REGARDING teenage vandalism and crime, looking back on my childhood and teenage days of the 1930s and 1940s I can see many reasons why there is such a vast difference in behaviour.

Children had a healthy respect for the discipline provided by their fathers, and the local policeman, being both at that time free from the shackles of psychological nutcases, who have succeeded in recent years in undermining their authority.

Fathers in those days generally played a bigger part (especially with boys) in educating children after work with pastimes such as gardening and DIY.

Mothers taught children to knit and cook, and all other household essentials.

Leisure hours, now often unsupervised, were spent as a family, playing cards and other games, which not only kept the family together but prevented boredom, which has a disruptive effect on active minds.

Alas, despite the joys of television, it is not an activity.

It is now more frequently a tool for selling to children either things that their parents cannot afford or the type of unacceptable behaviour, which, copied, causes the very problem that is the subject of this letter.

I would add that schoolteachers did have a lot more support to get the attention they desperately needed to do an effective job.

As most teenagers like their own kind of music they should be seriously encouraged, and funded, to either learn to play instruments or sing, and have space to practise without the inevitable decibel count aggravation.

I am certain that this combined interest would be therapeutically beneficial (and soothing) to many frustrated children on the threshold of real life.

Dancing classes should also be encouraged, as it is a desirable way of mixing with "respect".

Gordon Ross,

Huntington Road,

York.

Updated: 10:21 Thursday, January 12, 2006