No surprises (only disappointment) in this article on Upworthy.

The article is about a viral video on Tik Tok by Lisa Conselatore, an experienced teacher.

Her point is that everyone is blaming the epidemic of misbehaviour and disrespect by children today on COVID, whereas it is actually and issue of culture and bad parenting. Parents want to be their kids' friends more than they want to be their parents. As a result, they do not discipline their offspring at home, so that when they go to school and then to work they do not have the necessary social skills and attitude to succeed. Lisa Conselatore talks, in her video, about kids believing that they are always the most important person in any room; whatever happened to the Victorian idea that children should be seen and not heard? Children brought up with this severely mistaken attitude have serious problems coping with being in the same room as another child who also thinks they are the most important person there. At work, in a meeting, this attitude results in chaos.

It is, of course, possible to be your child's friend, but not at the expense of being their parent; this is similar to the balancing act of being someone's boss as well as their friend: it is possible, but requires care, so that the person (child or employee) is always clear when they are being spoken to by their parent/boss, and when by their friend. Some people cannot manage this balance; for those people the message is clear: being the parent or boss is more important than being the friend, so stick with that.

This can also be seen as a problem of conflict avoidance by parents. We see, time and time again, how parents will avoid enforcing discipline (especially in public) so that they (and bystanders) don't have to suffer the tears and tantrums they know will result. As everyone should understand, every battle over discipline that is deferred is a battle doubled; giving way rewards the child for bad behaviour and reinforces that behaviour; winning that lost ground back is very hard.

COVID is part of the mix, in that children spent more of their time at home instead of at school, summer camp, playing sport or hanging out with friends, thus exposing them to more bad parenting.

We are now raising a generation of children who are ineducable and unemployable. This is doing them no favours in their adult life. The attitudes with which we are imbuing our kids are probably the main cause of the entitlement that is so rife in the workplace and so evident on the Internet.

Since this story appeared on the BBC at the beginning of March, there have been a number of related news reports, and quite a stir on Facebook. A lot of the public are not pleased about the idea of kids playing no-tackling rugby.

I do understand that there are real health issues. I myself have a permanent injury from playing rugby (sustained as an adult, though, not as a child), and many people have far more serious injuries from the game.

The thing is that most versions of rugby which have no tackling also have no scrums or rucks. These games are therefore very different to play in, and also to watch. Although (at least so far) the plan seems only to stop kids from playing real rugby up to the age of 18, children will not learn how to play real rugby from playing touch or tag rugby, and this will reduce the number and skill level of people going into rugby as adults.

I really doubt that tag rugby will ever become a popular spectator sport, because no-one really wants to watch such a sport. Rugby League and Rugby Union are very popular spectator sports, and Rugby Union is an important part of the international sports scene.

So let’s be realistic as we discuss the ban on tackling in school rugby: we would be also signing the death warrant for the sport for adults too. If that is what people decide, then fine, but let’s not let the side-effects on the adult sport catch us by surprise.