Bad Boys

Children are curious by nature. They like to explore and investigate.. They are fascinated with the world of adults and would badly want to become adults themselves . So, we see the young girl wearing her mom's shoes and the boy trying his father's necktie, and later on she would secretly use her mom's makeup and accessories and he would steal his fathers cigarettes or even his car.

All these are normal things that most teenagers may go through. But what bugs me big time is that when children lose their cuteness and innocence at a very young age and start acting and talking like grownups. I hate to see an eight or ten year old girl wearing high heals and huge earings, dying her hair or even wearing makeup! For God's sake she's still a child and not a teen yet! What's even more disturbing is that when boys start to think about or even be obsessed with matters that are too big and too complicated for their age.

I totally understand that some kids can be aware of sensitive matters like sex at the age of 10 or 12, sometimes after or sadly before that, but what I cannot perceive is the parents' ignorance of their boy's early adolescence and the circumstances that caused it and took the boy to an advanced stage where sex becomes all what occupies his mind and determines his actions.

In my first year as a teacher, I was asked once to take the place of another teacher who had to leave for some reason. It was my first time in grade seven and my last one too. The class was working on some worksheet that their teacher prepared for them, except for one who didn't take his eyes off me from the moment I entered the classroom. I asked him to kindly direct his attention towards his paper instead of wasting his whole time staring at me. After that he started asking me questions every now and then, what's this word, what does this question mean, etc... then he was almost whispering while talking to me so that I get near and closer to him to hear him well. I was explaining something to him when I noticed that he wasn't paying attention to the paper and to what I was saying at all, instead, he was drawing closer to me looking at me in a very strange way. A filthy disgusting look that got on my last nerve. I could barely believe that I was just almost harassed by a seventh grader!

In the same year, a fifth grader used to throw rulers and stuff under the girls desks so that he takes a peek at their legs and underwear. In grade three, there was a boy who was caught more than once drawing pictures for naked women. His parents were contacted and asked to keep a watchful eye on their son, but unfortunately we didn't sense any change in the boy. Last year, we also faced one of those weird exceptional cases where a second grader (seven years old) used to do things that went far beyond anything we could imagine a seven year old boy would do, and used to leave us in utter shock and bewilderment, like bringing porn magazines to school, opening his pants zipper to show the girls "something interesting", utter bad words to them, and tell them that he'd love to do so and so with them, etc... In this case too, the parents were contacted, but in vain. We, the teachers, could no more deal with this boy as a child. To us, he became just like a man whose mind is always occupied with dirty thoughts.

I feel very sorry for such kids. I feel sorry that their innocence and naivety for some reason have been snatched away this early. The kids are not to be blamed though. I blame negligent parents who think that raising kids is only about giving them food and clothing.