Lack of Parental Control

Leaders of our neighbors to the south – Columbus – are considering a curfew for teens in at least one area of the city and the pushback has already started.
Columbus is not the first place to do this.
It was about 2006 or 2007 and I was in the mall in Panama City, Florida. At 8:45 pm the mall’s speaker system cut from the background music with a voice reporting the time and saying that all teens not accompanied by an adult had to vacate the property and parking lot in 15 minutes. Being the inquisitive person that I am, I had to ask why and the answer was a curfew because of mounting problems caused by unaccompanied young people.
Sound familiar?
My wife works in Columbus. Specifically, she works in an area that not many years ago was considered upscale, but not so much today. When she closes, my wife is usually among the last to leave because she has responsibilities that – quite frankly – puts her at some risk. To mitigate the risk, I am present those nights my wife closes, staged near the doors so I can see and intervene should something bad develop. As the other women leave, I watch from the time they exit the store until they are secure in their cars. Many of them wave and speak as they pass by. I am there until my wife exits the building and I am not unarmed.
Beginning last fall there was a group of teens, guys and gals, that started congregating in the parking lot at night. They parked in areas that did not disturb those businesses still open. They were relatively quiet, no obnoxiously loud radios, no shouting or screaming profanities, no racing car engines. They did not bother anyone, so no one bothered them.
Apparently, word spread and other groups began gravitating to that parking lot as well and they were not as well-behaved. They paraded around in the parking lot with their radios deafeningly loud. They seemed to get some pleasure out of driving fast over the speed bumps and they appeared to have little regard for the safety of those leaving stores heading to their cars. I have seen them cutting donuts in the parking lot, sometimes nearly hitting other vehicles. Their behavior had gotten so bad that very recently Columbus police officers started sending them away.
THE proposed curfew in the Columbus downtown area has drawn considerable attention and comments on social media, with varied opinions including that young people have nowhere to congregate.
I would think the business community in downtown Columbus would welcome young people as additional customers, but again the young people would have to police themselves and that rarely happens — or at least not for very long.
The difference between the two groups of young people noted in this column is directly attributable to the parents and how these young people were raised. Parents either did a good job in raising their children or failed miserably and everyone else pays the price. And before people begin whining about the proliferation of single-parent families and those inherent difficulties – until she married my dad, my mother was a single parent. I know others that came from single-parent families, or blended families, that did a great job raising the children.
THE world that many of us grew up in is gone and is unlikely to ever come back, but that does not excuse today’s parents for failing to teach their children how to behave.
That failure could lead to such a curfew not only being established, but expanded to include other areas in the city with parents being held financially, criminally, and civilly responsible for the actions of their children.
As they should be.
That’s my opinion.
Andy Kober can be reached by email at andykober@hotmail.com