Parents who refuse to parent, but then wonder "what went wrong"???
Italian food is super high on my list of foods that I love, that I don’t eat often enough. Last night I rectified that, killing two birds with one stone by going for pizza, pasta and wine with one of my favourite human beings on the planet that I’ve only seen ONCE since getting back to Toronto from LA.
We were busy catching up on absolutely everything, when she shared with me that her ten year old daughter, had been involved in a group chat, of other ten year olds, where one of the boys took the chat in a sexual direction.
Ladies, and gentleman might I remind you this boy is TEN.
He was in a group chat with other ten year old CHILDREN.
Luckily, his mother somehow has access to his social media, and his chats, so she caught the inappropriate behavior that her son was exhibiting. Yay mom for spying on your kid who is ten, who in my humble mother opinion shouldn’t be on social media in the first place. But call me old fashioned. So here we have a mother who is allowing her super young child to be on social media, cool, if that’s your thing, go for it. She even took all the steps and measures to be able to monitor her son while he is out there in that wild grown up world. HUGE BROWNIE points for that. Well done! I wouldn’t have the faintest idea about how to “spy” on my children on social media. Which is why they had to wait a long ass time for the privilege of it, and also why they had to use the family computer in the common area when they were on MSN Messenger, or Facebook. Yeah, I know, that’s going WAY BACK. Anyway, this mom was on top of it in so many ways, except in the execution of punishment for his choices. Instead of marching into his room, letting him know that she was on to him, and that he was way out of line, she waited. Booked in a meeting with the teacher, told her about what was going on within her class, and her little pupils, then left the building. She passed the baton of discipline from her hand to that of a teacher. Somebody who is not the parent. Somebody who may, or may not be qualified for the task of teaching a young man about sexual misconduct. I mean, you gave life to a boy. You’re responsible for building him into a law abiding, kind, respectful adult, and the universe gifts you with a golden parenting/teaching moment, and you bail.
Why? This truly makes me go “hmmm.” I am scratching my head wondering why this mother didn’t parent her son? There is a way better way to handle that situation, so he could learn about obeying any rules that I’m hoping his mother, if his parents are still married, and father would have laid out for him about conduct toward the opposite sex. It was a golden parenting opportunity that when we’re given, we must grab hold of and see them through.
If this young boy had been my, actually OUR son, I can tell you precisely how we would have handled it. Let me recreate it for you.
I am lurking my ten year old son’s social media account, I see that he is leading the charge in taking an innocent group chat in a sexual direction, aimed particularly at one little girl. I stand up. If Yannick is home, I go to him first, apprising him of what is going on with our son. Together we bring him into a “family meeting” (we had these ALL THE TIME with our girls, super effective)to let him know that we’re on to him. We would then have him read the chat out loud so he could not only hear, but also feel the impact of his words and how they might have made the young girl feel uncomfortable too. Then we would take his cellphone, his laptop, his iPad, and any other device he uses to access the WORLD WIDE WEB away from him. Once we had done that, we would call the family of the young girl, ask them if they would be available for us to go to their home and share something that we learned that was going on between our children, initiated by our son. We would take our son with us, of course, and he would be the one who would need to apologize to the parents and the young girl about his inappropriate actions. Once home again, we would sit down with him and begin sex-ed chats, because obviously he’s already curious about sex, and should be having open, and frank discussions with his dad, at the very least.
But that’s not at all what happened here. How this played out was the teacher had individual meetings with the kids, then called my girlfriend bringing her into the loop, and that was it. End of story. The ten year old boy is still whopping it up on social media, with absolutely no idea that his parents are smarter than him. That it wasn’t a kid who turned him into the teacher, and got him in “trouble.” Rather it was his kick ass smart mother who caught him, because you’re a child, and your parents are smarter than you, so of course she did. They’ve been here longer, they’ve earned it. It is paramount that kids know that their parents mean business, that rules are to be obeyed. That they’re not just blowing smoke setting up rules because they like to hear the sound of their own voices, and that there is consequence when kids don’t respect them. IF you parent like this you end up with respectful, thoughtful, well adjusted adults. Letting a kid run around thinking they’re “getting away with shit” is an extremely bad idea. In fact I believe that this is a prevalent problem in our society these days. Children no longer seem to have a healthy fear of their parents, or any adult in a position of authority. Actually as I’m typing the words “obedient” and “authority” I keep hearing myself say; “Oh man some parents are going to have a problem with those words.” To which I say, too bad. They’re not dirty words. In fact the world could use a lot more of both, in healthy measure, which I believe we’re lacking. As far as the ten year old boy who began a sex chat against a non-willing party, I’d say his parents would do well to let them know they’re on to him. Put a little bit of knowledge, and fear into him. Because I would venture to guess, this young boy doesn’t have a very healthy fear of anything, and little respect for how to approach sex with somebody of the opposite sex.
And this my friends is a F*#k-boy in the making.
