This is in the Pit, as I expect it would otherwise end up here.
A Florida mother had her child hold up a sign: “I was rude to my teacher. I can’t come to school. I am sorry!!!” outside the school, while she stood by to ensure his safety.
It seems a little bit extreme, but not knowing the problems she’s faced with junior in the past, at least mom is not blaming others for her child’s misbehavior, and is addressing it herself. For that alone, I give her thumbs up.
Heh. That reminds me – my sister recently made my niece go to her room and told her she couldn’t come out until she’d made a list of at least 10 reasons not to be rude to people. The final (11-item) list haf these two gems:
#2: It makes people not want to take me out for ice cream, even to make up for something else.
#9: It makes me be punished.
(The rest were good reasons not to be rude, but those two cracked me up.)
The kid is all of eight or nine years old. Couldn’t mom just march junior into class and insist he apologize directly to the teacher. It seems counterproductive to publicly humiliate the child and keep him out of class.
I agree unconventional. There are a whole lot of effective punishments between doing nothing and media-covered public humiliation.
I don’t think it’s abusive but attention-whore parenting isn’t something we should aspire to.
A kid that young can’t have done anything fucked up enough to deserve that treatment. Unless… there’s some bad parenting involved.
Did I miss the part where she carried a sign, too?
It’s abusive. I’ve seen parents like that - they aren’t stable. In a few years start checking the kid for bruises. If not sooner.
IMNSHO, parents who pull stunts like this just crave the media attention. “Oh, look, I’m getting news coverage about the l33t way that I’m publicly disciplining my child, that must mean I’m a great parent.” I think a personal apology directly to the teacher would have been much more appropriate. (In addition to whatever other consequences the school and parents opted for, which hopefully would not include standing out on a public roadway holding up a sign like the kid was selling mattresses or something.)
Discipline isn’t about exacting revenge on our kids. It’s teaching them how to resolve challenges and prevent them in the first place.
This is an undisciplined response to an undisciplined kid (or it would seem).
It is difficult to accurately gauge the appropriateness of this reaction, but it strikes me as repugnant. It’s hard to know without more information, like what the kid actually did and said and how often the behavior had occurred until that point. It would have to be pretty blatant and out of control to resort to that.
Well, as for how egregious his misbehavior was, or about taking him out of school, If we knew one thing, it would kill both of these questions with one answer.
Was he suspended from school by the administrators?
If so, that probably says a lot about whether or not he has a rap sheet, if it was gross misbehavior, and whether or not we can be indignant at the mother for taking him out of school on her own.
Based on my assumptions, it shoudn’t have attracted media attention, that just adds to the humiliation factor, but I don’t have a problem with the local people who HAPPENED to see it. Then again, I didn’t breed, so any parent would say I don’t have the experience to make any judgements. I just try to remember being a kid.
On what basis do you conclude this second grader has a rap sheet? Really?
Now… I’ll concede it looks like he was suspended…
This is really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Humiliation is not an effective method of parenting and teaching. Yeesh, reminds me of some of the crap that a teacher of mine pulled when I was a kid. Took me decades to truly get over it.
Maybe he was suspended, but an out of school suspension is a serious consequence for being rude to the teacher. There is in school suspension for most misconduct/infractions. Out of school suspension is usually reserved for specific and more serious rule violations.
Hey, this second grader might have a rap sheet. The criminal element is young and dangerous these days. In fact, he could face life w/o parole by middle school.
According to this link, the boy is an honor-roll student. It seems he wasn’t suspended, but kept out of school by his mother, as punishment for being rude to his teacher!
While I believe the mother had good intentions, I’m a firm believer in avoiding deliberately humiliating your child in front of their peers for any reason. It is abusive. A good spanking in private is far preferable.
How is this different than sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on?
I think she sounds like a grade A bitch IMHO. An honour roll student who was rude to his teacher but not disciplined by the school? It can’t have been that bad then could it? I’ll wager he’ll be up a tower with a rifle or in the gutter with a crack pipe if she keeps humilating him like this. Poor kid.
How many kids appear on the six o’clock news when they’re sent to the corner?
The woman should be forced to stand on the corner with a sign reading: “I pulled my son out of school just to get on TV!”
If the only way that woman can get her eight-year-old’s attention is to publicly humiliate him, I’d wager that she’s already failed on the parenting front.
That’s not parenting. That’s grandstanding.
Gosh, I really like the way you put that. Very wise.
I could see doing it to a teenager, maybe, if they’d gone completely out of control (those hormones). Maybe? I don’t know. Of course, the sign you’d want them to wear for teenage misbehavior (“I was drinking and having sex”) wouldn’t exactly have the desired shaming effect.
A little kid? No way.
Personally, my kids would never forgive me for doing something like that to them. It would drive a huge wedge between us.
It’s not- that would be cruel too. My sister remembers sitting in second grade (some 40 plus years ago) with a sign saying “baby” because she cried over something. It was extremely traumatizing to a sensitive, fragile kid.
Oh, and responsible parents aren’t such a “rare” find anyway. They just are “rarely” in the news when they successfully raise children.