not deceit though, that’s a bad thing, a bit of misdirection, deception, when done properly goes unnoticed. You got the reward, not the consequence.

One wrong move