Yesterday’s parenting techniques required to stop crime epidemic.

There is an epidemic happening in this country and the government has no answers.

I am not talking about a spike in omicron cases or winter flu, I am referring to the outbreak of crime conducted by children.

In recent weeks media outlets have carried stories of teenage ram raiders targeting an Auckland shopping mall.

We’ve heard of children as young as seven years of age being found in the early hours in a Hamilton shopping mall targeting a toy store.

Teenagers involved in car jackings, violent dairy robberies and the list is starting to grow.

Why is this outbreak suddenly happening? Is it cyclical as the Police say?

Because of the ages of some offenders, it sounds bad, but children and teenagers have been involved in crime for decades.
think back to the teenage ram raids where dairies were targeted for cigarettes, where teens emulated the movies the fast and furious around city streets with cop cars chasing them, the boy racers particularly notorious in Hamilton using suburban streets for whatever.

Young offending has been going on for a long time, but I even I must admit it is at the stage it is now out of hand and becoming an epidemic.

Small business owners could suck up the loss of profit from the odd shoplifter, but with margins the way they are today, many are now facing uncertainty because of the measures they are having to go to protect their assets.

Across New Zealand there are many dairies owned by people who are open all hours trying to eke out a living, possibly making less than the minimum wage, who are being forced to spend a fortune to erect bollards, smoke canons, metal mesh gates and fences for protection.

They have looked to the leaders of our country, to the law enforcement agencies, and even to their neighborhood for protection.

Apart from the platitudes they hear, nothing gives them assurance that crime will not stop.

The opposition has said several times this government is soft on crime, while the government defends its record of putting more police on the streets.

The Minister of Police has even appealed to the community for more help.

While everyone stands around with their hands in their pockets shrugging their shoulders and staring down at the ground, the answer is obvious. It must come back to a question of parenting.

WE have an ideology promoted by the New Zealand Government where the nanny state knows better about bring up your children.

This is the same nanny state idea where this stupid idea of letting the village raise the children of New Zealand.

Can I say that villages are now filled to overcapacity with people who have no parenting skills left?

So, my question is what type of children is it the village is raising?

The escalation of crime conducted by our children can be put down to, many things.

It can be, the mandate passed down from the government to the cops to be soft on crime,

It could be because of the tough economic times we are facing, but it can’t be because they are hungry. It’s not food these kids are stealing, electronics, cigarettes, toys.

We can blame everyone and everything else for the way our children behave, but let’s not accept parental responsibility.

And yet, if we were to return to the way grandmothers brought their children up, this epidemic would stop.

There are several factors at play but kids, as they do with every generation, only follow the examples that surround them.

They are imitators of the culture they live in.

A culture with a decline in responsibility, a culture where there is a lack of morality, a culture of truly little integrity, and a culture built on self-entitlement.

You cannot sit there and accept you have no responsibility for the way these children are acting.

We let them be taught by an education system which has no moral shame, a place where they are taught, they are nothing special a place which encourages them from an early age where there is no need for respect for one another and where they are taught and encouraged to keep secrets from their parents,

We as adults make available all types of entertainment.

Pornography which objectifies women is freely available as is video games where acts of violence are rewarded.

We have a government who don’t see a lack of truth as a casualty of society, but most of all we have a country which stopped instructing our children of a responsibility to a higher authority through the Bible in Schools program.

We are not blameless in this epidemic.

We as families need to stop and review what our role is.

On the news following a recent funeral for one of the four young people killed in a horrific car accident in Invercargill a spokesperson for this young boy’s iwi mourned the loss of this teenager.

He said he mourned in two ways, one way was for the family for the loss of their son, but he also mourned the loss of the future for his iwi.

It’s true, every time we lose a child, we lose a part of our future.

We need to bring our families back to the dinner table, back to being a family and the first thing we need to teach our young ones is respect.

As parents we need to show respect to our partners and your children. You need to show how it’s done.

We can send the kids off to school, but you, don’t learn how to live and how to act from you.

If your child is a mall in the middle of the night, this is on you, don’t blame society, look in the mirror and ask yourself, how did this happen?

Last word: Many people these days dismiss God, they dismiss the word of God found in the bible, but here’s the thing, when people live in a God honouring way there is peace in the land.