Parenting with a .45

[Warren Dew]

Yep. Teach her never to leave a trail anywhere...

How competent do you really want your kid to be at keeping secrets from you?

By the time she learns, she'll be an adult.

Given the degree of government intrusiveness here, those could be extremely useful skills for life.

[Svartalf]

Stupid to destroy the computer. I would marched her into Goodwill have her hand it over to them.

I'd never give a puter to goodwill without thorougly formatting the HD first, and while she might have the savvy to do that, I doubt he does, or the brains to tell her to.

[Svartalf]

Stupid to destroy the computer. I would marched her into Goodwill have her hand it over to them.

I don't agree with him destroying the laptop, but like how he responded to her facebook comment.

I totally agree with that.

He seems like the kind that, once he's decided he's in the right...

will destroy the tool rather than disscipline who used it.

[Warren Dew]

Stupid to destroy the computer. I would marched her into Goodwill have her hand it over to them.

I don't agree with him destroying the laptop, but like how he responded to her facebook comment.

He's in IT. He has a gazillion worthless old laptops lying around which he can use to make the video. I wouldn't be surprised if he used one of those to make the video, and just grounded her for a month or three. She's not the target audience for the video, her Facebook friends are.

[Robert_S]

Stupid to destroy the computer. I would marched her into Goodwill have her hand it over to them.

I don't agree with him destroying the laptop, but like how he responded to her facebook comment.

I totally agree with that.

He seems like the kind that, once he's decided he's in the right...

will destroy the tool rather than disscipline who used it.

Yeah. Using guns and destruction to make the child rearing point is what turns me off here. She's petulant and immature in a facebook rant, but she's a child and immature by definition. He's an adult and he sinks to the same level.

[Tero]

Yeah, the gun was wrong. He should have broken it with an axe, Finnish style. No excess hand guns in general circulation though Mafia guns are available easily.

[PsychoSerenity]

OK first of all there's clearly quite a difference between what she wrote in the message and what he claims, about what's expected of her. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, - even if she was completely exaggerating just to rebel and be disrespectful, so what?

Does she not have the right to rant to her friends about what's going on in her life?

Ok so he was offended, humiliated, disrespected by his daughter, - but if someone did that to me, I'd want to talk to them and try to find out what was wrong in the relationship that made them feel that way.

And you can't demand respect, just by virtue of being a parent, - sure that works when kids are young, but if you want to keep it, you have to start to earn it, like you would in any other relationship. And as the supposedly mature adult, he should be taking the lead in that. Demanding respect with the threat of punishment is at best going to get an act of respect with hidden feelings of resentment.

What he did was nothing more that vindictive destruction of important equipment and part of her social life, just because he felt offended that his daughter doesn't respect him. Well why should she?

[MrJonno]

Wimp shooting her laptop,

Next time she doesnt tidy her room burn down the house down that will teach her

[Seth]

The daughter is better? Or just a product of her genes?

I dunno, I couldn't watch the whole thing because the father was so annoying. Was she that bad? Because, to me, everything the father said didn't bolster his position but rather made me side with the daughter instead. Also, nice job snooping through personal shit, asshole. That letter was obviously a rant, a way for her to express her frustration, and obviously not meant for his eyes. Feel butthurt by it? Tough shit, asswipe, because you never should have read it to begin with.

Minor children have no "personal shit." Everything they have belongs to their parents, by law, and they have no expectation of privacy in anything they write, anywhere, ever, under any circumstances. Everything they do or say is within the power and authority of the parents to censor, investigate, listen to or punish for. That's part of being a child, and it's the responsibility of parents to keep tabs on what their kids are posting on the internet. Any parent who does not from time to time review browser histories, Facebook posts (and photos), text messages and other communications by their child is being grossly negligent.

If the parents of Klebold and Harris had been as caring and concerned as this father is, thirteen people might still be alive.

If the parents of hundreds of children had been as caring and concerned as this father is, hundreds, if not thousands of children might not have ended up victimized by on-line stalkers or sexually assaulted by pedophiles.

[Seth]

Wimp shooting her laptop,

Next time she doesnt tidy her room burn down the house down that will teach her

It's not HER laptop, it's HIS laptop. He owns it, he controls it, and he can do whatever he wants with it, including looking through it or shooting it.

And the answer to a recalcitrant teen who won't "tidy her room" is simply to take every single thing that's not in it's proper place and throw it away. Kids get told once to pick up their stuff, and then they lose it, forever. It teaches them responsibility and obedience, which are necessary traits for all children to learn early.

[Rum]

Edited: Nothing to say to you so I won't.

[hadespussercats]

She was doing the chores he asked her to do, right?

She hadn't gotten a job yet, sure. Sounds like she honestly didn't know how to fit a job into her schedule. He had a hard-working late childhood/early-adulthood, but it seems like he's expecting her to understand that perspective even though it was never part of her experience (sort of like Annette Bening in "American Beauty," raging out with "When I was your age I lived in a duplex!") This is the trouble with giving your kids all the things you never had-- you expect them to feel grateful, instead of just thinking that's the way it's always been. But for the child, it is the way it's always been.

But to get back to my main point-- nowhere in that video did Dad claim daughter wasn't doing the chores on her list. He bitched that he needed to write them out for her, not that she didn't do them.

So what the daughter did that was so unacceptable was to complain about her parents to her friends. My God. The humanity. I mean, if he'd overheard her bitching about them over the phone, would he have shot the phone? Snoopers pay the price for what they find out by snooping.

This is not to say he shouldn't have looked at her page, or unblocked what she'd tried to hide. She should know these things are public, and learn to act accordingly. But his whole "How dare you disrespect us?" is a bit rich. She's fifteen. Disrespecting her parents kinda goes with the territory. If it doesn't play out with her getting drunk and having dangerous sex, or committing crimes, or... If all she's doing is letting off some steam with her friends, Dad needs to lighten the fuck up. I'm sure this video wasn't his first venture into bitching about her.

All right, Dad wants her to get a job, learn the value of money? Fine. Deal with that. I don't even think taking away her expensive gadgets is a bad idea-- let her learn to pay for these things herself. But going on some hyper-macho testosterone rampage against her computer isn't really showing her to respect money. It just makes him look like a bullying hick.

[Robert_S]

If the parents of Klebold and Harris had been as caring and concerned as this father is, thirteen people might still be alive.

Right! If you teach kids that destruction, preferably with a firearm involved, of what you don't like is the answer then there won't be any more rampages.

[Seth]

OK first of all there's clearly quite a difference between what she wrote in the message and what he claims, about what's expected of her. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, - even if she was completely exaggerating just to rebel and be disrespectful, so what?

Does she not have the right to rant to her friends about what's going on in her life?

Yup, and she's also subject to discipline for disrespecting her parents.

Ok so he was offended, humiliated, disrespected by his daughter, - but if someone did that to me, I'd want to talk to them and try to find out what was wrong in the relationship that made them feel that way.

Merely existing is generally sufficient excuse for a sixteen year old girl (or boy) to loathe their parents.

And you can't demand respect, just by virtue of being a parent, - sure that works when kids are young, but if you want to keep it, you have to start to earn it, like you would in any other relationship.

Horseshit. The problem with youth today is precisely that parents do not demand and rigidly enforce respect for their parents and indeed all elders, who have earned the right to that respect by surviving and creating the child. Parents are due absolute respect and obedience merely because they chose not to abort the baby in utero and chose to give the child life, a home to live in, clothes to wear, food to eat and an education. Parents owe their children nothing by way of "earning respect." It's children who owe respect to their parents, no matter how they might feel about it.

And as the supposedly mature adult, he should be taking the lead in that. Demanding respect with the threat of punishment is at best going to get an act of respect with hidden feelings of resentment.

Who cares if a child resents being disciplined? Who cares if they have "hidden feelings of resentment?" That's a natural, ordinary feeling for a child to have when being told to do something they don't want to do. But they have to do it anyway, because they have to learn how to be obedient to authority and hide their resentment carefully because, well, that's pretty much how the rest of their life is going to go. Children who are coddled and never learn to control their emotions and bury their resentment will be entirely unsuccessful in life, and will never be able to hold anything other than a menial job at best. This is because for the balance of their lives, they will be facing employers who make demands that breed resentment and frustration, and if they don't learn how to suck it up and show respect regardless of how they really feel, they will be fired for insubordination. The word "insubordination" derives from the word "subordinate," which means to take a position inferior to and under the control of another.

That's life. So kids need to be taught how to subordinate themselves to authority so they can be successful when they grow up to be adults. The "act" of respect is what is required by society. Your boss doesn't really care if you actually respect him so long as you show respect and follow orders. If you do respect him, fine, that's a good thing, but in the end, you obey orders, keep your mouth shut and bury your resentment deep, so your boss can't see it or you starve to death in the gutter, and justifiably so.

What he did was nothing more that vindictive destruction of important equipment and part of her social life, just because he felt offended that his daughter doesn't respect him. Well why should she?

She's not going to need a computer for her "social life" because, if it were me, she would have no social life at all for at least a year. She'd be on house arrest until she learned her place in the family hierarchy and how to respect her elders. In the good old days she'd have been taken to the barn for a good strapping too. Unfortunately, liberal panty-waisted wimps have made it illegal in many places to give a child a good strapping, or even a spanking, and the results of this idiotic stance are seen in the uncontrollable youth and inability of any of them to be productive citizens as adults because they never learned self-discipline as a method of avoiding the much harsher consequences of parental discipline.

It's a tragedy for society and humanity that children are not properly disciplined so that they learn self-discipline and how to survive in the big, bad, harsh, unforgiving world of adults, where being an undisciplined jerk like this little girl destroys one's economic and social future.

[MrJonno]

Wimp shooting her laptop,

Next time she doesnt tidy her room burn down the house down that will teach her

It's not HER laptop, it's HIS laptop. He owns it, he controls it, and he can do whatever he wants with it, including looking through it or shooting it.

And the answer to a recalcitrant teen who won't "tidy her room" is simply to take every single thing that's not in it's proper place and throw it away. Kids get told once to pick up their stuff, and then they lose it, forever. It teaches them responsibility and obedience, which are necessary traits for all children to learn early.

Somehow I don't think what the teenager did or didnt do is the issue only that the father is a complete loon