Responsibility

Summer vacations are almost here, so it is time for one of my bigger pet peeves. I do understand that today's world means most parents must work at least one job in order to survive; I know many families putting in 50 hour work weeks or working two jobs each to afford cars, health care costs, houses, insurance, utilities, and the likes.

My issue is with teenagers in the neighborhood. We struggle financially, but it is a choice we made. I was not having my children growing up without parental supervision. My kids are responsible, polite children, much like my brothers and I were growing up. Yes, we did our "bad" things, but our "bad things" were usually reserved to crossing the river to sneak up to the waterfall, staying up past our bed times... Typical children reactions...

In my neighborhood now, I watch teenagers hanging from the hoods of their friends' cars while racing down the road to see IF they can stay on around the curve near my house. ATV's driving all over other people's lawns with no respect for boundaries or property rights. There are issues in this neighborhood with eggs being thrown at houses, dog poo placed in empty mailboxes, mail stolen from houses where people are often gone. Around here, mailbox baseball is all the rage, so my husband and I created what we thought was an indestructible post and mailbox. It worked for quite some time. Our neighbor's mailbox was hit half a dozen times, but ours remained untouched. Until one day, witnesses saw a car full of local teenagers back up their station wagon and run it over twice. We'd put in an 8 foot length of 4 inch steel piping and filled it with concrete, I know there has to have been serious damage to that car's front end and undercarriage. Police do their best, but can't patrol around the clock and local teens know it.

Which leads me to my question, where do the parents come in to all this? Can your child really come home with a seriously wrecked car and still be allowed to drive mom or dad's car? Why do people let that happen? I don't think television is to blame at all, despite what some will say. I think too many people are leaving their latch-key kids at home and those bored children want attention. A child who WANTS attention will often take the worst route to ensure they get it...