From youth crime and classroom chaos to the rise of gentle parenting and a generation seemingly allergic to being told no, are we raising children who are emotionally aware but increasingly unable to cope with the real world? And what can parents learn from cultures that approach discipline, respect and responsibility differently?
There was a time when the worst thing a teenager might do was sneak out of the house, smoke behind the school gym or steal a bottle of vodka from their parents’ drinks cabinet. They might have sworn at a teacher, slammed a few doors and announced that nobody understood them before retreating to their bedroom to listen to something suitably miserable.
Parents worried about bad influences, unsuitable boyfriends and whether their teenager would ever learn to put a plate in the dishwasher. Teenagers, meanwhile, were largely occupied with avoiding their parents, impressing their friends and occasionally doing something extraordinarily stupid.
None of this was especially new. Being a teenager has always involved a certain amount of rebellion, spectacularly poor judgement and an inflated belief in one’s own intelligence.
But something about today’s teenage landscape feels different.
Turn on the news and there are stories of teenagers allegedly stealing cars, assaulting strangers, threatening shopkeepers and filming acts of violence for social media. Teachers report struggling to maintain order in classrooms. Retail workers find themselves confronted by groups of young people who seem entirely unconcerned about authority. Parents describe households in which asking a 14-year-old to put down their phone can escalate into a three-hour emotional standoff.
Somewhere along the way, it seems, a fairly ordinary instruction to put your shoes on became an invitation to negotiate the constitutional rights of the child.
Of course, most teenagers are not out stealing cars or terrorising shopping centres. Many are thoughtful, hardworking, compassionate young people who are navigating an extraordinarily complicated world with considerable maturity.
But dismissing every concern about teenage behaviour as another round of adults complaining about the younger generation is equally unhelpful.
There are genuine questions worth asking about boundaries, consequences, respect, technology and the changing relationship between parents and children.
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all is whether, in our determination to raise happy children, we have sometimes forgotten that our actual job is to raise capable adults.
The Youth Crime Problem: What Do the Numbers Actually Say?
The headlines make it easy to believe Australia is experiencing an unprecedented national explosion in teenage criminality. The reality is more complicated, although that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 44,583 young people aged 10 to 17 were proceeded against by police during the 2024–25 financial year, a decrease of 5% on the previous year.
The national youth offender rate also fell, from 1,764 to 1,660 per 100,000 young people. In fact, longer-term data shows that youth offending rates have generally declined over the past decade.
That is an important distinction. An increase in frightening crimes in particular communities does not necessarily mean every teenager in Australia is becoming more dangerous. Yet some of the figures remain deeply concerning.
Around 26% of youth offenders in 2024–25 had acts intended to cause injury recorded as their principal offence. Almost seven in ten youth offenders were male, and 16 was the most common age.
In Victoria, 31% of youth offenders had acts intended to cause injury as their principal offence, while theft accounted for another 16%.
Other states are experiencing different trends. South Australia recorded a 16% rise in youth offenders in 2024–25, even as the national figure declined. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Recorded Crime – Offenders, 2024–25, released March 2026.
And for the people who have been assaulted, threatened or had their homes invaded, the knowledge that youth crime is statistically lower than it was a decade ago provides understandably little comfort.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that 9,579 young people were under youth justice supervision at some point during 2024–25. Almost two-thirds had been supervised in a previous year. Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Youth Justice in Australia 2024–25.
That last figure matters. It suggests that, for a significant group of young offenders already in the justice system, changing behaviour is neither quick nor straightforward.
But being proceeded against by police, being accused of an offence and being convicted of a crime are not the same thing. Nor do offender counts tell us how many offences each young person committed.
We need to be careful not to turn legitimate public safety concerns into a blanket character assessment of an entire generation.
Have We Become Too Afraid to Parent?
Here is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Over the past two decades, parenting has undergone something of a cultural revolution. The authoritarian approach of previous generations, where children were expected to be seen and not heard, has increasingly been replaced by a philosophy built around emotional validation, negotiation, connection and understanding.
In many respects, this is an enormous improvement.
Children should feel safe expressing their emotions. They should be listened to. They should not be humiliated, frightened or physically punished into obedience. Parents should apologise when they make mistakes, and a child having a difficult day should be met with understanding rather than automatic punishment.
But somewhere between rejecting unnecessarily harsh parenting and embracing a more compassionate approach, some families appear to have lost sight of an important distinction.
Understanding a child’s feelings does not mean accepting every behaviour those feelings produce.
A child can be furious that their phone has been confiscated. They are allowed to be furious. They are not allowed to smash a door, threaten their mother or throw a chair across the kitchen.
A teenager can feel embarrassed when a teacher corrects them. They cannot use that embarrassment as justification to abuse the teacher.
A young person can feel excluded, misunderstood or angry at the world. Those emotions deserve attention. They do not excuse intimidating someone in a shopping centre.
We have become remarkably good at telling children that their feelings are valid.
Perhaps we need to spend a little more time explaining that other people’s feelings, safety and rights are valid too.
Gentle Parenting Was Never Supposed to Mean No Parenting
Gentle parenting has become one of the defining parenting philosophies of the social media era. At its best, it encourages adults to remain calm, recognise their children’s emotional needs and establish boundaries without resorting to fear or aggression.
The trouble is that what appears online as gentle parenting is not always the same as what child development experts recommend.
An approach that combines affection with clear expectations is generally described as authoritative parenting. It differs substantially from permissive parenting, where adults are warm and responsive but impose few limits or struggle to enforce them.
The distinction is crucial.
A gentle parent might say, “I understand you’re disappointed that you can’t go out tonight. You’re allowed to be upset, but the decision stands.”
A permissive parent might begin with precisely the same statement and then spend the next two hours renegotiating until the teenager gets their way.
One approach teaches emotional regulation and acceptance. The other risks teaching persistence as a means of exhausting adults into surrender.
And teenagers, being teenagers, are exceptionally quick to discover which system operates in their own house. A boundary that disappears whenever a child becomes sufficiently upset is not really a boundary. It is a suggestion accompanied by some optimistic language.
Good parenting does not require constant confrontation, but it does require the ability to tolerate a child’s disappointment.
Sometimes the most loving thing a parent can say is no. And then actually mean it.
What Other Cultures Understand About Raising Children
One of the more interesting questions is why expectations around children’s behaviour differ so dramatically between cultures.
Visit Japan, for example, and you may notice that children are often expected to develop an awareness of their responsibilities to the wider group. In many Japanese schools, students participate in cleaning their classrooms and shared spaces. Everyday school life places considerable emphasis on cooperation, consideration and not unnecessarily inconveniencing others.
The message is not simply that children should obey adults.
It is that they are members of a community, and their behaviour affects everyone around them.
There is something quite powerful about that idea.
In Australia, we increasingly encourage children to understand their individual needs, express personal boundaries and advocate for themselves. These are valuable skills. But they can become problematic when they are not balanced by a sense of obligation to others.
A child’s right to express frustration should not outweigh another child’s right to feel safe.
A teenager’s desire to be entertained should not automatically become everyone else’s responsibility.
And having a bad day does not grant anyone permission to make somebody else’s day miserable.
Japan Versus Australia: The Classroom Tells an Interesting Story
The OECD’s 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides a revealing comparison.
Students reporting classroom problems in most or all mathematics lessons
In Australia, 40% of students reported being distracted by digital devices during most or all maths lessons, compared with 5% in Japan.
These figures do not prove that Japanese parents are better parents, or that Australian parenting causes classroom disruption. The differences reflect education systems, classroom expectations, technology policies and wider cultural factors.
But they do demonstrate that disorder is not an unavoidable feature of modern adolescence.
There are societies in which students report considerably more orderly learning environments.
Perhaps that is worth examining rather than assuming that every classroom must now function like a particularly hostile group chat..
What About European Parenting?
European parenting offers a different lesson, although treating an entire continent as one parenting culture would be rather like assuming everyone in Australia raises their children exactly the same way.
In many Scandinavian households, independence, outdoor play and the ability to manage age-appropriate risks are valued. Rather than removing every obstacle, parents often encourage children to develop competence through experience.
In France, family routines and adult-led expectations are frequently emphasised in discussions about parenting, although actual families vary considerably. The idea that children can participate in adult life without necessarily controlling it is an appealing one.
Neither culture is free from difficult teenagers, emotional problems or youth crime. And traditions that seem effective from the outside can conceal pressures of their own.
But both offer useful questions for Australian parents.
Are children being given enough responsibility?
Are we allowing them to learn from ordinary disappointment?
Are family routines designed around the needs of the whole household, or increasingly around whichever child is most likely to object?
Have we confused providing children with a wonderful childhood with ensuring they never experience an uncomfortable moment?
There is a difference between a child feeling loved and a child believing the entire world is supposed to make them comfortable.
The former creates security. The latter can create a very difficult transition into adulthood.
When Did Respect Become Optional?
Ask almost any teacher who has spent decades in the classroom whether student behaviour has changed and you are likely to hear a few stories.
Not all will be negative. Today’s students can be wonderfully articulate, socially aware and confident in questioning ideas that previous generations might have accepted without hesitation.
But confidence and disrespect are not the same thing.
Questioning a rule is different from refusing to follow any rule you dislike. Advocating for yourself is different from insulting someone because they have disappointed you.
Respect, it seems, has developed something of an image problem.
For some children, it has become associated with submission rather than basic consideration.
Yet showing respect does not mean abandoning independent thought. It means recognising that teachers, parents, retail workers, bus drivers and complete strangers are human beings who deserve to be treated decently.
Children do not need to agree with every adult they encounter.
They do need to understand that disagreement does not automatically justify abuse.
And perhaps parents should consider whether they are inadvertently undermining that message themselves.
When a child comes home complaining that a teacher was unfair, do we automatically assume the teacher is wrong? When a sporting coach doesn’t select our child, do we demand an explanation? When a school imposes a consequence, do we immediately attempt to overturn it?
Sometimes adults in positions of authority are wrong, and children should absolutely be protected from unfair or abusive treatment.
But if our instinct is always to rescue our children from the consequences of their behaviour, we may be teaching them that rules are optional provided they can find someone willing to challenge them.
The Smartphone Has Become a Third Parent, and It Is Not Doing a Particularly Good Job
Previous generations of teenagers did stupid things. The difference is that much of the stupidity remained confined to the people who were physically present.
A teenage argument might end in tears, a friendship falling apart or an embarrassing story that circulated around school for a few weeks.
Today, the same argument can be recorded, edited, uploaded, shared, mocked and discussed by thousands of people before dinner.
Social media has changed the audience for teenage behaviour.
It has also changed the rewards.
Attention has become a form of currency. A humiliating confrontation can attract views. An outrageous prank can generate followers. A fight can become a piece of entertainment.
None of this means every teenager who uses social media is at risk of becoming violent. The relationship between online content and real-world behaviour is far too complicated for such a simplistic conclusion.
But it is reasonable to question what happens when children spend substantial amounts of time in digital environments where provocation is rewarded, outrage travels quickly and public humiliation becomes entertainment.
Teenagers are still developing impulse control, judgement and their ability to anticipate long-term consequences.
Now we have handed them devices capable of broadcasting their worst decisions to the entire planet. And in some households, those devices have remarkably few limits.
Parents know more about the ingredients in their teenager’s protein powder than they do about the content their child consumes online for four hours every evening.
The answer is not necessarily to confiscate every phone and move the family to a remote property without internet access, tempting as that might occasionally sound.
But digital freedom should be earned and supervised according to a child’s maturity.
A teenager who cannot put down their phone during dinner probably does not need unrestricted access to it at two in the morning.
Photo by Ron Lach
The Mental Health Conversation Matters, but It Cannot Explain Everything
It would be unfair to discuss teenage behaviour without acknowledging the genuine mental health pressures facing young people.
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately one in seven adolescents aged 10 to 19 experiences a mental health condition.
Anxiety, depression and behavioural disorders can affect school attendance, relationships, decision-making and a young person’s capacity to cope with everyday demands.
Some young people who appear angry or defiant are struggling with trauma, neurodevelopmental differences, family instability, bullying or serious emotional distress.
Others are growing up with poverty, violence, neglect or circumstances that place enormous pressure on their families.
These issues cannot be solved by telling parents to become stricter.
Nor should mental health conditions be used to explain criminal behaviour without evidence. The overwhelming majority of young people experiencing mental health difficulties are not violent offenders.
But there is another distinction we need to make. Mental health support and personal accountability are not competing ideas.
A teenager can need professional support and still be expected to take responsibility for harmful behaviour.
A child can struggle with emotional regulation and still be taught that hitting people is unacceptable.
A young person can have experienced terrible circumstances and still benefit from clear, predictable boundaries.
Compassion should influence how adults respond to behaviour, not require them to abandon expectations altogether.
The aim should be to understand what is driving the behaviour, address the underlying needs and protect other people from harm.
Are We Raising Children Who Cannot Handle Being Told No?
Perhaps one of the more troubling changes in modern parenting is our relationship with children’s discomfort.
We want children to be happy. Naturally.
We want them to feel confident, supported, included and safe. Again, entirely reasonable.
But somewhere in that admirable collection of intentions, we may have developed a tendency to treat ordinary frustration as something that requires immediate adult intervention.
A child doesn’t like the dinner? Make something else.
They are bored? Find an activity.
They forgot their homework? Drive it to school.
They don’t make the team? Challenge the selection process.
Their friends arrange something without them? Contact the other parents.
By adolescence, some young people have had surprisingly little practice managing situations in which the world simply does not accommodate their preferences.
Then they encounter teachers who expect work to be completed, employers who require punctuality and strangers who are under no obligation to care about their personal circumstances.
The transition can be brutal.
Of course, being protected and supported throughout childhood is a good thing. Children who are genuinely vulnerable need more support, not less.
But resilience is not developed by removing every manageable difficulty.
It develops when children experience challenges, discover that uncomfortable feelings are survivable and learn how to respond without falling apart.
Not getting your way is not always an injustice.
Sometimes it is simply Tuesday.
What Actually Works? The Case for Boundaries, Consequences and Connection
If there is one thing parents should take from all of this, it is that raising respectful, emotionally healthy teenagers does not require returning to the harsh parenting methods of previous generations.
We do not need more yelling, humiliation or fear.
We need adults who are comfortable being adults.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies parental monitoring as an important protective factor during adolescence. Teenagers whose parents know where they are, understand who their friends are and set clear expectations are less likely to engage in a range of risky behaviours.
Importantly, the research also highlights the value of warmth and communication. Rules tend to work better when teenagers feel they can trust their parents.
The answer, then, is not authoritarian control or unlimited freedom.
It is something decidedly less fashionable: consistent parenting.
1. Stop Negotiating Every Boundary
Children should have a voice in family life. They should be able to question decisions, express frustration and participate in age-appropriate discussions.
But not every decision needs to become a family referendum.
Bedtimes, school attendance, respectful language, household responsibilities and basic safety expectations should have clear boundaries.
Parents can listen to objections without automatically changing the outcome.
In fact, this is one of the most useful lessons we can teach teenagers: you can disagree with a decision and still be required to accept it.
2. Make Consequences Predictable, Not Dramatic
Consequences work best when they are clear, proportionate and connected to the behaviour.
A teenager who repeatedly ignores an agreed curfew might temporarily lose some independence. A child who damages something deliberately should participate in repairing or replacing it. Someone who behaves cruelly towards another person should be expected to acknowledge the harm and make meaningful amends.
The goal is not revenge. It is learning. Constant threats, excessive punishments and consequences that change depending on a parent’s mood can undermine that process. Consistency matters far more than volume.
3. Give Children Real Responsibilities
Perhaps it is time to stop treating ordinary contributions to family life as extraordinary achievements.
A 15-year-old should be capable of preparing a basic meal, completing regular household tasks, managing some personal responsibilities and treating other people with consideration.
They do not need applause for every plate they carry to the sink.
Nor should responsibility be framed entirely as a financial transaction.
Helping at home teaches young people that being part of a family involves contributing to it.
Not because someone is paying them, but because other people live there too.
4. Stop Automatically Rescuing Them
Forgetting something, missing an opportunity or receiving a disappointing result can be valuable learning experiences.
Naturally, parents should intervene when a child’s safety or wellbeing is at risk.
But allowing teenagers to experience manageable consequences helps them develop practical judgement.
If they forget their sporting equipment, perhaps they have to explain that to the coach.
If they fail to complete an assignment, perhaps they have to discuss it with the teacher themselves.
Parents can help them plan how to respond without immediately taking over.
The aim is to gradually make ourselves less necessary, not more.
5. Know Who Your Teenager Is Spending Time With
Teenagers need privacy and independence, but independence should not mean complete parental disengagement.
Know their friends. Know where they are going. Discuss how they will get home. Pay attention to sudden changes in behaviour, unexplained possessions, aggression or escalating secrecy.
Build a relationship in which your teenager can tell you when something has gone wrong without fearing an immediate explosion.
Being involved does not mean conducting an interrogation every time your child leaves the house.
It means remaining a meaningful presence in their life.
6. Teach Respect Through Your Own Behaviour
Children notice how adults treat other people.
They notice when parents are rude to waiters, aggressive towards other drivers or dismissive of teachers.
They notice whether we apologise, keep promises and accept responsibility when we make mistakes.
It is difficult to persuade a teenager that disrespect is unacceptable when they regularly watch adults behaving disrespectfully themselves.
The standard has to apply to everyone.
7. Let Them Be Bored, Uncomfortable and Occasionally Unhappy
One of the greatest gifts parents can give children is the confidence that they can survive discomfort.
They can be disappointed and recover.
They can feel embarrassed and move on.
They can have an argument with a friend without requiring six adults to intervene.
They can lose, fail, wait, apologise and begin again.
These are not failures of parenting.
They are part of growing up.
And perhaps we should spend less time trying to create permanently happy children and more time helping them develop the resilience to manage an imperfect world.
Youth Crime Needs More Than Tough Talk
Of course, none of this suggests that firmer household rules alone will solve serious youth offending.
A teenager from a safe, stable home refusing to unload the dishwasher is not experiencing the same circumstances as a young person repeatedly involved in violent crime, homelessness, exploitation or family violence.
Pretending they are part of the same problem would be absurd.
For young people already involved in serious offending, effective responses may require intensive family support, mental health care, education, drug and alcohol treatment, mentoring, victim-focused accountability and appropriate justice-system consequences.
Communities also need confidence that serious offending will be addressed and that victims will be protected.
There is a legitimate debate about the balance between punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence and diversion from the justice system.
But a successful youth justice system should ultimately be judged by more than how tough it sounds.
It should reduce offending, protect the public, support victims and give young people a genuine opportunity to change course.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that the rate of young people under youth justice supervision declined from 19 per 10,000 in 2015–16 to 12 per 10,000 in 2024–25.
That is evidence of a longer-term reduction in supervision, but it does not establish which policies caused it, nor does it eliminate concerns about repeat offending or serious violence.
A community should not have to choose between caring about vulnerable young people and caring about the people harmed by their actions.
Both matter.
Perhaps Parents Need to Be Parents Again
It is tempting to blame teenagers for everything that seems to be going wrong.
They are rude. They are entitled. They spend too much time online. They cannot cope with criticism. They expect the world to accommodate their preferences.
And certainly, some teenagers are all of those things.
But adolescents do not develop in isolation.
They learn from the adults around them, the institutions they attend, the environments they inhabit and the culture that shapes their expectations.
We cannot spend an entire childhood teaching children that their happiness is our highest priority, that rules are negotiable and that uncomfortable feelings must be immediately resolved, then act surprised when they struggle with authority at 16.
We cannot give children unrestricted access to digital environments designed to capture their attention and then expect them to develop exceptional self-control without guidance.
And we cannot consistently undermine teachers, coaches and other responsible adults while simultaneously complaining that young people have no respect for authority.
Parents are not responsible for every choice their children make. Even wonderful, attentive parents can face extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and there is no parenting approach that guarantees a particular outcome.
But parenting still matters. Enormously.
So does community. So do schools. So do the standards we are prepared to uphold collectively.
Perhaps the real problem is not that we have been too kind to children.
Perhaps it is that we have sometimes misunderstood what kindness requires.
Kindness is teaching a child how to behave when they are angry.
Kindness is allowing them to experience consequences while supporting them through the aftermath.
Kindness is refusing to let them treat other people badly, even when they are struggling themselves.
Kindness is teaching them that they matter, but that they are not the only people who matter.
And sometimes kindness involves being the parent your teenager desperately wishes you would stop being.
Photo by Kindel Media
The Kids Are Not Alright, but They Are Not Beyond Hope
Every generation has worried about the one coming after it.
The teenagers of the 1950s were supposedly corrupted by rock and roll. The teenagers of the 1970s were rebellious. The teenagers of the 1990s were accused of being apathetic, disrespectful and hopelessly distracted.
Somehow, civilisation continued.
Today’s teenagers are growing up in a world that is faster, more connected and more publicly judgemental than anything previous generations experienced.
They are dealing with enormous opportunities and very real pressures.
Most will become perfectly decent adults. Many already are extraordinary young people.
But that should not prevent us from having difficult conversations about behaviour, boundaries and responsibility.
We can acknowledge that youth crime is more complicated than the headlines suggest while still demanding effective responses to violence.
We can support children’s mental health without excusing harmful behaviour.
We can embrace emotionally intelligent parenting without abandoning discipline.
And we can love our children fiercely without organising the entire world around their preferences.
The goal of parenting was never to produce a child who is happy every minute of every day.
It is to raise someone who can participate in society, manage disappointment, respect other people, contribute something meaningful and take responsibility for their own actions.
Someone who can hear the word no without falling apart.
Someone who understands that freedom comes with responsibility.
Someone who knows that being angry does not give them permission to be cruel.
The kids may not be entirely alright.
But perhaps the bigger question is whether the adults are prepared to do the difficult, sometimes unpopular work of helping them become so.
Because children need love, understanding and compassion.
They also need boundaries, expectations and consequences. And they need adults who are not afraid to provide all three.
From youth crime and classroom chaos to the rise of gentle parenting and a generation seemingly allergic to being told no, are we raising children who are emotionally aware but increasingly unable to cope with the real world? And what can parents learn from cultures that approach discipline, respect and responsibility differently?
There was a time when the worst thing a teenager might do was sneak out of the house, smoke behind the school gym or steal a bottle of vodka from their parents’ drinks cabinet. They might have sworn at a teacher, slammed a few doors and announced that nobody understood them before retreating to their bedroom to listen to something suitably miserable.
Parents worried about bad influences, unsuitable boyfriends and whether their teenager would ever learn to put a plate in the dishwasher. Teenagers, meanwhile, were largely occupied with avoiding their parents, impressing their friends and occasionally doing something extraordinarily stupid.
None of this was especially new. Being a teenager has always involved a certain amount of rebellion, spectacularly poor judgement and an inflated belief in one’s own intelligence.
But something about today’s teenage landscape feels different.
Turn on the news and there are stories of teenagers allegedly stealing cars, assaulting strangers, threatening shopkeepers and filming acts of violence for social media. Teachers report struggling to maintain order in classrooms. Retail workers find themselves confronted by groups of young people who seem entirely unconcerned about authority. Parents describe households in which asking a 14-year-old to put down their phone can escalate into a three-hour emotional standoff.
Somewhere along the way, it seems, a fairly ordinary instruction to put your shoes on became an invitation to negotiate the constitutional rights of the child.
Of course, most teenagers are not out stealing cars or terrorising shopping centres. Many are thoughtful, hardworking, compassionate young people who are navigating an extraordinarily complicated world with considerable maturity.
But dismissing every concern about teenage behaviour as another round of adults complaining about the younger generation is equally unhelpful.
There are genuine questions worth asking about boundaries, consequences, respect, technology and the changing relationship between parents and children.
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all is whether, in our determination to raise happy children, we have sometimes forgotten that our actual job is to raise capable adults.
The Youth Crime Problem: What Do the Numbers Actually Say?
The headlines make it easy to believe Australia is experiencing an unprecedented national explosion in teenage criminality. The reality is more complicated, although that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 44,583 young people aged 10 to 17 were proceeded against by police during the 2024–25 financial year, a decrease of 5% on the previous year.
The national youth offender rate also fell, from 1,764 to 1,660 per 100,000 young people. In fact, longer-term data shows that youth offending rates have generally declined over the past decade.
That is an important distinction. An increase in frightening crimes in particular communities does not necessarily mean every teenager in Australia is becoming more dangerous. Yet some of the figures remain deeply concerning.
Around 26% of youth offenders in 2024–25 had acts intended to cause injury recorded as their principal offence. Almost seven in ten youth offenders were male, and 16 was the most common age.
In Victoria, 31% of youth offenders had acts intended to cause injury as their principal offence, while theft accounted for another 16%.
Other states are experiencing different trends. South Australia recorded a 16% rise in youth offenders in 2024–25, even as the national figure declined. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Recorded Crime – Offenders, 2024–25, released March 2026.
And for the people who have been assaulted, threatened or had their homes invaded, the knowledge that youth crime is statistically lower than it was a decade ago provides understandably little comfort.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that 9,579 young people were under youth justice supervision at some point during 2024–25. Almost two-thirds had been supervised in a previous year. Source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Youth Justice in Australia 2024–25.
That last figure matters. It suggests that, for a significant group of young offenders already in the justice system, changing behaviour is neither quick nor straightforward.
But being proceeded against by police, being accused of an offence and being convicted of a crime are not the same thing. Nor do offender counts tell us how many offences each young person committed.
We need to be careful not to turn legitimate public safety concerns into a blanket character assessment of an entire generation.
Have We Become Too Afraid to Parent?
Here is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Over the past two decades, parenting has undergone something of a cultural revolution. The authoritarian approach of previous generations, where children were expected to be seen and not heard, has increasingly been replaced by a philosophy built around emotional validation, negotiation, connection and understanding.
In many respects, this is an enormous improvement.
Children should feel safe expressing their emotions. They should be listened to. They should not be humiliated, frightened or physically punished into obedience. Parents should apologise when they make mistakes, and a child having a difficult day should be met with understanding rather than automatic punishment.
But somewhere between rejecting unnecessarily harsh parenting and embracing a more compassionate approach, some families appear to have lost sight of an important distinction.
Understanding a child’s feelings does not mean accepting every behaviour those feelings produce.
A child can be furious that their phone has been confiscated. They are allowed to be furious. They are not allowed to smash a door, threaten their mother or throw a chair across the kitchen.
A teenager can feel embarrassed when a teacher corrects them. They cannot use that embarrassment as justification to abuse the teacher.
A young person can feel excluded, misunderstood or angry at the world. Those emotions deserve attention. They do not excuse intimidating someone in a shopping centre.
We have become remarkably good at telling children that their feelings are valid.
Perhaps we need to spend a little more time explaining that other people’s feelings, safety and rights are valid too.
Gentle Parenting Was Never Supposed to Mean No Parenting
Gentle parenting has become one of the defining parenting philosophies of the social media era. At its best, it encourages adults to remain calm, recognise their children’s emotional needs and establish boundaries without resorting to fear or aggression.
The trouble is that what appears online as gentle parenting is not always the same as what child development experts recommend.
An approach that combines affection with clear expectations is generally described as authoritative parenting. It differs substantially from permissive parenting, where adults are warm and responsive but impose few limits or struggle to enforce them.
The distinction is crucial.
A gentle parent might say, “I understand you’re disappointed that you can’t go out tonight. You’re allowed to be upset, but the decision stands.”
A permissive parent might begin with precisely the same statement and then spend the next two hours renegotiating until the teenager gets their way.
One approach teaches emotional regulation and acceptance. The other risks teaching persistence as a means of exhausting adults into surrender.
And teenagers, being teenagers, are exceptionally quick to discover which system operates in their own house. A boundary that disappears whenever a child becomes sufficiently upset is not really a boundary. It is a suggestion accompanied by some optimistic language.
Good parenting does not require constant confrontation, but it does require the ability to tolerate a child’s disappointment.
Sometimes the most loving thing a parent can say is no. And then actually mean it.
What Other Cultures Understand About Raising Children
One of the more interesting questions is why expectations around children’s behaviour differ so dramatically between cultures.
Visit Japan, for example, and you may notice that children are often expected to develop an awareness of their responsibilities to the wider group. In many Japanese schools, students participate in cleaning their classrooms and shared spaces. Everyday school life places considerable emphasis on cooperation, consideration and not unnecessarily inconveniencing others.
The message is not simply that children should obey adults.
It is that they are members of a community, and their behaviour affects everyone around them.
There is something quite powerful about that idea.
In Australia, we increasingly encourage children to understand their individual needs, express personal boundaries and advocate for themselves. These are valuable skills. But they can become problematic when they are not balanced by a sense of obligation to others.
A child’s right to express frustration should not outweigh another child’s right to feel safe.
A teenager’s desire to be entertained should not automatically become everyone else’s responsibility.
And having a bad day does not grant anyone permission to make somebody else’s day miserable.
Japan Versus Australia: The Classroom Tells an Interesting Story
The OECD’s 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides a revealing comparison.
Students reporting classroom problems in most or all mathematics lessons
In Australia, 40% of students reported being distracted by digital devices during most or all maths lessons, compared with 5% in Japan.
These figures do not prove that Japanese parents are better parents, or that Australian parenting causes classroom disruption. The differences reflect education systems, classroom expectations, technology policies and wider cultural factors.
But they do demonstrate that disorder is not an unavoidable feature of modern adolescence.
There are societies in which students report considerably more orderly learning environments.
Perhaps that is worth examining rather than assuming that every classroom must now function like a particularly hostile group chat..
What About European Parenting?
European parenting offers a different lesson, although treating an entire continent as one parenting culture would be rather like assuming everyone in Australia raises their children exactly the same way.
In many Scandinavian households, independence, outdoor play and the ability to manage age-appropriate risks are valued. Rather than removing every obstacle, parents often encourage children to develop competence through experience.
In France, family routines and adult-led expectations are frequently emphasised in discussions about parenting, although actual families vary considerably. The idea that children can participate in adult life without necessarily controlling it is an appealing one.
Neither culture is free from difficult teenagers, emotional problems or youth crime. And traditions that seem effective from the outside can conceal pressures of their own.
But both offer useful questions for Australian parents.
Are children being given enough responsibility?
Are we allowing them to learn from ordinary disappointment?
Are family routines designed around the needs of the whole household, or increasingly around whichever child is most likely to object?
Have we confused providing children with a wonderful childhood with ensuring they never experience an uncomfortable moment?
There is a difference between a child feeling loved and a child believing the entire world is supposed to make them comfortable.
The former creates security. The latter can create a very difficult transition into adulthood.
When Did Respect Become Optional?
Ask almost any teacher who has spent decades in the classroom whether student behaviour has changed and you are likely to hear a few stories.
Not all will be negative. Today’s students can be wonderfully articulate, socially aware and confident in questioning ideas that previous generations might have accepted without hesitation.
But confidence and disrespect are not the same thing.
Questioning a rule is different from refusing to follow any rule you dislike. Advocating for yourself is different from insulting someone because they have disappointed you.
Respect, it seems, has developed something of an image problem.
For some children, it has become associated with submission rather than basic consideration.
Yet showing respect does not mean abandoning independent thought. It means recognising that teachers, parents, retail workers, bus drivers and complete strangers are human beings who deserve to be treated decently.
Children do not need to agree with every adult they encounter.
They do need to understand that disagreement does not automatically justify abuse.
And perhaps parents should consider whether they are inadvertently undermining that message themselves.
When a child comes home complaining that a teacher was unfair, do we automatically assume the teacher is wrong? When a sporting coach doesn’t select our child, do we demand an explanation? When a school imposes a consequence, do we immediately attempt to overturn it?
Sometimes adults in positions of authority are wrong, and children should absolutely be protected from unfair or abusive treatment.
But if our instinct is always to rescue our children from the consequences of their behaviour, we may be teaching them that rules are optional provided they can find someone willing to challenge them.
The Smartphone Has Become a Third Parent, and It Is Not Doing a Particularly Good Job
Previous generations of teenagers did stupid things. The difference is that much of the stupidity remained confined to the people who were physically present.
A teenage argument might end in tears, a friendship falling apart or an embarrassing story that circulated around school for a few weeks.
Today, the same argument can be recorded, edited, uploaded, shared, mocked and discussed by thousands of people before dinner.
Social media has changed the audience for teenage behaviour.
It has also changed the rewards.
Attention has become a form of currency. A humiliating confrontation can attract views. An outrageous prank can generate followers. A fight can become a piece of entertainment.
None of this means every teenager who uses social media is at risk of becoming violent. The relationship between online content and real-world behaviour is far too complicated for such a simplistic conclusion.
But it is reasonable to question what happens when children spend substantial amounts of time in digital environments where provocation is rewarded, outrage travels quickly and public humiliation becomes entertainment.
Teenagers are still developing impulse control, judgement and their ability to anticipate long-term consequences.
Now we have handed them devices capable of broadcasting their worst decisions to the entire planet. And in some households, those devices have remarkably few limits.
Parents know more about the ingredients in their teenager’s protein powder than they do about the content their child consumes online for four hours every evening.
The answer is not necessarily to confiscate every phone and move the family to a remote property without internet access, tempting as that might occasionally sound.
But digital freedom should be earned and supervised according to a child’s maturity.
A teenager who cannot put down their phone during dinner probably does not need unrestricted access to it at two in the morning.
The Mental Health Conversation Matters, but It Cannot Explain Everything
It would be unfair to discuss teenage behaviour without acknowledging the genuine mental health pressures facing young people.
The World Health Organization estimates that approximately one in seven adolescents aged 10 to 19 experiences a mental health condition.
Anxiety, depression and behavioural disorders can affect school attendance, relationships, decision-making and a young person’s capacity to cope with everyday demands.
Some young people who appear angry or defiant are struggling with trauma, neurodevelopmental differences, family instability, bullying or serious emotional distress.
Others are growing up with poverty, violence, neglect or circumstances that place enormous pressure on their families.
These issues cannot be solved by telling parents to become stricter.
Nor should mental health conditions be used to explain criminal behaviour without evidence. The overwhelming majority of young people experiencing mental health difficulties are not violent offenders.
But there is another distinction we need to make. Mental health support and personal accountability are not competing ideas.
A teenager can need professional support and still be expected to take responsibility for harmful behaviour.
A child can struggle with emotional regulation and still be taught that hitting people is unacceptable.
A young person can have experienced terrible circumstances and still benefit from clear, predictable boundaries.
Compassion should influence how adults respond to behaviour, not require them to abandon expectations altogether.
The aim should be to understand what is driving the behaviour, address the underlying needs and protect other people from harm.
Are We Raising Children Who Cannot Handle Being Told No?
Perhaps one of the more troubling changes in modern parenting is our relationship with children’s discomfort.
We want children to be happy. Naturally.
We want them to feel confident, supported, included and safe. Again, entirely reasonable.
But somewhere in that admirable collection of intentions, we may have developed a tendency to treat ordinary frustration as something that requires immediate adult intervention.
A child doesn’t like the dinner? Make something else.
They are bored? Find an activity.
They forgot their homework? Drive it to school.
They don’t make the team? Challenge the selection process.
Their friends arrange something without them? Contact the other parents.
By adolescence, some young people have had surprisingly little practice managing situations in which the world simply does not accommodate their preferences.
Then they encounter teachers who expect work to be completed, employers who require punctuality and strangers who are under no obligation to care about their personal circumstances.
The transition can be brutal.
Of course, being protected and supported throughout childhood is a good thing. Children who are genuinely vulnerable need more support, not less.
But resilience is not developed by removing every manageable difficulty.
It develops when children experience challenges, discover that uncomfortable feelings are survivable and learn how to respond without falling apart.
Not getting your way is not always an injustice.
Sometimes it is simply Tuesday.
What Actually Works? The Case for Boundaries, Consequences and Connection
If there is one thing parents should take from all of this, it is that raising respectful, emotionally healthy teenagers does not require returning to the harsh parenting methods of previous generations.
We do not need more yelling, humiliation or fear.
We need adults who are comfortable being adults.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies parental monitoring as an important protective factor during adolescence. Teenagers whose parents know where they are, understand who their friends are and set clear expectations are less likely to engage in a range of risky behaviours.
Importantly, the research also highlights the value of warmth and communication. Rules tend to work better when teenagers feel they can trust their parents.
The answer, then, is not authoritarian control or unlimited freedom.
It is something decidedly less fashionable: consistent parenting.
1. Stop Negotiating Every Boundary
Children should have a voice in family life. They should be able to question decisions, express frustration and participate in age-appropriate discussions.
But not every decision needs to become a family referendum.
Bedtimes, school attendance, respectful language, household responsibilities and basic safety expectations should have clear boundaries.
Parents can listen to objections without automatically changing the outcome.
In fact, this is one of the most useful lessons we can teach teenagers: you can disagree with a decision and still be required to accept it.
2. Make Consequences Predictable, Not Dramatic
Consequences work best when they are clear, proportionate and connected to the behaviour.
A teenager who repeatedly ignores an agreed curfew might temporarily lose some independence. A child who damages something deliberately should participate in repairing or replacing it. Someone who behaves cruelly towards another person should be expected to acknowledge the harm and make meaningful amends.
The goal is not revenge. It is learning. Constant threats, excessive punishments and consequences that change depending on a parent’s mood can undermine that process. Consistency matters far more than volume.
3. Give Children Real Responsibilities
Perhaps it is time to stop treating ordinary contributions to family life as extraordinary achievements.
A 15-year-old should be capable of preparing a basic meal, completing regular household tasks, managing some personal responsibilities and treating other people with consideration.
They do not need applause for every plate they carry to the sink.
Nor should responsibility be framed entirely as a financial transaction.
Helping at home teaches young people that being part of a family involves contributing to it.
Not because someone is paying them, but because other people live there too.
4. Stop Automatically Rescuing Them
Forgetting something, missing an opportunity or receiving a disappointing result can be valuable learning experiences.
Naturally, parents should intervene when a child’s safety or wellbeing is at risk.
But allowing teenagers to experience manageable consequences helps them develop practical judgement.
If they forget their sporting equipment, perhaps they have to explain that to the coach.
If they fail to complete an assignment, perhaps they have to discuss it with the teacher themselves.
Parents can help them plan how to respond without immediately taking over.
The aim is to gradually make ourselves less necessary, not more.
5. Know Who Your Teenager Is Spending Time With
Teenagers need privacy and independence, but independence should not mean complete parental disengagement.
Know their friends. Know where they are going. Discuss how they will get home. Pay attention to sudden changes in behaviour, unexplained possessions, aggression or escalating secrecy.
Build a relationship in which your teenager can tell you when something has gone wrong without fearing an immediate explosion.
Being involved does not mean conducting an interrogation every time your child leaves the house.
It means remaining a meaningful presence in their life.
6. Teach Respect Through Your Own Behaviour
Children notice how adults treat other people.
They notice when parents are rude to waiters, aggressive towards other drivers or dismissive of teachers.
They notice whether we apologise, keep promises and accept responsibility when we make mistakes.
It is difficult to persuade a teenager that disrespect is unacceptable when they regularly watch adults behaving disrespectfully themselves.
The standard has to apply to everyone.
7. Let Them Be Bored, Uncomfortable and Occasionally Unhappy
One of the greatest gifts parents can give children is the confidence that they can survive discomfort.
They can be disappointed and recover.
They can feel embarrassed and move on.
They can have an argument with a friend without requiring six adults to intervene.
They can lose, fail, wait, apologise and begin again.
These are not failures of parenting.
They are part of growing up.
And perhaps we should spend less time trying to create permanently happy children and more time helping them develop the resilience to manage an imperfect world.
Youth Crime Needs More Than Tough Talk
Of course, none of this suggests that firmer household rules alone will solve serious youth offending.
A teenager from a safe, stable home refusing to unload the dishwasher is not experiencing the same circumstances as a young person repeatedly involved in violent crime, homelessness, exploitation or family violence.
Pretending they are part of the same problem would be absurd.
For young people already involved in serious offending, effective responses may require intensive family support, mental health care, education, drug and alcohol treatment, mentoring, victim-focused accountability and appropriate justice-system consequences.
Communities also need confidence that serious offending will be addressed and that victims will be protected.
There is a legitimate debate about the balance between punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence and diversion from the justice system.
But a successful youth justice system should ultimately be judged by more than how tough it sounds.
It should reduce offending, protect the public, support victims and give young people a genuine opportunity to change course.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that the rate of young people under youth justice supervision declined from 19 per 10,000 in 2015–16 to 12 per 10,000 in 2024–25.
That is evidence of a longer-term reduction in supervision, but it does not establish which policies caused it, nor does it eliminate concerns about repeat offending or serious violence.
A community should not have to choose between caring about vulnerable young people and caring about the people harmed by their actions.
Both matter.
Perhaps Parents Need to Be Parents Again
It is tempting to blame teenagers for everything that seems to be going wrong.
They are rude. They are entitled. They spend too much time online. They cannot cope with criticism. They expect the world to accommodate their preferences.
And certainly, some teenagers are all of those things.
But adolescents do not develop in isolation.
They learn from the adults around them, the institutions they attend, the environments they inhabit and the culture that shapes their expectations.
We cannot spend an entire childhood teaching children that their happiness is our highest priority, that rules are negotiable and that uncomfortable feelings must be immediately resolved, then act surprised when they struggle with authority at 16.
We cannot give children unrestricted access to digital environments designed to capture their attention and then expect them to develop exceptional self-control without guidance.
And we cannot consistently undermine teachers, coaches and other responsible adults while simultaneously complaining that young people have no respect for authority.
Parents are not responsible for every choice their children make. Even wonderful, attentive parents can face extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and there is no parenting approach that guarantees a particular outcome.
But parenting still matters. Enormously.
So does community. So do schools. So do the standards we are prepared to uphold collectively.
Perhaps the real problem is not that we have been too kind to children.
Perhaps it is that we have sometimes misunderstood what kindness requires.
Kindness is teaching a child how to behave when they are angry.
Kindness is allowing them to experience consequences while supporting them through the aftermath.
Kindness is refusing to let them treat other people badly, even when they are struggling themselves.
Kindness is teaching them that they matter, but that they are not the only people who matter.
And sometimes kindness involves being the parent your teenager desperately wishes you would stop being.
The Kids Are Not Alright, but They Are Not Beyond Hope
Every generation has worried about the one coming after it.
The teenagers of the 1950s were supposedly corrupted by rock and roll. The teenagers of the 1970s were rebellious. The teenagers of the 1990s were accused of being apathetic, disrespectful and hopelessly distracted.
Somehow, civilisation continued.
Today’s teenagers are growing up in a world that is faster, more connected and more publicly judgemental than anything previous generations experienced.
They are dealing with enormous opportunities and very real pressures.
Most will become perfectly decent adults. Many already are extraordinary young people.
But that should not prevent us from having difficult conversations about behaviour, boundaries and responsibility.
We can acknowledge that youth crime is more complicated than the headlines suggest while still demanding effective responses to violence.
We can support children’s mental health without excusing harmful behaviour.
We can embrace emotionally intelligent parenting without abandoning discipline.
And we can love our children fiercely without organising the entire world around their preferences.
The goal of parenting was never to produce a child who is happy every minute of every day.
It is to raise someone who can participate in society, manage disappointment, respect other people, contribute something meaningful and take responsibility for their own actions.
Someone who can hear the word no without falling apart.
Someone who understands that freedom comes with responsibility.
Someone who knows that being angry does not give them permission to be cruel.
The kids may not be entirely alright.
But perhaps the bigger question is whether the adults are prepared to do the difficult, sometimes unpopular work of helping them become so.
Because children need love, understanding and compassion.
They also need boundaries, expectations and consequences. And they need adults who are not afraid to provide all three.
What to Read Next
Why Gen X Still Seems Weirdly Unbothered About Everything: What a generation raised on independence, boredom and less parental supervision might teach us about resilience.
When Did Having a Hobby Become a Personality Trait?: Why everything from hobbies to happiness now seems to require an audience.
The Uncomfortable Truth: Being Replaceable at Work Is About to Get a Whole Lot Easier: Why resilience, people skills and being willing to put in the effort still matter.
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