Pea-n-Me
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2004
But - and not trying to be critical, Smitch - this is where the disconnect seems to be. You said, "Awesome was not the first word that came to my mind after watching that. Stupid was. There are ways to make your child listen to you without beating them." in your first post.
This was a lady who was reacting to a sudden, life or death, critical situation with her teenaged son. She also may have come from a tough background herself.
Did she look stupid, and goofy? Yes, in some ways she did. In fact, I sort of cringed when I first saw it, too. But then I really thought about the situation, and how her life is very different from mine. And I couldn't help but not only giving her kudos for CARING and BEING THERE, but realizing that, given the same circumstances, I likely would have done the same thing. After the first whacks upside the head, I actually got a huge lump in my throat watching her, understanding, as a mom, how passionate she was feeling because she simply loves her son and didn't want him to get in trouble, or worse. Surely we can all relate to that, and that's why people are calling her a hero.
That is all, I think, that we're trying to say, and perhaps why some of your posts were so strongly reacted to. A lot of parents want to insist why their kids would never do such a thing, but we all know, it can happen to anyone. Teens are very different animals than young children. They subtely start taking on views of their own, sometimes different from those of their parents, and they're also often beholden to peer pressure. If you think about it, it's part of a teen's "job" to separate from their parents, and this is often how it begins - by going against what they've learned and been taught. (Fortunately, it usually comes back. But the teen years are tough!)
This was a lady who was reacting to a sudden, life or death, critical situation with her teenaged son. She also may have come from a tough background herself.
Did she look stupid, and goofy? Yes, in some ways she did. In fact, I sort of cringed when I first saw it, too. But then I really thought about the situation, and how her life is very different from mine. And I couldn't help but not only giving her kudos for CARING and BEING THERE, but realizing that, given the same circumstances, I likely would have done the same thing. After the first whacks upside the head, I actually got a huge lump in my throat watching her, understanding, as a mom, how passionate she was feeling because she simply loves her son and didn't want him to get in trouble, or worse. Surely we can all relate to that, and that's why people are calling her a hero.
That is all, I think, that we're trying to say, and perhaps why some of your posts were so strongly reacted to. A lot of parents want to insist why their kids would never do such a thing, but we all know, it can happen to anyone. Teens are very different animals than young children. They subtely start taking on views of their own, sometimes different from those of their parents, and they're also often beholden to peer pressure. If you think about it, it's part of a teen's "job" to separate from their parents, and this is often how it begins - by going against what they've learned and been taught. (Fortunately, it usually comes back. But the teen years are tough!)