Setting our kids on right road

REARVIEW:ONE QUESTION was on the lips of many people watching the hordes of feral kids rampaging through Britain's streets recently: where are their parents?

Sadly, in many cases their supposed guardians were either looting away alongside them or egging them on to pinch a new telly.

It is apparent that many breeders don’t care that they have a responsibility to their children – and society at large – not to raise them to be little monsters.

Granted, dragging the fruit of your loins out for a spot of family pillaging is an extreme example of rubbish parenting. But many of us are unwittingly teaching our offspring habits that could end up killing them.

I speak of the example we set children by our behaviour behind the wheel. A recent survey of 1,000 children in the UK and Ireland by Continental Tyres reveals 63 per cent regard their parents as aggressive drivers and 13 per cent are frightened or embarrassed to get in a car with them.

One in 10 children reported being so terrified by their parents’ antics they gripped their seats in fear. Three-quarters said their parents shouted at other motorists, and a fifth said they used hand-held phones while driving. And all this without even mentioning the mental midgets who smoke with their kids in the back.

If you let your children believe it’s fine to drive like a bank robber, don’t be surprised when they do it themselves. So, unless you want to be visiting your child some day in prison or – worse still – a morgue, cop on.