Objective Thoughts on Conflicting Social Situations

In My Humble Opinion
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  1. A child brightly asks a few times to buy a party hat or two for her dad’s birthday. The dad sees it as a bad behavior, and yells at her for asking when he said “No” the first time. He smashes his cake on the ground, and walks away.

  2. A step son talks to himself in his room out loud as he has a habit from a mental illness. The step’father summons him out while sitting on his chair, and says with some volume and contempt that he should stop. The son tells him “Stop” for being bitter. The step father sees it as disrespect and explodes in rage. He goes on an angry monologue, when the son decides to calmly get his cellphone to film the situation. The son offers to have the angry father to express to the camera what’s wrong with the son, in exchange for the son saying what’s wrong with him, in turn. He intends to post the discussion online for dozens of people to objectively judge. The stepfather screams with twitching expressions about how the son had “done things” years ago that does not affect anyone now. The son stays silent, and films the whole explosion. At the end, because he does not delete the film, the stepfather fights for the phone, snatches it, and destroys the evidence with a hammer because, “If people say that, they would think I’m a psycho.”

The two seem to have different beliefs:

The Stepson: It isn’t disrespect or harmful to tell your parent in the eye to stop being bitter or angry just because the son tried to take a snack upstairs, or walked around with a food plate. He does not believe that small things like that are reasons to bring him to a table to lecture for “disrespect” and should not have to apologize for doing things like joking to turn down their chewing volume.

The Stepfather: It is cultural in South Korea that parents are superior figures, and should not even be spoken to with disagreement such as, “I think this is like dictatorship. You don’t control people that way.” It is rightful to have complete dominance over someone who is allegedly lower, and hasn’t worked for a decade in society.

Every info was taken from quotes so far, and paraphrased.

To add: The stepson is respected by everyone else.
The Stepfather has not seen one friend in a decade.

It IS about a certain person in my life. Without suspecting bias, what would you comment?

What would you tell the stepson, and what to the stepfather?

Thanks for reading. Here’s a joke.

<command/insert-joke/>

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Reported for forum change —> IMHO

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Asian parents, in my experience, believe their kids should never, ever disagree with them. Mine called styling my hair differently than they desired “disobedience”.

Thus I am not in a neutral, objective place to stand. But smashing cake on the ground and exploding rages are not mature, and all the same, all too often the tools parents use.

Parents should be the adults in a situation. Everyone gets mad, but if you cannot control your temper, you should walk away. Unfortunately the parents I have seen who can do so are rare and the exception.

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Scenario 1: The father is behaving inappropriately.
Scenario 2: Both the father and the stepson are behaving inappropriately. To decide which is worse, I’ll score the behaviours on a scale of one (no biggie) to ten (real crimes). Just my 2¢, of course.

“A step son talks to himself in his room out loud as he has a habit from a mental illness.”
Since this is described as a habit, rather than an inherent part of the condition (e.g. Tourette’s), I think this is kind of annoying. Score: 4.

“The step’father summons him out while sitting on his chair,”
A bit imperious, but not outside of normal parenting. Score: 2.

“and says with some volume and contempt that he should stop.”
The tone is not nice. Score: 3. Subtotal: 5.
“The son tells him “Stop” for being bitter.”
I don’t entirely understand this, but it seems reasonable. Score: 1. Subtotal: 5.

“The step father sees it as disrespect and explodes in rage.”
Not an appropriate response to disrespect, real or perceived. Score: 5. Subtotal: 10.

“He goes on an angry monologue,”
Endurable. Score: 2. Subtotal: 12.

“when the son decides to calmly get his cellphone to film the situation.”
Uncool. Not nice to film people at their worst. Score: 5. Subtotal: 10.

“The son offers to have the angry father to express to the camera what’s wrong with the son, in exchange for the son saying what’s wrong with him, in turn.” This wouldn’t be a bad exercise if it weren’t being recorded. Why not just use pencil and paper? Score: 2. Subtotal: 12.

“He intends to post the discussion online for dozens of people to objectively judge.”
Really uncool. This is: 1) creating a permanent record of a conflict, and 2) airing dirty laundry in public, not even selectively. Totally out of line. Score: 7. Subtotal: 19.

“The stepfather screams with twitching expressions about how the son had “done things” years ago that does not affect anyone now.”
Screaming is only escalating. Score: 5. Subtotal: 17.

“The son stays silent,”
This is great. Score: 0. Subtotal: 19.

“and films the whole explosion.”
Uncool, for reasons above. Score: 3. Subtotal: 22.

“At the end, because he does not delete the film,”
Which he should have. Score: 1. Subtotal: 23.

“the stepfather fights for the phone, snatches it, and destroys the evidence with a hammer because, “If people say that, they would think I’m a psycho.””
The hammer was overkill. If he had snatched the phone and hit delete, I would have scored one, but the hammer brings it up to five. Subtotal: 28.

So, on balance, I think he was worse than you, but the intent to post the video online is by far the worst things, so call it a draw. Both of you, smarten up.

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Since the OP is looking for opinions, let’s move this over to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

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Am I the only one confused? Maybe I’m up too late, or have poor reading comprehension. I get the impression (I hope) that English is not the native language of the writer.

If that is the case - some of nuances are important here.

The mental illness - what is it? How old is the step son?

Talking to yourself if you are a kid - is pretty normal - and not a mental illness. Talking to yourself if older - I don’t think would be considered a habit. If the stepson is seriously mentally Ill - then obviously that makes a big difference.

Was it the father’s own birthday cake that he smashed? Why would a child want to buy a party hat? Do children actually go out and buy hats?

If I felt like I was living in a prison with a dictator for a father I could see recording things to try and show people that I wasn’t exaggerating. I am not saying it is right.

I certainly wouldn’t put up with the whole parents can do no wrong attitude that apparently is common in some parts of the world. I can’t imagine living like that and remember feeling fairly helpless as a kid - and my parents were actually pretty good.

You can’t expect someone that destroys his own birthday cake (if that is what happened) not to go really crazy when confronted with a cell phone taping session.

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Lacking important details and context, clearly contains bias, language badly misused/misleading, cultural difference so large as to exclude objective input from anyone, in my opinion.

Sorry, I’m not sure how you think anyone could bring anything pertinent or illuminating to such a mishmash of ill drawn interactions.

Nonetheless, I wish you good luck. I think you’re going to need it.

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It seems the the recording a video and submitting it to be seen by strangers is the point where you’ll get the most disagreement here. Personally, I think it’s pretty reasonable. When we’re growing up, we lack perspective on what is appropriate family behavior. Parents setting very reasonable boundaries for their kids may be seen by them as being tyrannical, while children receiving genuine abuse may consider that normal. We happen to live in an age where recording technologies are readily available enough that we can share experience more directly, without losing as much detail to hearsay and exaggeration. If a kid thinks a parent is being unreasonable and abusive, then perhaps it would be best to share the details in a way that won’t be dismissed as the kid merely being a disrespectful, exaggerating ingrate.

Obviously, this wouldn’t be appropriate for the vast majority of parental acts, but if a parent can’t sit down and calmly explain to the kid when family matters should be private and not be displayed to the public, then that kid deserves to be told by more objective sources “your father is violent and abusive, and his actions go beyond good parenting.”

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If you are The Stepson, know that this isn’t the way it should be. Remove yourself from the situation as much as possible and when you can get out permanently, do it.

Then begin to learn how to live and not just survive.

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Apparently, someone in Asia had the same father I had. I wish I’d had a way of recording some of his irrational outbursts, back then. The birthday cake episode rings very very true.

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I think the kids need to take out the dads in their sleep before they kill again

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That’s probably the best course of action. Nip this in the bud, so to speak.

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Instead of asking yourself “Is this course of action objectively correct?” ask yourself “Will this course of action achieve the outcome I desire?”

Neither the father nor the stepson are getting what they want. Looking for validation from strangers on the internet will not change the situation. Being able to say “look, all these people agree that I’m right and you’re wrong” is not a path toward solving the problems in this relationship.

What actions can you take that are likely to produce the outcome that you desire? Or at least an outcome that is better than what you have now? And remember, walking away counts as an action … .