Tough Love or Questionable Parenting

In your case, I think you just take away his computer privileges until his attitude improves and tell him how disappointed you are in him.

I wouldn't have shot up anything, either - that was a total waste of money - but I guess he wanted to make sure she got the point.

You get the Youtube link and then put Youtube tags around it (same as "quote" but do "youtube" instead -- click "quote" on my post to see what it looks like.

We've been successful in dissuading Mo from having much interest in the computer so I'm just reading along to learn how other parents have handled it in case I need it later.

I think this guy went over the top when he made a video and posted it to Facebook instead of just doing it privately. There seems to be a real trend of parents publicly ranting about how awful their kids are just to show what hard ass parents they are. I can only assume they're getting some kind of validation from it: "Yay for hard ass parents!" or something.

To embed a video you put: [youtube] insert link [/youtube]

And it comes out like this:

Thanks! I don't know why I didn't think of using the "Quote" button to see how to do it in the first place.

Here's what Soz's UBB code looks like. Leave no spaces.

It's a good question. So far I've avoided it, by keeping the kid off of Facebook. She's fine with that so it hasn't really been an issue so far. We just had a talk about it and I was kind of surprised -- she said that she is in touch with people she wants to talk to via texting, Facetime, etc., and she doesn't feel any particular need to go beyond that.

I don't monitor Facetime at all, but I do monitor her texts -- she knows that I will look at stuff, it's part of the deal if she has a phone.

I don't do a lot of monitoring, haven't caught anything of concern yet.

One other thing I do is keep an eye on some of her peers on Facebook, just to see what the zeitgeist is, and to kind of prepare for when she eventually starts with Facebook. There haven't been any big surprises, except maybe positive -- there are a lot more straightforward/ nice interactions than I'd expect. (Not enough privacy though, I can see a lot of stuff without friending people.)

Anyway, while this isn't a big issue now I know it's going to get bigger. So it's something I've thought about, not a lot of conclusions.

Sozlet seems to be (so far) one of those kids that responds well to trust -- trust her, and she proves herself trustworthy. So I'm probably going to give her a fair amount of freedom. But at the same time, I don't want to be naive. And will probably keep tabs on things until... that's the tricky part, haven't decided yet. At least a few years into the future, so will revisit then.

Well, it was rather an extreme reaction, but damned funny. I was just surprised that, when he was addressing her complaint about not being paid, that he hadn't pointed out that she is sheltered, clothed and fed. My grandmother's scolding usually begain with: "If you expect to put your feet under my table . . . "

In this case, I think he thought he was publicly shamed by his daughter and therefore felt he had to respond publicly, but teenagers rant and get passionately mad and see injustice in the world as a personal affront so I don't think he really needed to go quite so far. I don't know how I would feel if I were the daughter's friend. I could see saying "you go girl" on the original rant if I were a teenager, but seeing the blowback would be insanely shocking, maybe even embarrasing. I've got to wonder what is happening to this girl at school and if her friends are seeing their own FB posts in a new light.

I have told my children that I completely reserve the right to go on their social networking accounts at any time. I've discovered some of my son's friends have been engaging in dangerous activities (drinking until passing out) and quietly informed their parents. I've discovered other unsavory but not dangerous things and kept out of it. I've come to have more respect for my son's judgement in that he generally doesn't respond to the more offensive stuff nor does he generate any of it. (Although as posted earlier, we had an early calibration of expectations.) I certainly wouldn't have shot the laptop. I did really like the Dad's defense of the woman who cleans their house. Maybe she could have used that laptop.

No captions on the video so I'm responding kind of generally:

I definitely like your (engineer) response to the rant better than this guy's. Definitely seems attention-seeking and destructive rather than constructive. I think it's more likely to make the kid more rebellious and just force her into hiding rather than come to him with any problems, and won't really solve anything.

I'm not sure I'd respond directly to a rant about me, really depends on the age and circumstances I think. I'm very aware that she's going to get frustrated with me, and that's allowed.

Other part of that though is that she's been aware from when she was very little, and has seen me repeat many times (as she looks over my shoulder when I'm on A2K or Facebook) that online stuff is forever, and you post with the knowledge that anyone might eventually see it. I've shared some concerns about one of her cousins' Facebook interactions with her (not making a big deal of it, but when she's hovering and I see something from the cousin I'll wince, she'll see that reaction, and we'll talk about it) in a way that I think (hope) has been instructive.

Sheltering, clothing, feeding are responsibilities you take on automatically when you become a parent. I, personally, would add providing medical care, educating them, helping them with homework, etc. to that list.

These things don't count as compensation for work that you ask of your child.

The kid had no choice in being born; it's not their fault that they have needs.


Eating at the table with the family is a privilege. As is visiting Grandma....

Hah, that guy has taught his daughter well and I don't think thIS is the first time he's ranting about her publicly, perhaps not on video but I am sure it wasn't the first time.

Actually, his entire rant was so counter productive that his daughter probably heard the first sentence and the last one, never mind witnessing the violent shoot-out of her computer. He certainly needs anger management classes and it seems he's taught his daughter some of his traits. We have a saying: "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!" and here I think it's quite right. It's definitely questionable parenting!

If you want to get through to your kids you'll choose different methods.
We've had our share of problems with facebook - especially at the beginning, when Jane was around 13 years old. I deleted a lot of wall posts, not because they were offensive towards anyone, they were too informative about herself and her school etc. Anyone could have found her from the posts she made.

It's a learning process and as a parent you talk and talk and talk some more until they get it. My kid is 16 now and she understands now, in fact, she
goes and tells younger facebook friends what they can reveal about themselves and what not.

Bingo.

She was also given a laptop, which her father repaired, updated, and paid for the software. She may also have other things her parents bought her that aren't considered the necessities of life. Her parents didn't deserve to be called out like that in public; it was extremely rude and disrespectful.

For his part, he was even worse. What is he teaching her by his behaviour? It was completely uncalled for and over the top. Not to mention wasteful. What a moron.

And as for kids doing chores, it's just part of being a responsible member of the family. There is no justification for them to do nothing.

I don't have a problem with taking away privileges. I regularly do so with my kids.

Nor do I have a problem with chores. Kids shouldn't have to work to earn their food, but they need to scrape their plates and put them in the dishwasher.

Agreed.

Straw man, i didn't say those things counted as compensation for the "work" one asks of one's child. They are a very good justification for the routine chores assigned to a child, and she had it pretty damned easy in comparison not just to myself, but to my generation. She'd have filled her pants to have suddenly found herself with the kinds of chose that we found routine. Of course, if she had been raised that way, she'd have not thought them unusual at all.

I didn't visit grandmother, i lived with her and my grandfather. They were the primary "care givers," and it was their house, their rules, their table, their food, etc., etc., etc. . . .

Ha . . . that cracked me up. Try doing the dishes by hand and cleaning the kitchen after the meal, every day of your life. Try working four to six hours a day in the garden in the summer to produce a significant, large portion of that food that you eat. Some of our chores we didn't really mind. The first time i ate in a cafeteria in college, i was appalled at the food. Even commercially canned food doesn't stack up to the food we grew, harvested and canned ourselves. Just about everyone around us lived that way, too. My grandmother expected a lot of us, but she gave a lot, too. She got up every Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m. to make and bake the bread we ate for the rest of the week. She was up before any of us (only my grandfather arose earlier), and she made all the meals, did all of the laundry and either did or supervised us in doing all of the cleaning and in the maintenance of the house, yard and garden.

I think this child was living pretty high on the hog, myself.

Wow, two wrongs don't make a right...
The kid did a stupid childish thing. In this day and age of social media, kids just don't get it. I have quite a few kids this age on my facebook and I'm constantly amazed at the stuff they put up. Privacy is a thing of the past and most of them wear their hearts on their sleeves. Instead of getting the tell all memoir later on in life, we get a play by play of all the crap that goes on in their daily lives, minute by minute.
The father has every right to be pissed, but the violent ending is very disturbing. This will follow both of them around forever and so much for either of their privacy. She'll get married and daddy's little temper tantrum will be featured on the wedding reel. He could have handled this way better, smarter... instead he stooped to a new low.
What she wrote would have been forgotten within days, what he did will be remembered for a long, long time. And not in a good way - at least to some of us.

No disagreement, here.

I regularly reflect on how lucky I am to be living when and where I do. My house would be considered palatial by any historical standard.

Heat on demand, air conditioning on demand, clean water on demand, light on demand, vermin-free, smoke-free, machines to clean my clothes and my dishes, machines to pick up dirt, a refrigerator to keep my food unspoiled, entertainment piped directly into the house.