Thursday, February 16, 2012

Guns never solve parenting problems


So your daughter pissed you off and you want to teach her a lesson, good for you. You just taught her to shoot and that "might makes right"

How on earth did shooting a laptop and publicly humiliating her teach her that it is wrong to talk shit about you online? How does your behavior model what you want from her?

OK so lets for a moment ignore the fact that this dad is a self riotous idiot ( I will come back to him later) and focus on what the girl did. Her behavior was hurtful, it broke house rules, and it needs to be addressed.  Since she seems unable to keep her online conduct within the parameters her parents set taking away her laptop and thus limiting her online access is reasonable. And this is where Gun happy dad and I part ways.

The goal of parenting should always be to teach. In this case I would assume you want to teach them to be grateful for how good they actually have it and to be considerate of how their words and actions can hurt others.

 Talking to her about WHY what she did was hurtful is important. She is old enough that there is no reason not to put the onus for mending fences on her. If she is unable to see why what she did was wrong and think of a way to fix it then perhaps it is time to get rid of the computer all together. If it comes to that though

GUNS ARE STILL NOT THE ANSWER

In fact unless someone is about to kill you ar there is a deer in front of you that will feed your family for the winter guns are never the answer. Why not have some good come out of her punishment. Have her choose a kid that she knows will never be able to afford their own computer  and give it to them as they will appreciate it more. Or if you can't trust her not to mock that child at school for receiving her castoffs then donate it to an underfunded school.

Back to Dad. In this situation I blame the dad completely. It is unreasonable to assume a man so juvenile as to shoot an inanimate object that becomes the focus of his rage is also incapable of cleaning up after himself? He acts like an adolescent and can hardly be a role model for proper behavior. Heck if I lived with an asshole like that I would probably get pregnant in high school just to escape. I hope his daughter doesn't become a statistic and marry someone like him.

3 comments:

  1. I agree it was a little bit extreme for this day and age, but at least he didn't do like they when I grew up and take his rage out on HER with a public throttling.

    Kids today are getting out of hand. If you can raise a teen to be obedient out of love and not fear then you're doing an outstanding job of parenting. But as my dad always used to ask me, are you upset because you did it or upset because you got caught. I learned the right answer after a few tries I and just said what knew would please him and pretty much did whatever I wanted BEHIND HIS BACK.

    I'm quite sure kids haven't changed that much in thirty years. It's just the socialization that parents get when they mess up that makes THEM change in most cases. Nowdays if you're seen spanking your child you can go to jail. When I grew up if you messed up you got paddled with a footlong paddle that stayed on the principal's desk to scare the bejeezus out of you BEFORE you did anything wrong and came out when you forgot your manners or wore the wrong thing that wasn't in the student dress code.

    I'm glad those days are gone, but kids today should get to pay a visit to the past so they can't thank their lucky stars they don't have parents like mine.

    (And they were good parents, they were just very strict) And I was a very obedient child, so rarely if ever got a spanking.

    What really worked for me was one was enough.

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  2. Indeed. We have definitely seen stricter times than these.

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  3. I think the analysis in "Guns Never Solve Parenting Problems" by Melissa Beliwicz is one sided and doesn't even give short shrift to the frustrations a parent can face. In fact, I think the video posting is quite constructive as he is actually confronting the issue and doing so in a very honest way.

    Aside from that, I think she makes several good points of how he could have done it better.

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