Don’t Judge All Kids

By The Behavior Of A Few

To the Editor:

I have to add my voice to the conversation about young people hanging out downtown after school. Before making my own points, I have to say that I’m particularly bothered by the assumptions that those who would kick kids out of downtown make. Don’t assume that a few bad apples are representative of the whole bunch of good kids who patronize Dunkin’ Donuts and other downtown businesses. Our society is based on the principal of innocent until proven guilty. Let’s live that principle and not judge a whole class of people guilty because of the bad behavior of a few and the inattentiveness of those few’s parents. Now to my points:

1. More often than not, these kids are paying customers. My daughter, an eighth grader at NMS, won’t take a table, or even enter Dunkin’, if she and her friends are not purchasing something. And if these businesses don’t want the business of my daughter and her well-behaved friends, then they won’t have mine either. Downtown businesses should embrace their new young customers and find a way to not only serve them but also to make some money in the process. Isn’t that why they’re in business in the first place?

2. Kids have the right to access any appropriate business, just as adults do.

3. If adults are afraid to enter a business because a group of kids are there, they (the adults) have other deep personal issues that kicking kids out of downtown won’t solve.

4. Any person who is misbehaving in public should be ejected, adult or child. I agree that parents need to take responsibility for teaching their kids good behavior. But some of the crankier, child-phobic citizens of Newtown need a refresher course in manners, too.

5. Newtown isn’t a walker friendly town. Where else can kids who can’t drive go?

Thanks for listening,

Tim Gagne

6 Cherry Street, Sandy Hook                               December 22, 2006