Rare find-a parent who takes responsibility for their child

The BBQ Pit
41

The *usual * product? Seriously? Perhaps you should try getting more of your information about children from interacting with them, rather than reading newspaper articles about how out of control they are. :rolleyes:

Subjecting your child to public humiliation isn’t “taking responsibility as a parent”. It’s abdicating that responsibility. It’s saying “Well, the kid won’t behave, I’m out of ideas, and this clearly isn’t MY fault. Maybe I should make him carry a sign so that people know he’s just rotten, and poor me has been dealt a bad hand. I mean really, what can I *possibly * be expected to do with this child?”

Perhaps the next time he misbehaves she should just brand him?

42

I’d imagine though that this would be for adults who have been convicted of some kind of crime/misdameanor rather than an 8 year old kid who has commited some kind of unspecified act that the school doesn’t appear to have seen fit to punish? I don’t disagree with this tactic per se but I do feel that it was unnecessary in this case.

43

I’ve avoided posting so far because I agree with all of you. I think it’s great to see a parent taking measures to curb poor behavior AND I think this was cruel AND I think it probably won’t be a big deal in the long run AND I think maybe the kid might be psychologically damaged AND I think she was grandstanding AND I think maybe more parents should do such grandstanding AND I think she sounds like a control freak AND I think a little parental discipline early might be more effective than a judge’s discipline later…

Bottom line: I don’t know. She did what she thought best with the best information she had at the time. Do any of us do any differently?

44

I definatley feel your pain, on the one hand it’s easy to dismiss her as an overzealous nutcase but at least she’s doing something, right? I do think that however good her intentions this isn’t really an acceptable way to punish an otherwise well behaved 8 year old.

45

Underlining mine…
I assume you meant “humiliation.” Changes the sentence a bit.

46

Righto.

Now that I reread the OP I have to wonder about this “rare find”. By all accounts the op is a resonsible parent so what is so rare about that, or is it that he finds it rare for a black mother to take responsibility for her son? :dubious:

47

Ouch. Way to play the race card. I’m fairly confident that the OP meant that yeah, if you read the newspapers and parenting books and watch Jerry Springer and COPS or go grocery shopping in an area with lots of children, it DOES look fairly rare for a parent to take responsibility for her son these days. That’s what *I *meant, anyway. It never occurred to me that there was anything racial about it. It’s a little "kids these days! :rolleyes: " but it’s not racist.

48

Wow WhyNot…you really nailed it on this one. I couldn’t figure out what I thought about it, either, and this is why. Any of what you say/what has been said in the thread could be true. Depends on the mom, on the kid, on the situation, etc. Hard to tell. Don’t think I would do it, but on the other hand, I’m the kind of mom who could probably stand to be a little stricter about a lot of things. So who knows? Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong.

49

Presuming that this incident is atypical for the child, a good parent would be able to elicit shame for undesirable behavior, reinforce appropriate behavior and motivate future compliance with rules and expectations without needing to use others to achieve results, as in this type of public humiliation.

If this incident is typical for the child, a whole host of other interventions are available, and the likelihood that her chosen intervention will make positive change is scant.

Most parents who take responsibility for their children do so without public fanfare or public spectacle. It’s probably one of the reasons why a naive observer might consider it to be rare.

50

Then the OP needs to be a little more intelligent about the media.

51

Well, what do you know. Somewhere in his internet travels, Danceswithscat has at last found an action taken by a black person that he can approve of – harming her own child by overpunishing for a trivial offense. It’s not his fault, though – this unnamed woman is clearly the black person most prominent in the news today. So he really had no choice.

In places other than the OP’s current location, “taking responsibility” means, and has always meant, accepting one’s own fair share of credit and blame, based on what you’ve done and what you have not done. It’s hard to measure that accurately when you’re talking about the actions of children, and downright impossible when you’re the OP, but even allowing for that I can’t see any definition that allows making your child hold up a sign explicating his guilt and shame while standing by and accepting credit for your parenting. A parent taking responsibility would be holding a sign up him-or-herself, with or without the child in question. A parent shares his/her child’s shame as well as her/his joy.

I make lots of mistakes with my own children, which is why I’m reluctant to condemn or praise other parents based on news reports and my own prejudices. I will suggest this: that humiliation is the experience, more so than sadness or loss or frustration or even physical pain, that creates resentment and anger, and that those are the emotions we must most beware of, because they are so destructive and most likely to visit themselves on others and to perpetuate and spread.

In any event, parenting is as private and as blindly hopeful an act as praying. As friend Hentor has just put it better, both are often destroyed by public scutiny.

52

You’re so fucking full of yourself. For your information, I didn’t notice at first that the lad was black. The article didn’t indicate his race, and the sign obscures most of him, save his little arms. Therefore, ergo, you dimwit, race had nothing to do with this thread. Not that you’ll believe that, (and not that I give a fiddler’s fuck either way) because you’ve decided to follow me around the SDMB, attempting to sound erudite while merely being a pompous jerk. Fuck off, already.

53

Well, a person with high self esteem is more inclined to humility than a person with a negative self image. People with a healthy, positive self image usually have less need to prove their worth to others. The same can be said about good winners and losers. A good loser and winner will likely have self confidence. Self esteem is not overrated. A small child rewarded for risk taking, cooperation, positive peer interaction, and team work (e.g. every kid gets a trophy on the peewee soccer team) is more likely to take risks in the future, work well with others, and lose knowing that the effort is as valuable as the outcome.

A second grader does not have the same cognitive ability, social sophistication, or self control as an adult. Surely, anyone who interacts with children knows this intuitively. It’s not hard to observe the cognitive and social/emotional differences between children and adults or, as my mom used to say, you can’t put an old head on young shoulders.

54

I must apologize, honored OP. Of course I believe that your presence here has nothing to do with race. It’s just a big coincidence, one of continuing series in which you’ve repeatedly shown your ass, (usually disappearing behind the nearest bush). Sure, the picture in your own link didn’t indicate race to you. Just as it means nothing now. Which is why, regardless of race, you suddenly have nothing whatever to say about the mother’s actions, when most of the arguments against your OP address the issues you claim to be concerned about.

It’s not that I follow you around – who wants the odium even of being compared favorably to something like you? But I’m a one-time farmboy, and when I smell shit, I still instinctively reach for the shovel.

55

You are as dumb as motherfucking rock. Unlike you and your band of merry shitstains, once my OP is posted, I don’t wait to badger the hell out of others who simply wish to state a differing opinion. I don’t get the tickle which you obviously do from attempting to argue the blue out of the goddamn sky.

I said:

Now that you want to play the race card, it is also clear that my OP praises the actions of a black woman. Gee-that kinda runs counter to how you wish to portay me, doesn’t it?

Tell ya what, farmboy-if you’re smelling shit, it’s because of your own asshole, where your head spends a goodly portion of time firmly lodged.

56

You know, dunce, now that I see the vast number of people who have jumped into the fray in the last twelve or fourteen hours to defend you and your point of view, I have no choice but to apolo-- oh, wait a second. On recount, that number appears to be, uh, approximately zero. So you remain not only your own best friend but also your only friend, which is nothing – much – for you to be ashamed of, at least compared to everything else.

Your insults, for example. They’re unimaginative, repetitive, and suggest nothing in the way of quickness or cleverness so much as they evoke the image of a lazy slob who is now and always has been severely cognitively limited when under the slightest bit of stress. Come on: “motherfucking,” “shitstain,” and “asshole” are the forty-year-old’s cognate of “Wahhh!” And you know it (or at least, it’s been explained to you in small words). But you continue to trot them out as if they are new, just as you expect each new vacuous pitting to be received as a fresh proof, discovered by you, that humanity’s progress toward egalitarianism is a big mistake.

Dunce, you really have to have a talk with whoever is reading these threads to you. As I said, way too subtly because I was writing for humans, your praise of a black woman for overpunishing her black child for a trivial offense against authority doesn’t exactly break the mold we’ve all come to recognize as uniquely, stupidly yours. Nobody but you wants to portray you, dunce: the role just isn’t written well at all. Just as a for-instance, what kind of dough-brained moron would try to claim credit for “praising” a black woman in his OP only two posts after claiming that

There’s evil, and there’s bone-rattling stupid. Nobody, present company excepted, wants to play both at the same time.

Look. I know you’re stupid, and I know you’re committed, and I know you don’t care about continually losing the argument because you think your only job is to keep the fight going, and you can always just start a new thread. Fine. I don’t want to change you or suppress you, I just want to make fun of you and keep everybody up to speed on what you are and what you’re doing. Think of it as a small addition to the cost of your advertising here. I feel the least I can do is to speed up the rate at which you’re making everyone sick of you.

57

Granted, there should be a step-wise level of punishment (yes, punishment): 1st offences are easier-going, more severe the more often it happens.

(Positive behaviors should also be rewarded. Not money-for-grades, but general praise or permission to go to special events.)

But there has to be some level of guilt/bad-feelings/esteem-lessening that discourages repeat behavior.

I know the few times that my parents yelled, spanked, or made me feel bad for what I’d done were effective. After that, I never crossed the street without permission, threw mud at passing cars, or stayed out past curfew drinking (respectively).

When I call students’ parents about undesirable behaviors, I get quite a few "it’ll never happen again"s. But inevitably, the behaviors happen again.

Even our school’s graduated “punishments” wouldn’t be punishments if I were a student. If it’s a serious-enough offense, a student gets in-school suspension (1 day in a windowless room with other miscreants, doing assignments [supposedly]). What punishment is it to be taken out of the class that you misbehaved in, probably because you don’t like it?

After that are 3-, 5-, 10-, and 30- day suspensions. Gee: 1) you get to stay at home, 2) your teachers have to make up special assignments for you to complete while you’re out, 3) you get to make up all other assignments (tests & quizzes) that you missed, usually within the same number of school days that you missed.