How can any parent do this?

CKhalvashi

Unholy angel, I agree with you 100% here.

My DD's were outside the office this afternoon waiting for me to finish with pressure washer and hoover, and my car, another managers car, several company cars and 3 of the company vans were left immaculate, and they've been given £40 each from the fleet budget (I'll probably end up putting it back), as they wanted a few new PC games and were told they had to earn this money.

It's not forced labour, it's not child labour, I give them both pocket money, and if they want something over this, they have to earn it. They actually asked if I wanted anything doing.

I'll only let them do it if they've got no homework, but they're in the office for 2-3 hours on the average weeknight, and as I mentioned the other week, they enjoy it, it teaches them the right signals, and it keeps them out the way of us on Operations!

CK

Leo2020

I'm not saying what she did was right but so much stereotyping on here.

My son's middle name is Xander. I don't live on a council estate but the area I live in is classed as deprived.

I live there because that's what me and my husband can afford. I was brought up in a nice area but even with a large deposit we could not afford to live in the same area as my parents.

But apparently this makes me a bad Mum and some sort of scum to be looked down upon.

Lagoon

RuthnJasper wrote: »

What a world. Kids don't understand money, or social stigma, at that age - all they want is reassurance that they are loved and trusted. And that doesn't cost anything.

I agree completely about not understanding social stigma. I knew money was an issue. I knew we shouldn't have been living off as little food as we did, in the kind of properties we lived in (which ranged from alright council-houses to drug addict-infested flats hidden out of sight and caravans parked on lawns), however it never ONCE occurred to me until I was in my teenage years (and actually quite late into them) that we were that annoying 'chav family'.

I had plenty of other things that made the people where I lived look at me and treat me the way they did - set apart from my family from a very young age, I thought everyone liked my family and JUST hated me.

I didn't even consider that the whole family was getting any kind of judgement, and it wasn't really until I left home that I realised we were 'that kind of family'. The neighbours (elderly on both sides) must have heard all sorts of screaming, shouting, swearing, smashing and crashing through their walls on a regular basis, for a start. I live next to a single mother with teenage girls now, and I hear their normal arguments so have no idea what the neighbours heard and thought! We wore scruffy clothes from charity shops, a lot of 'loud' and fluorescent stuff, and sportswear. Then, in summer, we were the family that had a BBQ with no consideration for others, turning some rubbish music up so loud that the entire neighbourhood could hear. The adults would get drunk almost daily, and even ruined a relative's wedding by shouting abuse all through the speeches, and it wasn't uncommon for them to buy multiple scrap vehicles and take up all of the parking spaces with an intention to 'do them up' that never became a reality.

It's true. As a child, some of what you experience is 'normal' to you. I knew I shouldn't have been being treated the way I was, and I knew we were 'poor', but I didn't recognise that the whole family were behaving inappropriately because I was being raised by them. If people talked, they talked behind our backs and only gave looks of disgust. Nobody said anything, and the neighbours were extremely tolerant, but I can imagine their thoughts when the previous neighbour unfortunately passed away, and this new family tore into town with their scrap metal, abusive behaviour and loud dance music. Oh dear.

piglet25

Every day I see more and more headlines about little children being murdered, battered, starved, tortured and abused and I know no one might agree with me but I have to say that sometimes the child is better off when they do pass away because with the lack of official intervention, and the unwillingness of the neighbours to intervene or try to find out exactly whats going on the horror would have been endless. I have been reading lately about the little boy who was starved, and was eating out of bins in the playground and it has to be said - what the hell were the teachers doing? If a child is starving, and he was described as similar to a concentration camp victim body wise, why the hell didn't they do something? or the other parents? How the hell do they sleep at night? I would never ever forgive myself if I had been in a position to help a child and didn't act on it, even if it ment a personal cost to myself.
The whole country seems to be losing its sense of responsibility and community and its only going to get worse - if you ever have any worries about a child please act on them

PILES

ThumbRemote wrote: »

Top stereotyping. Well done.

There is usually some truth in stereotypes. You would do well to remember that.

Valli

Leo2020 wrote: »

My son's middle name is Xander. I don't live on a council estate but the area I live in is classed as deprived.

I live there because that's what me and my husband can afford. I was brought up in a nice area but even with a large deposit we could not afford to live in the same area as my parents.

But apparently this makes me a bad Mum and some sort of scum to be looked down upon.

Don't think Xander was mentioned as a chav name - partly because the chavs couldn't spell it.

Anyway, it's not just where you live but how. Apart from anything else you're 'up' already, what with being married and all;). Now as long as you're selective about your TV viewing you'll be fine;)

PILES

Leo2020 wrote: »

I'm not saying what she did was right but so much stereotyping on here.

My son's middle name is Xander. I don't live on a council estate but the area I live in is classed as deprived.

I live there because that's what me and my husband can afford. I was brought up in a nice area but even with a large deposit we could not afford to live in the same area as my parents.

But apparently this makes me a bad Mum and some sort of scum to be looked down upon.

Is that short for Alexander? Thats my middle name.

Timalay

I think people like this, should be castrated.

sweetstudent

Timalay wrote: »

I think people like this, should be castrated.

I can think of worse things that should happen to them!

RuthnJasper

Valli wrote: »

Don't think Xander was mentioned as a chav name - partly because the chavs couldn't spell it.

Anyway, it's not just where you live but how. Apart from anything else you're 'up' already, what with being married and all;). Now as long as you're selective about your TV viewing you'll be fine;)

It was in Lou67's post - #18.

There is good and bad in each and every example.

Xander is quite a nice name really and, personally, I wouldn't put that name amongst the other given examples.

In actual fact, it was chosen by a very respectable and nice couple of friends as a name for their first son. The reason being that the mother had told her late great-grandfather shortly before his death that she would name her then-expected baby son in his honour. Unfortunately (and understandably) it did not occur to her at the time that she and her husband had a double-barrelled surname, the initials being S-S.

The great-grandfather's name was, inevitably, Alexander.

Less-emotional consideration of the promise and the reality of the subject at hand made them aware that they could never inflict the initials "A S-S" upon their baby son. However, a promise IS a promise, and so they called the baby Xander. Not chavvy at all.

Leo2020 - NO-ONE is suggesting that you are somehow deficient as a parent; please don't draw that conclusion from this thread. xx