To intervene or not????
Hello, i’m back after a long hiatus!! i am revitalised and ready to blog!
What i am aim to discuss is the matter of where the boundaries of personal and public behaviour meet!
When people’s behaviour become erractic and maybe even incling towards mental or physical breakdown/ damage, when do we as outsiders intervene? Psychologist and many an older person will atest to the general public’s reluctance is evidence of modern societies decay and malaise.
We are very risk averse as a community. we would see our young people bullied in the streets, see them tear each other up and fight, very rarely does anyone apprehend them or admonish them; yet we cry about the rise of street gangs, not recognising the link. we allow these gangs when we allow kids to fight and be bullied without consequence, we have become scared of our own children and gangs prey on that.
These gand leaders prey on our kids like paedo’s they groom them, give gifts, create an artificial community with it’s own rules and codes and modes of behaviour. It’s a sense of belonging and a strong community these kids get in these gangs , whilse we outside the gangs fail to give the kids a decent community on the outside.
when growing up, as well as being made aware of manners and correct attire, i had a community with it’s eyes trained at me. if i was involved in any mistemeanour the elders of my west indian community would have the news back to my various family members faster than text messages,twitter, facebook or any modern innovation. Futhermore my parents would have been dissapointed and upset and my elder relatives would have been furious that i had shamed them.
But now well some people think they know better than to raise children in the manner that people have been raisng them for millenia/ or centuries depending or not you believe in creationism.
The effect of a community was secondary in my development of a sense of moral and civil behaviour.But for some that extra support could be that extra protection from harm.
If you saw someone exhibiting strange or worrying behaviour what would you do? Now i am not including in this anything like dangerous,violent or psychotic behaviours just to be clear. would you approach them? would you call a police community support officer, would you just run like hell, would youwalk by and then worry about them and what happened to them.
It reminds me of the case last year of the cyclist that died in a street, he was passed by 3 cars and no-body until the 4th car thought to call for help, he lay dying in a street and nobodygave him any aid.
it just makes me sad, he was somebodies son, maybe husband, maybe father. But we are so risk averse that 3 cars drove past and this man expired, because of a lack of altruism.
so in that sprit today i intervened in some troubling events. I walked uo to see two grown women and they were arguing and a sullen child was being clutched by one woman, they child was kicking her.
The general gist was that one woman was talling the other that she shouldn’t tell her child off. the mother was furious….. i had to step in. the child was wild and contraditing the mother was just making matters worse. the childless woman was advocating that the child would learn what was right from what was wrong by not being informed, she was reasoning that shouting was just barbaric. Great i love it i thought, undermind the child’s primary caregiver right in front of the child! she was not smacking, nor beating, not even pointing.
so i simply walked up and offered ” lady you’re being very inapropriate, she is not hitting the child, she’s shouting because being kicked hurts and that gets the message across!” the mother looked gratified, the childless woman gave me a dirty look and just threw her hands up and left.
But what would her version of the world end up like? where people just let children do what they wanted and they made up their own morality? But then again this woman was the exception, she was doing exactely what i am advocating, but it shows that some people care enough about the society in which we raise our children, which is always a good thing.
