[apitaru]

I find it interesting that this is what you took out of the story. I'm not suggesting it's wrong. My immediate reaction was:

1) These kids are evil. 2) Are they spoiled rich kids? 3) How do I reduce the odds of my kid behaving like that in 10 years.

btw - I'd like to hope the kid who video-taped it knew exactly what he /she was doing. Maybe a silver lining in an otherwise depressing bus ride (that and the 100k).

[Estragon]

The kids are probably in even greater need of compassion than the lady they were harassing is, because they probably learned this attitude at the core of this behavior from their parents.

[DugFin]

Mmmmm..... as someone who works for a huge school district with hundreds of schools with students running the gamut from poorest of the poor to richest of the rich, I can tell you they didn't LEARN this behavior from their parents. Rather, they have never been taught to NOT behave like that. Even those with decent parents will sometimes act like horrid little turds. The natural state of the 12-13 year old Middle School Child is that of a vicious, immoral monster. Most will eventually mature into normal, empathetic humans, but at that age, they're ALL terrible.

I neither feel compassion nor hate for them. I detest them for their behavior, and think what they need is some sort of long, unpleasant punishment (e.g. grounded for 4 weeks, during which they clean out the Augean stable) but this is not worthy of any permanent judgement.

[cslacasse]

That is the immediate reaction of most decent people that read the story or watch the video. The problem with commenting about how horrifying it is is that it's not a unique observation and therefore not that interesting.

I am really interested in your third point about preventing this sort of behavior. Contrary to what most parents will say, almost all teenagers are capable of this sort of behavior given the right (or wrong) sequence of events paired with peer pressure. The job for us as parents is to teach our children to be aware of negative influences from peers so that they can either avoid or stand out against things like this.

How do we do teach them? Not sure. But we MUST figure it out before they find themselves in situations like this.

[apitaru]

> The problem with commenting about how horrifying it is is that it's not a unique observation and therefore not that interesting.

Fair enough. But again - this wasn't a judgement. Maybe I expected a quick vague reference to one of these obvious points.

> How do we do teach them? Not sure.

On one side kids will be kids. On the other hand, adults fail in similar ways, sometimes spectacularly - and then millions of people are allowed to die (Sorry for the dramatic delivery).

These situations have a certain 'smell' to them, which I think kids can identify. Maybe it's not as stinky as stealing, but there's definitely a fragrance.

It'll be great if we can have a red light blink in their heads at the point - an inner voice saying:

"I know what's going on. It's just as wrong as stealing. Option 1: stay away from the situation. Option 2 (better): fine a way to stop it."

How do we teach our kids that it's wrong to steal and lie? I'm guessing here: Train them to defer instant gratification in favor of a higher ground.

I hope I don't sound silly. I'm a young parent and Bob Dylan is playing in the background.

[gwright]

1) These kids aren't evil and certainly aren't beyond redemption. They do need to be disciplined (i.e. they need to see there are bad consequences for their inappropriate actions).

2) I can't understand why the wealth of the parents is a concern. I don't think this behavior is correlated with wealth.

3) Be a parent and not a friend to your children. Discipline them when they mess up (and they will mess up in big and small ways). Don't feel bad about it, feel good that you are reigning them in before they show up on YouTube.

[ebrenes]

To steal a quote from Forest Gump: "Evil is as evil does".

I don't believe evil is an immutable property of an object; these kids were evil by virtue of their actions. I also believe that, yes, children can be evil. That they don't know any better is a testament to the lousy job their guardians have done in raising them.

[gwright]

OK, but that isn't what you wrote. It is one thing to say their actions "are" evil. Quite another to say the kids "are" evil.