I doubt they stole it to use it as a weapon or anything like that, they more than likely simply thought it would be funny to take a blind person's means of getting around safely. It wouldn't surprise me if all they did with it was to disassemble it and throw it away so as not to get caught with it.

That depends on whether you use Amazon or not. Since I have been a long time customer of Amazon, the choice for me was easy, so I got an Echo. But if I hadn't been an Amazon customer, I'd have probably purchased a Google Home.

One of the biggest problems with kids these days is lack of supervision. These days it takes income from both parents to raise a family so gone are the days where one parent stayed home, and most people don't bother with arranging some place for their kids to go after school where they'll be supervised, so the kids pretty much run wild and often get away with almost anything they decide to do regardless of what it is, legal or not.

I'm thankful that we had a stay at home parent while I was growing up, though that didn't prevent some things from happening that shouldn't have, so we were supervised which probably kept us out of all sorts of trouble we'd have gotten into.

That and the state stepping in where it has no damn business, telling parents its not OK to spank their kids, well, look what that lead to. Spanking isn't abuse, and you can do all the timeouts and stand in the corners and take this and that away, but it just doesn't work. You need to give them a line, a hard line in the sand and this is what you don't cross. When they have that, then the chances you will have to spank them go way down, like in my entire childhood, I think I was spanked like maybe 4 or 5 times, not that often.

I just saw a video on facebook yesterday, and its not like this is a new thing, but it was a compilation of kids acting completely insane, talking back to their parents and so forth, yelling, screaming, getting violent. And these were younger kids, not teens. Actually the parents were very calm, I suspect because they were the ones filming it but still.

SO you use spanking as a corrective tool, a motivator, I mean I can see how people see it as barbaric, its not a viewpoint I can't see both sides of, because you sort of are using pain as a motivator, and you are using fear of that pain being repeated as a means of keeping the kid in line. I do feel its necessary despite that, however. Also, parents need to take a more active role in just figuring what is going on in their kids' lives. I think the problem is now that we're starting to see parents of the millennial generation which is part of the problem. Another part is lack of supervision. You may end up having a kid grow up into a real piece of shit adult if you don't do something now, but then again, I've seen some bratty ass kids grow up to be decent people, the point is that you can't predict how things will turn out, you can't rely on them coming to their senses. You need to start discipline young, and no, all discipline does not need to include spanking, that other stuff has its place too, but you just can't rely on it. I mean, fear does kind of keep kids in line. It's not like its a daily fear like I'm scared of my parents, scared to be around them, its more a knowledge OK I better not go up to them and scream fuck you, or guess what...

I think the reason kids freak out so bad these days is because of lack of that fear, they literally have nothing to be afraid of because their parents either talk calmly, or yell back, they take stuff, but the kids probably get it back anyway because they just keep going at the parents until they give in. It should never get to that point, it should be stopped well before that point, and young, like as a baby even, yoo want to teach them no and stuff as a baby, so by the time they reach toddler stage and getting into everything, now I"m not suggesting spank the kid for running around and being a kid, but its like for the worst of the offenses.

Having a kid so far out of line like that just makes things so much worse in the home. The parents probably already have stressers of their own, maybe they have financial burdens, maybe they're worried about losing their job because the see the writing on the wall, and they think they'll be replaced soon, whatever, life has its stressers, then you add that into the mix, the bratty kid? It makes things exponentially worse. No you dread coming home because it's gonna be chaos, you dread waking up in the morning to get them up and out the door to school, work becomes a haven, an escape, and the presure doesn't just go to a certain point and stop, it mounts every day, its unhealthy, and psychologically devastating. It may even get the parents fighting among themselves and lead to a divorce that then creates a ton more problems, so its a cycle that needs to never get started, and if it seems like its becoming an issue, steps need to be taken to end it..

Now I hear you saying, but you're not a parent, how could you know anything about raising kids? Truth is, there's a lot I don't know about it, and I have no desire whatsoever to step into fatherhood in my life. I can only draw conclusions from my own life and observations of my surroundings, some of which include parents who handle their kids badly, and parents who handle their kids exceptionally well. I don't think it takes any special qualifications to share observations, just a methodical approach and the attempt to remain objective, and see both sides of a point.