If he has money to buy a new PS2, then he can use it to pay for what he broke; if not, he can decide what to sell or how to earn that money. That’s how it works in the real world.
According to the story, he doesn’t care about other stuff.
Yes, exactly, which is why I’m puzzled that you don’t see the contradiction. In the real world, when you owe someone money, it’s up to you to get the money to pay them back. They don’t just get to pick through your things and sell them.
Apparently the point I’m getting is not the one you intended. Maybe you should rephrase it.
When the family of that 12 year old girl was sued by the RIAA, and had to pay a hefty settlement, altruistic P2P users raised money to pay them back. I consider doing that a favor for the family, even though some might describe it as “catering to their bad behavior”. Some punishments are stupid, and mitigating stupid punishments is a good thing in my book.
Maybe it’ll teach him that authority figures will take whatever he leaves unguarded, as soon as they convince themselves they need it more than he does… which is also worth learning.
OK, so I happen to think that it’s wrong for a 13-year-old (not to mention his friends) to be drinking alcohol when his parents haven’t allowed it. Gosh, you’d think that was illegal or something…
At any rate, I don’t care if parents let their teenage kids have a bit of wine with dinner, or try some of their beer, or whatever. This - assuming it actually occurred, which I doubt - apparently was not one of those instances. And as I stated, I’m not a parent, nor was it all that long ago that I was a teenager.
Mr2001, HelenTroy and erislover responded to your comments well.
I already said, if I hadn’t had the money to pay my dad for the stamps, I could definitely see him taking one of my things and selling it in order to pay him back. If the only thing I had of value was a game that my parents gave me in the first place, then that would be the thing to go. Like erislover (and no doubt pretty much everyone else), I don’t believe that the boy bought the PlayStation with his own money.
And then you could also think of it this way: turnaround is fair play in some households—he took something of theirs, so they take something of his. He didn’t ask them, “Is it okay if I take this thing of yours?” before he took it, therefore, they don’t have to ask him if he minds if they take something of his. If he didn’t like how it felt to have something he valued taken away, then maybe next time, he’ll think twice before taking something of theirs. That’s another way to teach a lesson—put the kid on the receiving end of it, so he knows how it feels.
[QUOTE=yosemiteAnd then you could also think of it this way: turnaround is fair play in some households—he took something of theirs, so they take something of his. He didn’t ask them, “Is it okay if I take this thing of yours?” before he took it, therefore, they don’t have to ask him if he minds if they take something of his. If he didn’t like how it felt to have something he valued taken away, then maybe next time, he’ll think twice before taking something of theirs. That’s another way to teach a lesson—put the kid on the receiving end of it, so he knows how it feels.[/QUOTE]
Its not unusual for grandparents to drop a wad of cash into juniors hands every xmas and birthday , depending on the relative wealth of the family.
I got GI joes , but other friends the same age were getting up to a thousand dollars on their birthday, and that was back in the seventies so…
Sides , count me as one of the people that think this is a gimmick to move a PS2
Declan
In all cases? Or only on rare occasions when there is no other way to come up with the money, or when someone fails to pay the judgment by a certain time?
When I got a traffic citation that I couldn’t pay all at once, they didn’t come to my house and start auctioning off my things. They let me pay it off over time. If they hadn’t, I still could’ve gone to any number of places to get a personal loan, paid the state immediately, and paid the loan off over time. In the real world, there are options.
Or
Kid does not have money ---------> Kid has to spend his free time earning money to pay mom, lesson is learned
Or
Kid does not have money ---------> Kid sells some other possessions to pay mom
I agree it’s unlikely that he bought it on his own–though I was buying video games at his age, so who knows–but we have no idea where he got it. Could’ve been a gift from some other relative, or a prize from a contest. And regardless of where it came from, it became his.
Some households, sure: The ones where the parents are as immature as the kids.
Well, then again, you hadn’t stolen something. You just owed a fee. Kind of different thing.
Or, kid loses game, kid has to spend his free time earning money to pay mom, kid earns money, gets game back. The nice thing about that plan is, the mom gets her money back right away, instead of waiting for the kid to pay it back in dribs and drabs. And the kid gets that immediate lesson, instead of thinking that when you steal something, you can pay it back in installments. Not to say that paying back what you steal in installments is necessarily a bad plan, just not the only (or necessarily the best) plan, depending on the circumstances, and the thief.
Well, since the kid got to choose which possessions of the parents he got to take, I don’t think the parents are obligated to let him choose which possessions of his they get to take. He didn’t ask them, they don’t have to ask him.
Just like the booze that he stole became his parents. But oh wait! He took it anyway.
Or perhaps the ones where the parents know what methods will work on their willful and selfish kids. Immediate results for their bad actions (no more PlayStation RIGHT NOW) can sometimes make a dramatic impression. I know that forking over my hard-earned money to my dad right away (and I did earn it through babysitting—it wasn’t a gift or an allowance or anything) made a big impression on me.
Perhaps. Do you have evidence that the victim of a thief is allowed to sell the thief’s possessions in order to regain the value of what he lost, even if the thief could come up with the money another way?
Ah, I see. Two wrongs make a right.
Well, unfortunately we have no way to know whether it worked on this kid (or whether the kid even exists). I can say from personal experience that it didn’t work on me.
Well, not when the thief and the victim aren’t related to each other. However, I can assure you that if I stole from one of my sisters or from my parents, my possessions wouldn’t have been treated with kid gloves. I would have paid up or forfeited something, by hook or by crook. Especially if I stole something worth over $100.
Oh, please. Cry me a river. They’re parents and they’re teaching their kid a lesson. He’s learning that “turnaround is fair play.” I think (if the story is true) that what they did is quite appropriate. He needs to learn how it feels to have something taken from him against his will, first hand.
And I can say that it did work with me. So I guess we’re at an impasse.
Reparations are a bitch…regardless if it’s national or familial. I bet that kid will use this event as a moral benchmark for the rest of his life. Nothing wrong with that.
In other words: not in the real world. This sort of punishment is meted out by parents, not by judges.
Except that, as you’ve described it, what happened to you is not the same as what happened to this kid.
To be fair, what happened to me isn’t an exact analogue either. My favorite possessions weren’t actually auctioned off, they were just taken and hidden. (My folks eventually did threaten to sell my things, and the next day I quietly moved everything I wanted to keep to a friend’s house.)
And what effect did those punishments have? Well, I learned where my parents liked to hide things, and how to sneak around the house at night without waking anyone.
I also learned that if I wanted something, I had to take a stand and fight for it: if my parents were “rewarded” only with moping and continued disobedience, instead of humility and compliance, when they made me miserable, then they’d eventually stop doing it. I had more energy than they did, and I could keep the struggle up longer than they could. It’s an important lesson, but I doubt it’s the one they meant to teach.
Oh, I don’t doubt it. Perhaps one day we’ll see him on the SDMB in a thread much like this one, putting forth a position much like mine.
Do you think the kid should face a judge instead of his parents? Do you think the parents should press charges in order to give the kid a taste of the “real world”?
What they did was give the kid a taste of the real world, which is this: you can’t steal someone else’s stuff and get away with it. They also taught him what it felt like, short and sweet. That’s what parents do, that judges don’t necessarily always do.
Was your parents punishment a result of you stealing something that belonged to them? If so, what did you steal, and why did you steal it? And why did you believe that your possesions would be hands-off, if you didn’t treat their possessions that way?
What do you mean by “wanted something”? Do you mean take something? Steal something? Keep something that belonged to you in the first place? I’m not sure what you mean here.
You mean, “I stole something of theirs so they took something of mine to pay for the stuff I stole, and it was terribly horribly unfair”? Somehow, I doubt it. Unless he grows up to be a whiner with a sense of entitlement.
No, it would be ridiculous to get the law involved over a damaged bugle and some wine. If they want to give him a taste of the real world (which you first brought up, BTW), there’s a much easier way, which I’ve already described.
Nope. So I guess we each have half of a relevant anecdote.
Well, specifically I wanted to keep the things that belonged to me, and eventually my parents stopped taking them. More broadly, I wanted them to get off my back about school and grades (which was mostly what I was being punished for), and eventually they did that too.
Out here in the real world, of course, the phrase “if you want something, be ready to fight for it” has many more applications: Want to get your candidate in office? Want to protect your rights from a new bill that’s about to take them away? Want to get that VP position that’s about to open up? Want investors for your hot new idea? Don’t just sit on your duff, go out there and work to make it happen, and don’t let bumps in the road knock you off course.
I mean, “You don’t take other people’s things, even if they did the same to you. Tit for tat only drags both of you into a race to the bottom.” Also, “Punishment should match the severity of the crime, in more ways than just monetary value.”
If the kid really loved his PS2 as much as the story says, do you really think his mom was as affected by some damage to a used instrument she was about to sell, the loss of a few bucks’ worth of beer, and the uncorking of a bottle of champagne she had already ruined herself (or so I hear) as the kid was by the loss of his treasured video games?
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the parents have tried that and it didn’t work? Ya think that it was a possibility?
With all due respect, I think my anecdote is far more relevant than yours. I stole something and I had to pay. You got bad grades and you had to—what? Get your stuff taken away? That’s not remotely like stealing and paying pack, now is it?
I’m not trying to second guess your parents—for all I know you were a terror and they were desperate at that point. But from the bare bones outline, it sounds like what they did was inappropriate.
I didn’t get stuff taken away from me unless that stuff was causing the problem (i.e. no TV time because of bad grades, that sort of thing). If my parents started rifling through my drawers to find stuff to swipe, just because (for instance) I lipped off to the neighbor lady (that didn’t happen), then that would be completely stupid. If your parents started taking stuff that belonged to you but that were not in the remotest stretch the cause of your bad grades, then I don’t blame you for being pissed. I would too, in your position. But that’s not what the OP is about.
Dude. We’re talking about a thieving little snot getting something of his taken away to pay for what he STOLE. That’s all.
Sounds like that’s what they were trying to do. You disagree? Well, a lot of us apparently don’t.
The champagne iin particular sounded like an expensive gift that she treasured (and was unaware that she’d ruined). It sounds to me that ruining that champagne was a big deal to her and a major source of her ire.
Sure, it’s a possibility. Maybe the kid’s mom tried being reasonable and that didn’t work. Maybe she really just sold his PS2 to get money for heroin. The story doesn’t mention either, so what’s the point of arguing over what may or may not have happened behind the scenes?
Ah, you see, my parents had the idea that I was doing poorly in school because of the time I spent on my computer, video games, TV, etc. So, they took those things away. Race to the bottom ensued.
Hey, you asked what I meant. Don’t complain when I tell you.
Sounds to me like they only cared about the monetary value. I do not believe that a used bugle, a couple beers, and a ruined bottle of champagne were as important to this woman as she claims her son’s PS2 was to him.
Hmm, maybe if her story had started out like this: “It was a glory day when * received [a bottle of Dom Perignon]. This beloved [wine] was [my] prize possession. [I gazed longingly at it], if not for hours at a time. When * would not take care of anything else, but * took care of this little treasure of [mine].”
