Are there any answers to this?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21582725/
After reading that, I have a few lines of thought on the subject.
1) When I was a teenager (a couple decades ago), we occasionally hung out at the mall. I don't remember it being a problem then. We often walked around and chatted. Often we browsed. And even spent money! Nobody worried about curfew at the mall unless it was a weekday and you were supposed to be in school. (Like when I was in college and got carded by the mall security guard who thought I was skipping high school classes.)
2) Is this legal? Can they really ban certain groups of people from the mall? Can we take this another direction and start banning elderly people at certain times because they walk too slow? Or can we ban strollers at certain times because they block an expedient walking flow?
3) Telling them to stay out of the mall will just move them somewhere else. Next thing you know you'll have roving gangs of kids wandering the ailses of Target. Or Piggly Wiggly.
(Ok, this is starting to become more than "a few lines". Whups.)
4) And when crime starts going up in some neighborhoods, and the residents start hollering it's because of "these kids who have nothing to do", I wonder if they will blame the malls for kicking the kids out.
5) Whatever happened to good old fashioned respect? Why are there roving gangs of kids intimidating folks in the mall? Why do they have no sense of courtesy? (I know, that was more of a rhetorical question....)
6) And why lay a rule flat out banning ALL teens instead of just holding the poorly behaving ones accountable?
After all those thoughts, I will add - my hubby, being a cop, can legally carry a concealed weapon at anytime and almost anyplace. He normally doesn't. We live in a pretty decent city overall. However, when he goes to the mall, he carries. And as a family, we have some entertainment watching the gangs that occasionally hang out. It's fun to try and figure out what one common denominator they have such as they're all wearing something blue or they're all wearing items only on their left side. I think everything is just symptomatic of a larger problem: kids with no or very poor adult guidance. (Such as the mom and daughter duo recently busted around here for stealing a car to drive and get more drugs. Wooo Hoo!! What good parent/child bonding time!)
Then there's always the *nature vs nurture* argument to throw in here too.... I'll save that discussion for another time.
posted by Mel @ 6:17 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I don't know what to think about this, to be honest. You are absolutely right on many of your posts. Our towns? Have nothing to do for the kids. Absolutely nothing. And that's all the kids complain about... they are bored to tears.
Just the other day when riding around with a nephew who is now 21, he was talking about some kids who were injured in a drunk driving accident and he said, "If you are going to get wasted, stay where you are! That's what I do." His mother said, "I don't want to hear about you being wasted. Why do you need to get wasted?"
And he replied, "I'm old enough to drink. And I don't drive when I do it, so what's the big deal? There's nothing else to do in this town. That's all there is."
And for the younger set? The teens? There is seriously nothing. Bowling. Movies. That's it. And the prices of both are skyrocketing. And how many teens enjoy bowling? Some do, true, but the bowling alley is closed down to all but league bowlers much of the time. And it's smoky and a bar is attached.
At the same time, I've been to the MOA prior to them introducing the ban back in 1996 and it could be a somewhat scary place if you were shopping alone in the evening. Granted, I didn't do alone shopping often, but...
I want teens to have things to do. I personally defined mallrat when I was a high schooler. It's what we did. And I was there during the day. It was the place to go when skipping school.
What is the answer? I certainly don't have the answer.
Thought provoking. You rock, Mel. ;)
I should've known Keri would speak up on this one :)
The MOA Policy is:
"We welcome all youth to Mall of America®, however on Friday and Saturday evenings youth under 16 must be accompanied by an adult 21 years or older from 4 p.m. until close. One adult may supervise up to 10 youth. Anyone 21 years or younger should be prepared to show a driver's license, state identification card, passport, or Mall of America employee identification card during the Parental Escort hours."
And, I know exactly why that's the policy. The mall is just too big for them to afford the staff necessary to patrol it & keep the shoppers safe; it's much easier to just post guards at every single entrance.
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