"Schoolies"

[mantra]

Since when are children adults since when can they just do whatever they want.
Have you parents eschewed all responsibility for your children?
All control?
Don't your children respect you and your wishes?

Some of us have raised Gen Y kids. I'm sure you've read about them. They have minds of their own.

[Rorschach]

Gen Y eh.... they mutants or freaks or something are they.
Parental responsibility and control... respect and self control... something parents should instill in their children.

[boxy]

Kids get drunk, and do stupid stuff every weekend, all over the country.

The main difference with schoolies, is that thousands of them are all in one place, and the media don't have to expend much effort to get the sound bites and vision of idiocy that they crave.

[Rorschach]

Kids get drunk, and do stupid stuff every weekend, all over the country.

I never did.
None of my friends ever did.

Kids who get drunk are doing so illegally... do they like being criminals? Do they like disobeying laws? Are they just plain stupid?

Like I said, in my day kids didn't have the money to do this sort of thing.
Their parents wouldn't have let them.
Only rich people did this sort of thing, only they could afford to.

[Black Orchid]

It doesn't matter how good a parent you are. Kids still get influenced by their peers and the more you try to restrict them the more they may rebel

Schoolies are generally 18+ so you have to allow them some responsibility and freedoms and hope that all you have taught them holds them in good stead

[Rorschach]

If you haven't brought up sensible kids by 18 you've been doing something wrong.

[Black Orchid]

There are thousands of kids on the Gold Coast for schoolies. There was one bad thing. Yes, very bad and very sad but we should assume the rest were all reasonably "sensible"

You can't wrap your kids in cotton wool just in case they might mix in the company of ferals. You can teach them everything you know but eventually they have to find out for themselves. Schoolies are young adults. Not primary school kids

We can arm them for all eventualities but ultimately they have to live and learn it themselves

[AiA in Atlanta]

Certainly tragic for the parents but students will have their fun regardless ...

[mantra]

Kids get drunk, and do stupid stuff every weekend, all over the country.

I never did.
None of my friends ever did.

Kids who get drunk are doing so illegally... do they like being criminals? Do they like disobeying laws? Are they just plain stupid?

You might have had 2 straight religious parents raising you. A lot of children today don't have that (unless they're Muslim). In fact the majority of children these days are absent a parent and usually the mother has to work. During the Howard era - the latchkey kid was established. Most children go home to an empty house. They grow up without the same sort of care previous generations gave their kids when parents were more accessible. Children today are brought up by technology, advertising and consumerism. It's sad because they're not equipped to deal with reality.

Like I said, in my day kids didn't have the money to do this sort of thing.
Their parents wouldn't have let them.
Only rich people did this sort of thing, only they could afford to.

Did your mother work? Mothers who don't work today are a minority.

[Jovial Monk]

When I finished HS in '65 the legal age at which you could buy alcohol was 21. When I left school I was 18 so my intitation into alcohol came when I was at Uni Drugs were not common either, that came with the hippies later in the 60s.