I don't want to be a part of the village

So, they tell me that it takes a village to raise a child. And yeah, I see their point. Kids need strong leadership from multiple adult role models to turn out well-rounded and well-behaved. But shouldn't the rest of us get to choose whether or not we want to be a part of the village that raises that kid?

The neighborhood I live in is desperate for me to be a part of the village. They seem determined to make me parent the kids that skate board on my driveway (And not just once in awhile turning around on my driveway, but actually assembling on my driveway to use my walkway and driveway as their personal, 12 year old X Games), or the kids that climb over my six foot fence into my backyard while they're playing hide and seek, or the kids that were climbing on the roof of my garage a few Saturday nights ago.

And that doesn't even cover the kids who, without a helmet or any other sort of protective gear, ride around on their bikes and scooters in the middle of our fairly narrow street, oftentimes past sunset and even past dusk, darting out behind parked cars, willfully displaying a wanton disregard for their own safety.

I do realize that as a single adult, without children of my own, to me kids are just more annoying. I don't find them charming the way their parents do. I don't think it's funny when they say the same thing over and over and over and over again. I don't like to aww shucks the kicking of my seat or the poking of my head on an air plane.

Some of that is just my lack of experience in dealing with children.

But some of it seems like a lack of respect on the part of the parents of these kids. After all, you can hardly blame a kid for rude or annoying behavior if the parents in their lives aren't monitoring them. I often wonder where the parents of the After Dusk Bike Riders are as their children are nearly run over by people trying to navigate their way down their street. Do they not see that the kid isn't inside? Do they not wonder where they are? Do they not worry that something bad might happen to them? I wonder what the parents think when they look out their windows and see their kid riding their skateboards up and down the driveways of other neighbors, or climbing on the roof of their garage. Do they not realize, "Hey, maybe I should teach Bobby that there is such a thing as personal space and property ownership and that we don't play in the yards or ride bikes on the property of others"? Aren't they embarrassed when their kids act without manners or without concern for the world around them?

When I was little, we got yelled at when we walked on someone else's lawn. We weren't allowed to ride our bikes on other people's property. We wouldn't have considered climbing into the yard of someone we didn't know to hide during a game of hide and seek. We wouldn't have played baseball toward the yard of a neighbor, tempting fate and the possibility of a baseball through a window. And there were consequences if we disobeyed those rules. We knew we would get in trouble. That we'd get a timeout. That we wouldn't play outside that day. Whatever. There were limits placed by our parents, we knew what they were and what would happen if we disregarded those limits.

Does that not happen anymore? Is that why it takes an entire village to raise kids these days? Parents hope other people will "raise" their kids? They hope one of the neighbors will teach the hard lessons about respect that they seem too scared to instill in their own children? I don't know. Maybe parents now days are overworked or underappreciated. Maybe kids really are nastier or meaner or more horrible. Maybe I'm just really intolerant and easily annoyed.

But this isn't just about my front yard or my driveway or the roof of my garage. This is about the movie theaters and restaurants and public spaces we all have to share. This is about parents actually standing up to their tantrum-having kids and telling them "no" and not shyly apologizing and asking the rest of us to indulge the whim of their four year old. This is about what the world will be like in about 12-20 years when a lot of these kids begin "real" jobs and make their way in the world, believing they are entitled to everything they want, other people be damned! This is about learning early that you aren't the center of the known universe, that other people matter and that grownups' opinions usually matter more. And they've earned that.

The older I get, the less patience I have for misbehaving kids. But the older I get, the angrier I get with those misbehaving kids' parents. This isn't about the kids. Just as I bear the responsibility for my dogs' poor manners---the jumping on people, the errant licking, the annoying barking---so do parents bear the responsibility for their kids. (And kids aren't dogs, I know.) But if I can carry a bag around and clean up my dogs' poop from a neighbor's lawn, surely they can keep their kids off my driveway. Or at least, for pity's sake, my roof.

Otherwise, I'm starting my own village.