I’ve had a feeling for a number of years and it’s regularly reinforced, that something is going very wrong with the early development of some of the members of our society as a whole.
When I was quite young, in the 1950′s, most of my entertainment and that of my contemporaries was self developed and a lot of mine involved roaming over an approximate half mile radius of my home.
My mother always asked me where I was going and who I was going with but I cannot remember her ever refusing to let me go. We used to ride our bikes over some undulating waste ground or go to the marine lake to catch crabs (with a worm hooked on a bent pin, tied to a reel of cotton) or go to the large park nearby, for several hours at a time.
We had a really good time, we had some good exercise and we built on our relationships and it cost nothing! – BUT the main point I’m getting to is that we always felt safe, our mothers felt safe and I can’t remember anything bad ever happening in those early years.
So where have all the generally unsavoury characters come from since then?
Were they always out there, lurking in the shadows but too afraid of what a much more coherent society might do if they made the wrong move or are they a phenomenon which has grown from virtually nothing over the last half century?
Is our society now so fractured that it increasingly produces the sort of people who seem capable and willing to perform any sort of objectionable act in order to satisfy some deeply held belief which was impressed on them from an early age by parents, carers and contemporaries – The research confirms that everyone’s values and beliefs are set in concrete by adolescence!
Did this behaviour evolve from recessive genetic coding, a loveless upbringing or the lack of a friendly ear, at an early stage in life, which could have listened and coached some of the fear, anger and anxiety out of a young person’s life, allowing them to grow up as a relatively normal human being?
We shouldn’t need to commit ever burgeoning resources to apprehending criminals and putting them away in prison – We should be concentrating on developing positive values and beliefs in our youth from an early age, not waiting until they commit an offence so we can punish them!
I’m a life coach, which suggests the above means a great deal to me and I do have the experience and great satisfaction of coaching at least one young person to success, by any definition – IT ISN’T DIFFICULT!
And the results are amazing.
