Chris Shaeffer said:
If you don't EXPECT crap from a teenager you're on crack.
-C
I don't expect crap from any teenager, or any adult for that matter. Kids that are brought up in an environment of respect and caring from adults don't talk like that, and they don't act like that. The rules aren't any different for them than they are for adults, or for kids. Do onto others and all that. If you want to be treated with respect, earn it by first treating those around you with it. Hip-hop has just given the youth of today a musical excuse to think with a narrow mind, speak poorly, and treat people poorly. And that's a load of garbage that it has come to that. We don't lose kids to drugs and violence because they get picked on when they walk into a room with their hat on sideways and their dick hanging out, we lose them because we allowed them to grow up in the undisciplined, unfettered, poorply parented culture of entitlement and street power that spawned hip-hop in the first place. "Good marketing and shock value" to a rational adult is "desensitization, street cred, automatic weapons and glamorized violence, drugs and demeaning treatment of women" to a high schooler. Obviously this kid doesn't realize that it's marketing. He probably thinks wrestling is real, too. I didn't take it personally because he's a kid. But, bullshit needs to be called out, no matter who it comes from. How else will they learn it's not the approach that is going to get someone to listen to their "stuff", or more importantly, listen to their wants, needs, and fears?
That said, I'm very glad you work with kids that got off to the wrong start. Lord knows we need people like you to clean up the messes of the incredible amount of bad parenting in the world. You may see a lot of it, and I'm certain you do a great job turning them around, but that doesn't mean it happens with all, or even most kids.
And besides, nobody here is beating him up with any seriousness. Kids are pretty resilient. Rami and Nak are good folk, just goofing around. I'm sure that's what "bomb" is doing, so he should expect nothing less in return.