News, Finger pointed at parents as Bieber fever catches Sydney by surprise (teens, support)

[JD59]

The organisers of this morning's chaotic Justin Bieber concert say parents are partly to blame for the event's cancellation.

Bieber fever: hyperventilating girls, angry cops
NSW Police blame absent parents and overexcited fans for their decision to cancel teen singer Justin Bieber's Sydney concert.

Justin Bieber fever: parents blamed

[NoExcuses]

My mother took my sister and I as preteens to a Beatles concert. We worked for the tickets and bought hers as well. We never left her side. The crowd was unbelievably huge but under control. These days, parents just drop their kids off at things like that.

Too bad they all lost out on the experience.

[aidxen]

If you red the article that is pointed to by the OP, it would seem to me that the police and the event organisers did the right thing.

Mr Boland said Channel Seven had employed an event management company that has looked after the likes of U2, Pink and the Pussycat Dolls to manage security and crowds.
But as he admits, they under-estimated "the Bieber fever", which he said was a "bizarre phenomenon".
"I don't think anyone expected Justin to be as big as this. His own people weren't sure about coming to Australia as they didn't think it was a market he had cracked and we thought we were taking a risk by holding the concert," Mr Boland said.

"I think I'm OK with that [apologising] but I think parents would [have wanted an apology] if their [children] had been hurt. We here at Seven are totally supportive of the police action, we are not going to argue with police," he said.
"We understand the frustration of some the kids. A lot left more satisfied [after the Martin Place performance] but ultimately the safety of them must come first."

You know I agree with that. If there had been serious accidents then the TV station would have been doing a lot more than apologising.

I agree too that parents need to take tighter controls on their teens. There was note that teens were dehydrated after not drinking any water for many hours. I agree that parents just drop and run and that parents need to retake control of their lives.

The problem is that parents are diempowered. It does not seem to matter how you parent, there is always someone criticising the way you do it.

There is this idea that parents should just butt out of their kids lives, give them all the "love" and freedom that they want and that by some magical means they will grow up to be nice members of society. Of course when a kid goes off the rails, then its the parents fault. Can't be both ways.

To me we need to re empower parents. As a society we need to have greater emphasis for respect for others between adults and respect of adults by kids and of course respect of kids by kids.

[steel7]

Alot of parents just let their kids do what they want. I bet when alot of those kids become adults they are still living at home with their parents. I bet justine beiber fever will cool off in a few yrs.

[NJGOAT]

This is funny as it reminds me of the worst concert I ever had to work at in my life. I spent a summer (1998) working security at a large venue when I was 18. We had shows from Metallica and Ozzfest to Chicago and Jimmy Buffet. We thought that the hardest shows were going to be things like Ozzfest which were all day events with tons of different bands including at the time a new on the scene Limp Bizkit which loved to promote rioting during their shows.

Anyway, the hardest by far was the Dave Mathew's Band. I thought it would be more of a chill and jam sort of concert like Buffet was, boy was I wrong. It seemed every parent let their kid come to this show thinking it was going to be an innocent thing. Of course the kids immediately cut loose drinking and partying. I went home bruised from that show from all the fights we had to break up.

It's the seemingly innocent shows where they let the kids cut loose that cause the biggest problems. If my kids want to see a show, you better believe that I'll be going with them until they can handle it on their own.