I saw a video with a little boy outside at night with grown adults. He looked no older than seven or eight. In the clip, he called a drug addict a crackhead, hit him, and ran. That alone was bad enough, but what made it worse was how normal it all seemed. He should not have even been outside at night, let alone feeling comfortable enough to act like that around adults.
When I saw it, I said that little boy would be in jail or hell before 18. People got offended by that, but I was not joking and I was not trying to be cruel. I was saying what too many people are afraid to say out loud. Behavior like that is not cute. It is not funny. It is not just kids being kids. It is a warning sign.
What bothered me almost as much as the video was the reaction. Some people said pray for him. Others acted like everybody in the video was disrespectful except the child. That kind of thinking is exactly why so many boys stay on the wrong path until the consequences get serious. People confuse truth with cruelty and excuse making with compassion.
Let me be clear. I am not condemning a child. I am condemning the lack of supervision, the lack of correction, and the adults who keep letting obvious dysfunction slide. Prayer matters, but prayer is not a substitute for parenting, discipline, structure, intervention, therapy, and real guidance. You can pray over a child all day, but if nobody is putting him in the house, checking his behavior, watching who he is around, and correcting what is going wrong, then the streets will keep teaching him instead.
And the streets are brutal teachers.
People love to act shocked when boys end up hurt, locked up, or dead. But many times the signs were there early. The disrespect was there. The aggression was there. The neglect was there. The adults laughing instead of correcting were there too. Sometimes truth sounds harsh because the situation is harsh. Pretending not to see it has never saved anybody.
#Parenting #MentalHealth #Society #Youth
